Obama stands as Grasshopper before House Republicans; Funny Face's gift certificate, elder Marine at Family, dog charges into path of oncoming cars; small view of beautiful evening

I am extremely frazzled at the moment, due to the fact that I have, once again, experienced technical difficulties with my Squarespace host tonight. Terrible technical difficulties. After preparing my photos, I first opened the program exactly one hour and 50 minutes ago and it has taken me that long just to get to this point - and I dread what might happen yet.

So I am exasperated. I just want to scream. I do not want to sit in this chair and battle Squarespace for another minute. But, I must get this blog post done. So I will proceed, although my wording might prove to be abrupt, reeking of frustration, all the way through.

Anyway - I did return to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant for breakfast today and, just as she said she would, Cindy had returned the gift certificate that Funny Face and her Mister had so generously purchased for me three days before Christmas.

I am quite amazed that the wrong Bill had this gift certificate all this time and did not take advantage of it, but grateful, too.

So today, my omelette came courtesy of Funny Face - and there was enough left over for another one, plus a bit more.

So thank you, Funny Face - Sally thanks you too.

When I started blogging, I never, ever, expected or even imagined that anyone would do something like this for me. It is quite amazing.

As I sat there enjoying my omelette, this man came in wearing the jacket that told of his service in the US Marines. This set off a whole train of thought that I was going to write down here tonight, but given the frazzled state that these technical difficulties have left me in, I am just going to pass.

Suffice it to say that I wanted to know more about him, to learn his story, to find out when and where he served. In fact, I decided that after I finished my breakfast, I would introduce myself. But then when the time came, he appeared so content and thoughtful, absorbed in his own consciousness, that I could not bring myself to interrupt him.

Plus, I had many things waiting for me to do, although I never did do them all.

Still, someday, I would like to learn what I can of his story.

You will recognize this dog from yesterday. It came out again. I had more that I was going to say about it, but, AUUUGGGGH!

As Charlie Brown would say.

This black lab came with it, of course, dragging a stuffed turtle with no head. It was right about here that my iPhone rang. It was Margie, calling from Arizona to tell me that there had been an explosion at Sunrise, the ski resort owned by her White Mountain Apache Tribe, and that our nephew, Uriah, had been caught in it and had been air-medivaced out to Phoenix.

She did not yet know anymore that. I walked as we talked. This was the third time that I had met this black lab in the past week. Both times before, it turned around and went home right after greeting me.

This time it continued on with me and it brought the turtle.

"Go home, dog," I said as I walked and talked to Margie.

It did not go home.

Soon we came to Seldon Street. I could see a number of cars coming from both directions. Sometimes, you look at a dog and you immediately know that this dog does not understand that if it crosses a road in traffic that a car can hit, injure and kill it.

I could see right away that this was such a dog. And there it was, trotting happily in front of me, straight toward Seldon - toward the cars that were coming from both directions.

"Dog! Dog!" I shouted, with Margie on the other end, trying to tell me how things were down in Arizona in the face of this latest bad news. "Stop! Come back here!" The dog did not stop, but trotted happily right into the path of an oncoming car.

"DOG! DOG!" Fortunately, the driver managed to brake in time. Immediately after, a car coming from the other direction did the same. I took no pictures because I was talking on the phone and shouting at the dog.

The drivers both gave me dirty looks.

The dog made it across Seldon and kept going up Brockton. I had planned to go that direction, too, but I knew that dog was going to stick with me the entire walk. I did not want to be responsible for it. It was only a couple of hundred yards from its house, so I figured it could find its way back without me - if it didn't get hit by a car in the process.

I wondered if I should try to shepherd it back, but I knew that it was just as likely to get hit by a car if I was shepherding it as if I wasn't.

It had already proven that.

So I left it to its own few wits and turned left, down Seldon, and ditched it. I hope it survived. I suspect that it did, but I don't feel that optimistic about its future, unless something changes in its daily care. Not so long ago, there was another dog that lived 100 yards from where this one does now. Once, even as its people looked on, it came running to Jacob and I and a car had to stop so hard it left rubber in the road.

Not long after, that dog was struck and killed.

As I walked on, an airplane passed by.

A raven flew overhead.

These bare trees just looked pretty to me.

Royce seems to be doing much better.

I first found Obama's appearance before the Baltimore retreat of the House Republicans online at The Mudflats. It was 66 minutes long and I did not have 66 minutes to spare, but I watched it, anyway. It was beautiful. Remember the old TV show, Kung Fu, with David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, or Grasshopper?

Remember how Grasshopper would calmly and quietly face the raging, fuming bullies, who would sneer and laugh and then charge in multiple at him with their guns, knives, axes, fists, whatever? Remember how, with his superior knowledge, skill and basic sense of humanity, Grasshopper would deflect or dodge every blow and weapon they threw at him and would turn their own rage and force backwards upon them until they fell before him?

And even then Grasshopper would be graceful, and would give them another chance - should they be willing to take it? Some did.

That was President Barack Obama, standing in front of the House Republicans.

As to the website taking up the other half of my screen, that is Burn Magazine, founded by master photojournalist David Alan Harvey of Magnum, both to encourage "emerging photographers" and to create a new venue for serious photography. Burn is a good place. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves photography that might not be commercial.

And, honest to God, I already had Burn onscreen when I found the Obama/House Republican get-together. I did not stage this very appropriate juxtaposition of web pages - this is just another one of those coincidences that I told you about yesterday.

On my coffee break, I saw this dog. I also heard from Margie again. Uriah has second degree burns on his face, along with several cuts, but no critical, life-threatening, injuries. Margie did not know how much of his face had been burned.

I continued on and the moon came up.

Pioneer Peak at dusk. I had to go down to 1/8 of a second to get this one. There was no traffic behind me, so I stopped in the road and held the pocket camera out the window. As soon as I saw a headlight in my rearview mirror, I took off again.

I did the same thing here. This is the best thing about living in Wasilla. Sometimes, you can get frustrated and forget, but then you are reminded - Alaska is always out there, surrounding you, embracing you, providing nurture to your soul.

I am a little frustrated by all this, though. I am satisfied with the size that vertical images appear in this blog, but sometimes I want the horizontals to be bigger, including these final three images.

Squarespace has a feature that allows a blogger to link a larger image to the small, column-width ones that you see here.  It is a process that is tedious in its operation - compared to accomplishing the same thing in say, Blogger, where it takes less than 20 percent as long (yes, I have timed it). I have pointed this, and their other many shortcomings, out to Squarespace many times and have suggested that they improve them to perform at least as well as do the same features in Blogger, which is free, whereas you must purchase Squarespace, but, damnit, after a-year-and-a-half, I am convinced that they are simply never going to.

Still, I regularly go through this aggravating process so that anyone who wants to can click on an image and bring up a larger version.

That feature is not working properly in Squarespace tonight, so the larger image is not available.  Even if you would like to look at a larger version of the final three pictures above, you can't.

Curiously, though, it worked with the omelette and the raven, but with no other image. And yes, I cleared cached, refreshed pages, closed and reopened my browser - several times - and shut down and restarted my computer. It didn't help.

Can you feel my exasperation with Squarespace? Can you? Can you feel it? I have never, ever, experienced anything else like Squarespace in the digital/computer world. In the beginning, when I first came upon these problems, I thought the situation would improve as I better learned the program and as Squarespace upgraded and improved it. I was wrong. Yet, I am so far into it, so many links lead to my Squarespace work and I have moved so far up in Google... what do I do? 

Squarespace has wasted so much of my time! They claim to want suggestions and they swear they consider all of them, but they never act on them. No, not on a single one do they act!

The support staff is, almost to an individual, courteous and they do their best to help, but at its root Squarespace is fundamentally flawed and their developers seem content to leave it this way.

Can you feel my exasperation?

I have ranted - but - if you only knew what I have been through with Squarespace!

Thos, if you read this, I am about ready to use some frequent flier miles and get you on a plane to Alaska! If you can solve some of these problems for me, it would be well worth it.

Couch warfare; someone gave me a gift certificate to Family, but it went to another; dogs - both nice and mean; Through-the-Window Metro study

The day began with promise. I saw a human being right away - Caleb, deeply engrossed in his video war games. When I looked at the screen, he was blasting away at an enemy (the avatar of an actual person somewhere else) who was scampering down the street in great panic as he tried to avoid Caleb's bullets.

It sure looked to me like Caleb was hitting him, but he dived into an open doorway, apparently unscathed. Immediately after that, Caleb was firing at someone else when another fighter popped out from the side and almost ran into Caleb's fire. Caleb stopped shooting for just one moment, or he might have hit that guy.

"Wow," I said, "that guy almost ran right into your fire."

"That was one of my teammates," Caleb said.

"So if you had hit him it would have been a case of friendly fire."

"No," he said. "Nothing would have happened. This is set up so you can't kill your teammates."

Just then, some kind of rocket came down on Caleb's avatar and killed it.

"I hope I didn't cause that by distracting you," I apologized.

"Oh, no, you didn't cause it," he said. "Those rockets just get you. You can't avoid them. It happens all the time."

And then you just become someone else, or the old you pops back to life and you keep fighting.

Yesterday, after coming in contact with a total of three people all day, all at once, for just as long as it took to buy an Americano, I promised to go to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant today. I did, and as I parked my car, I saw Sally walking towards her's.

So I shouted out to her. She gave me a hug, and then we talked for just a little bit. She asked me if I had received my certificate to get a free breakfast at Family Restaurant.

I was puzzled by this, as I knew nothing about any certificate.

It turns out that after I included her and a bit of her story about her battle with alcohol and drug abuse in a past post, one of my blog readers purchased gift certificates at Family for both Sally and me.

"Really?" I asked, puzzled.

"Yes," she said. "I got mine and I've used it already. Ask Connie, she knows about it."

So we said goodbye and I went in to get my breakfast, wondering if it had already been paid for. 

I ordered ham and eggs, over easy, plus hash browns and multi-grain toast, which I asked to be delayed until I had eaten everything else.

And here is my waitress, bringing my toast, after I had eaten everything else. But I forgot to speak her name into my iPhone dictation ap, and I have forgotten it.

After I spread strawberry jam upon my toast and ate it, I went to the check-out register and asked about the gift certificate. The lady behind the counter knew nothing about it, so she called out to Connie. Connie got a horrified look on her face and said that she had given the gift certificate to someone else.

This lady, Cindy, was standing in line behind me. "It was my husband that she gave it to," she said. She told me his name was Bill, too. She said there had been an argument at the time as to whether or not the gift certificate was supposed to go to her husband, but in the end he had taken it.

"I've got it in the car," she said. "I'll give it to you."

So I followed her to her car, where she did some rummaging, but she could not find it. She said it must be at home. She said she would find it and bring it tomorrow.

"I've just been wondering who Funny Face is," she said. That could be kind of puzzling for a wife, for her husband to get a mysterious gift certificate from someone she does not know by the name of Funny Face.

"Funny Face is one of my blog readers," I told her. "From Texas."

"Oh," she said.

Thank you, Funny Face.

I did speak Cindy's name into my iPhone, but, just as in every other case where I have done so, I remembered the name even without going back to the iPhone.

What are the odds that Cindy would have been standing in line right behind me when I asked about that gift certificate?

This is just another one of those hugely unlikely coincidences that happen to me all the time.

A bit later, when I took my walk, this dog that I first met Tuesday appeared again and came to greet me. It seemed to come from the same house where a dog named Angel lives. Angel is one of the nastiest dogs that I have ever met. Angel has bitten me. I think Angel is the Devil's angel.

The German Shepherd followed. I was a little leery, but it proved not to be vicious. It's still a bit of a pup, though, so its got time.

Maybe tomorrow, I will dig up my pictures of Angel and include them in my post - if there's room. Then you will see how mean she is. You will think that I had nerves of steel just to take such pictures.

The German Shepherd, in profile, tail down submissively. Maybe the future will be okay with this dog.

She told me the dog's name. I knew I would not forget it, so I did not speak it into my iPhone. I have forgotten it.

At the usual time, I headed to Metro Cafe. Carmen was feeling happy. The day was warm for Wasilla in late January and business had been good.

Through the Metro Window Study, #532.

I take so many pictures through the window of people on the other side of Carmen's counter that I just decided I've got a genuine study going.

I don't really know the number of this particular study, but #532 sounds pretty impressive, so I settled on it.

Carmen's husband, Scott, was taking down Christmas lights. He said these lights had been a disaster. The wind had pounded them against the windows, badly chipping the glass.

"I want it to be Spring," Scott said. "The older I get, the colder I get."

Despite the warmth of the day, right near freezing, the wind was brisk, so that must account for the fact that Scott, who works at Prudhoe Bay, was cold.

The moon was very near full.

Baby-in-waiting update: Still not here yet. Lavina is resting and is more comfortable now. Margie comes home in just over three days. I am a little more hopeful now that baby will wait for her/his grandma than I was last night.

I briefly see three humans today; I take a drive, listen to the Obama State of the Union Address; new baby draws nigh, causes intense contractions

This is it, right here - the only three humans that I had any direct contact with today. Carmen, of course, Samantha, who is in the fourth grade, but "going on fifth," and her mother, Tina. This happened a bit after 4:00 PM, when I got into the car and drove to Metro Cafe to get my Americano, and to listen to one hour of NPR, followed by President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address.

Other than these three, I did not come within face-to-face talking range of any other humans this entire day.

When I got up, Caleb had already gone to bed. I almost punched the auto-start to the car so that it could warm up and I could head to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, but it seemed to me that I should eat oatmeal today.

So I scooped some out of the round Quaker Oats box, put it in bowl, ran a little water into it, pulled a pack of mixed berries out of the freezer, dumped a handful in, micro-waved it for two minutes and then, surrounded by cats, ate it.

I also had a banana and a cup that I brewed myself.

Afterward, I took my walk and as I did, I exchanged a series of text messages with Lavina. Her situation is getting to be quite nerve-wracking. The contractions that she has now been having for a good week at least have intensified. They are getting strong and causing her significant pain. She is exhausted. Still, the doctor is telling her to stay home and stay in bed until they get to be about 15 minutes apart. 

Right now, they are 30 minutes to one hour apart. Her doctor still hopes to delay this birth a bit, as the baby is not officially due until one month from today and it would be good for s/he grow a bit before coming out.

But I hate to have Lavina suffering. It is hard for me to stay home. A couple of times today, I almost dropped everything to drive to Anchorage, but then if I got there and the baby still did not come for a couple of days, that would be kind of crazy.

I don't think s/he's going to wait until Tuesday for Grandma Margie to come home, though. As for Grandma Mary, she has given up the idea of coming. She still has some recovering to do from the injuries she sustained in the crash.

So Lavina's sister, LaVerne, is coming, with her young daughter, Gracie.

I am excited to see them.

After we quit texting, I looked from my iPhone and saw this jet passing overhead, going north.

Royce in the afternoon - he seems to be improving, but he is still mighty skinny.

That brings me back to coffee-break time. Here is Samantha, by herself. I, of course, am sitting in my car at the drive-through window.

Now I am driving, drinking my Americano, listening to the news, waiting for the Obama State of the Union Address.

At the very moment that I pass by this house, Obama begins to speak.

His speech continues as I wait at a stop sign for this car to go by.

I had thought that I would return home and finish listening to the speech in my office, but I did not want to get out of the car. So I bought a hamburger and a glass of water for dinner, and then ate it in the parking lot, not far from the Tesoro station.

I thought it was an excellent speech. Our President said some things that needed to be said and as I listened to him, I once again felt the rise of a sense of hope - yet, I'm pretty sure that those who needed to hear what needed to be said have already shook it all off and are busy planning and acting out the mischief that will build up their egos, spread the word of nonsense, hype fear and tear down our country.

Our nation drowns in absurdity - and my little town has contributed far, far, far, FAR more than its fair share. But damn - I still love this place.

After I returned home, I read Apple's announcement on its new iPad computer. This is just the tool that I wish I had 30 years ago, but new developments come along with they come along. I can't wait to get my hands on one. Maybe I can create little digital books about cats and coffee, and market them to people with iPads.

Margie called. She is a bit discouraged to be so far away as our new grandchild apparently draws so nigh to being born.

Somewhere near 10:00 PM, Caleb rose from bed and slipped off silently to work, so I never laid eyes on him today. The only folks I saw were Carmen, Samantha and Tina - just long enough to get an Americano served to me through the drive-through window. Other than that, my only companions today were cats and fish.

I love my cats and fish, but I think I will go to Family Restuarant tomorrow morning. I will spend half-an-hour or so in the midst of other humans, as their knives and forks clink against their plates and they ignore me and say clever things to each other and make each other laugh, or perhaps tell somber and grim stories and frown at each other.

My waitress won't ignore me, though. No. She will treat me right. At Family Restaurant, the waitresses all treat you right. They are excellent waitresses, each and every one.

Of course, if my phone should ring sometime between now and breakfast... then I will be off to go meet my new grandchild instead.

iPhone fun; a dearth of human contact; I hang out with cats and communicate with a fish

Yes, Michelle, I did get my iPhone* - just before I left for Barrow. It is such a long and absurd story and I have had so many things going on that I could not bring myself to tell it.

In fact, I cannot bring myself to tell it now, either. Basically, though, you will recall that I took the gift cards that Jacob and Lavina had given me for Christmas into the local At&t store where I was informed that they would cover the cost of an 8 gig phone, but I could get a 16 gig for $100 more. I did not want to pay $100, so I purchased the eight gig phone and the entire transition took about five minutes. 

When it was done, the salesman gave one of my gift cards back and told me that it still had $48 in it. That meant that I would actually have had to pony up only $52 for the 16 gig phone. That wasn't so bad, so I decided to go for it. The salesman said "okay," then attempted to complete the transaction.

About an hour later, he determined that, for some reason incomprehensible to me, he could not just transfer the funds that I had already paid straight over to the 16 gig phone. Instead, the funds had to be put back into the card, but they could not be put in for 24 hours.

"So come back in 24 hours," he said.

So I came back 24 hours later and a lady set about to complete the transaction. She took my extra $52, which actually came out to $53, and had me sign everything that needed to be signed. In the end, she could not complete the transaction, either. "The money is still not in the cards," she told me. "It will take ten days for the money to be put back into the cards. Come back in ten days."

Oh, boy... I just can't go on with this story. Let it be enough to say that each day for the next eight, a lady from At&t by the name of Elaine would call and we would talk - the first time for a good hour. Elaine would promise to get the situation taken care of so that I could pick up my phone within the day.

After a few days, she expressed great puzzlement as to why the money was going back into the cards at all, as the policy was to refund cash directly back to the customer, in which case, she said, I should have been able to get my iPhone that very first day.

Finally, three or four days after that, eight days after I made the original purchase, she figured out some way to bypass whatever convoluted thing had happened and to have the saleslady take the cards from me, cut them up and have me the pay the $53 all over again - then I could leave with my phone.

So eight days was better than ten.

I love the iPhone. It is so many things besides a phone. For example, if I photograph someone and then ask their name so that I can identify them in this blog, all I have to do is turn on iPhone dictation, speak that name and when I need it, there it is. So now I have no excuse ever to forget a name again.

But here is the curious thing: I have already used the dictation feature with a few names, but when it came time to do the blog I remembered the names even without opening the iPhone. However, there have been other names that I did not put into dictation, thinking that I would remember them, but when the time came, I had forgotten.

And of course I can now take pictures with my iPhone. The quality is terrible, but its still kind of fun and then I can send the picture to someone else.

Like this picture of Royce, for example. Melanie has been very worried about Royce and has spent much money on his care and diet, and now I can send his picture from my iPhone to her's and type, "well, he's taking his medicine, eating his soft food, and he's doing okay. The fish are doing pretty good, too."

Speaking of which, with Margie gone and me back from Barrow, I have almost no human interaction but tend to socialize only with cats and fish. I did see Caleb very briefly this morning. I woke up debating whether to cook oatmeal or go back to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. 

I was leaning towards oatmeal, with berries cooked into it, but then I heard the sounds of him playing war video games with his friends from around Alaska and the world. I heard the gunfire and the explosions, and the excited tone of his voice as he communicated with his team members as they battled the enemy.

I did not want to eat oatmeal in the middle of a battle, nor did I want to interrupt Caleb's game. My head felt groggy. I did not know if I could deal with cooking oatmeal and brewing coffee. I did not want to add more dishes to the pile. I knew that if I went to Family, I wouldn't have to.

I punched the auto-start to the car. Even before I left my bed, the car began to warm up.

"Hi Dad," Caleb when finally I stepped out, even as he blasted away at a enemy who dodged and blasted back at him.

"Hi Caleb," I said. Then I went to Family. There, I spoke briefly with my waitress, and with the lady behind the counter who took my money. As she was getting my change, I saw these folks admiring this baby, so I pulled my pocket camera out of my pocket and shot this scene and that was the total of my human interaction there.

"How was breakfast," Caleb, still fighting, asked as I reentered the house.

"It was good," I said.

I checked my email, then took off on my walk. I saw but one person, and he was atop a hill, about half-a-mile away from me. I did not see a moose. I did not even see a dog. I did see this raven, flying overhead. He had nothing to say to me.

Sometimes, ravens have lots to say, but not today - not this one.

And I saw this military jet.

And this airplane, which looks a lot like my crashed Running Dog. But I encountered no people.

By the time I reached home, Caleb had gone to bed. I came right out here to my office, sat down at this very computer and struggled to work. I don't know why I struggled, but I did. There was nothing unusally hard about the work, but sometimes, even when its easy, I struggle. I can barely do it. I find it almost impossible to put down a single word. It can take me hours to write two paragraphs.

And so it was today.

Finally, it was 4:00 PM, coffee break time, time to get back intp the car, grab an Americano and listen to the news. I had to drop off a bill, too. Along the way, I saw this kid. I said nothing to him. He was completely unaware of me and I'm pretty sure that's how he wanted it to be.

"Look!" said when I pulled up to Metro Cafe. "It's light! It's not dark. It's here, Bill. It's here." By "it" she meant light of course.

"Yep," I said, "it sure is."

"I've had a really good day today. It's been busy."

"That's good," I said. I want Metro Cafe to stay busy, because busy means staying in business.

"It's because we have lunch sandwiches now, and soup," she said. "People are coming for lunch."

"I will have to try your lunch, sometime," I said.

"Yes, you must," Carmen agreed.

And that would be the closest that I would come to having a conversation today.

When I saw this little girl exit her school bus, I thought that it really is a good thing that the light is back.

The road was slippery, though. One can never take an icy road for granted.

The moon is growing. I rolled down the window and shot a few frames as I drove down Church toward home. Except for the occasional glance, I did not look at it as I drove, but I knew where it was. I knew where to point the camera.

Wasilla moon.

Then I came back here to my office and here I have been ever since, not counting the half-hour that I spent inside the house, reheating some black bean soup that I made yesterday and then eating it, with applesauce for dessert. Just before 10:00 PM, I heard the sound of Caleb's footsteps as he walked from his room through the house and to the front door.

I heard the door open. I heard the door close. Caleb was gone.

At about 11:30 PM, I looked over at the parrot fish and saw him looking back at me, obviously wondering what I was up to. I have had him for eight years and for all but the first few months of that time, he had lived in the 55 gallon tank that I gave to Kalib just before I left for Barrow. I gave Kalib all the other fish that were in that tank, plus the giant plecostomus that had lived alone in the 90 gallon tank ever since the two big oscars died.

I am very fond of the parrot fish, and he likes me. He is smart, too. Very smart. He is the smartest fish that I have ever known. Some people think oscars are smart and they are, but they're not as smart as this guy. I could not bear to give him away, so I put him in the 90 gallon tank, which sits three feet to my right and kept him here with me.

Yesterday, I bought a little cichlid to go with him. It was yellow in the store, but it has been blue here. I also bought a little plecostomus, to be a house keeper.

"Hi, fish!" I waved.

The parrot waved back with the fin on his right side. "Hi, Bill!" he shouted.

I told you he is smart!

Who needs human interaction, when he has a fish such as this?

*see comments, previous post

I return to Wasilla and then kick about around town

It's about time this blog just kicked around Wasilla for bit. I begin in the parking lot outside Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, where this little American flag fluttered in the breeze from the back window of someone's car.

And this was one of many scenes inside, where the ham, eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee were all very tasty. Margie won't return from being snowed in down in Arizona for another full week yet. I will probably wind up here again a time or two between now and then.

In the afternoon, I took a walk with a half moon above.

I had not walked far before this dog came trotting down the street, eager to meet me. I was afraid that it would want to follow me, but it only wanted to say, "hello." Then it turned around and returned from whence it came.

This dog's name is Sampson. He was walking with a woman named Summer, and a black and white dog named Cher.

A little further along, I came upon a young man sitting on a four-wheeler going nowhere. "You're not broke down, are you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I ran out of gas and then my battery died." Someone had gone to pick up what he needed to get going again.

"Bill is my name," I said.

"Good to meet you, I'm Eric," he said, as he extended his hand.

We shook hands.

"Good luck," I said.

Then I walked away, leaving him to sit on his machine to wait for gas and a battery.

An airplane flew overhead.

On my coffee break, I took the car to the gas station. As I was filling the tank, I heard the whistle and the clacking rumble of the train coming down the tracks.

"Damnit!" I said, because my camera was buried deep in my pocket and I did not know if I could get it out and turned on before the engines passed by.

It was a big challenge, but I did it and here is proof.

As always, when the train rumbled by, it gave me a thrill.

Then I was back in the car, and as I approached Kendall Ford, I began to pass a long truck, with a flatbed at the back. On the flatbed were two vans, both of which claimed to have fire extinguishers inside.

This is the trailer of the same truck. As you can see, it is an Alaska truck.

And this is the cab, now falling behind me.

And here I am in the parking lot outside of Pet Zoo, where I have stopped to buy Royce some good, healthy, soft, cat food. I did a self-portrait of myself, with this dog.

He must have been scraping ice. It's been so long since Wasilla has had anything but a token snowfall. Early December, maybe.

I passed these kids on their snowmachines.

I saw these people walking down Spruce Street.

Late at night, just before they closed, I drove to Dairy Queen, where a young woman named Ashleigh sold me a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. The temperature was right about 0 degrees (-18 F); much warmer than when I made my first trip to the new Dairy Queen last January.

Then, the temperature was about -30 (-35 C). Last winter was much colder than this winter, all over Alaska. This has been a warm winter for us, even as it has been a cold winter for people down south.

Poor Margie. Snowbound and freezing in Arizona.