Cocoon mode* - day 16: Three check the mail, Daniel hunts for moose, a dog stalks me, the leaves go fast

As I drove down Gail Street, I saw a grandmotherly woman and two small children check their mail. 

I was pedaling my bicycle, when I saw this young man walking alongside Church Road with a rifle slung over his shoulder. "What are you hunting?" I shouted.

"Moose," he answered, just as I knew he would, for what else could he have been hunting?

I parked my bike, climbed the little hill and shot two frames in two seconds, as that's about as fast as I can do it with the pocket camera.

His name was Daniel and he had not seen a moose at all, but he had saw a man who had shot one.

"Good luck," I said, as I returned to my bike.

I should have got his phone number and address, so that if he brought down a moose, I could have gone over and got a chunk.

And as I traversed Brockton on foot, I spotted a dog stalking me through the trees. I stopped, pointed my pocket camera at it and it fled deeper into the trees, but still followed. I thought of its wolf ancestors. I imagined that it was a wolf and I was a woodland caribou with a sprained ankle, worried for my life.

Eventually, it went into a nearby yard, and then watched me warily from behind this tent. It followed me no further.

The caribou had survived. It's ankle would heal.

The poor damn wolf would starve.

At least this one would, for I think it was rather incompetent, and a bit cowardly.

The pack had booted it out and wanted nothing more to do with it.

The leaves are coming down fast. Soon, ravens will shout at each other and at me, from the bare branches of the birch trees. It is supposed to snow tonight, but the snow is not supposed to stick.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 15: leaf melts frost, commode goes down Church, reaction to Sarah Palin's big China speech, a tooth is pulled; I blow it

This morning, there was a leaf on my windshield. It had melted a patch of frost.

As I drove down Church Road, I saw a commode coming the other way.

On Lucille, I saw this group of children waiting for their school bus.

The big talk all day in Wasilla, all over Alaska and it seems the whole USA and the world has been Sarah Palin and her big speech in China. I've visited the other blogs and online news outlets and everybody is going on about it.

Me, I'd rather show you this car driving by Wasilla Lake, as I drive the other way.

Margie lost a filling and came down with a terrible toothache. Jacob and Lavina took her to Anchorage with them and dropped her off at the emergency room of the Alaska Native Medical Center. When she was done, she called me and I headed in to pick her up. I came upon this gentlemen right here in Wasilla, at the stoplight at the intersection of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

I have immortalized him for posterity beyond his mortal days and he does not even know it.

If you know him, perhaps you could tell him.

After she called me, Margie had to wait for an hour for her pain-killer prescrption, so the timing was just about perfect. Her tooth had to be pulled and she was in tremendous pain. She took one of two pills, but it did no good. The other pill had to be taken with food, but her mouth hurt her so bad she could not stick anything in it.

Poor woman! She has spent so much of this year suffering pain. So much! Damnit!

After I got her home, she managed to swallow some Saltine crackers. Then she took the other pill. The pain eased off a bit after that.

As for me, despite the increased number of pictures in this entry, I am still in cocoon mode. It's just that I burned out tonight. Completely. I could not do another lick. So I decided to watch a movie with Margie, something that we have not done much of together in quite awhile - although she has been watching movie upon movie upon movie, because of her injury. But tonight all she wanted to do was take her Vicodin and go to bed.

When I was recovering from my injury, I hardly watched any TV at all. I read books, and I learned to use the pocket camera, took pictures with just one hand and with that same hand pecked away at my laptop computer. I also slept a lot. It was amazing how much I slept. I miss sleeping like that.

And then one night I went to bed and I could not sleep at all. I threw away my pain killers, but still this condition persisted for a couple of months. It was awful. And now I sleep but I still don't sleep much and I am tired 100 percent of the time.

Oh, how I ramble! This is because I am burned out and don't know what else to do.

I did not want to watch a movie by myself, so I came out here, made this blog entry and since I could not work, put in a couple of more pictures than I should have, being in cocoon mode. I still left some out, though. Some good ones - even better than the ones I put in.

I am tired of working everyday. Every day! The whole damn summer passed and I did not get to take one break and do one damn fun thing (although I do have fun with my work, sometimes, especially when I was on the Arctic Slope) but I have got to get this job done.

It doesn't feel like I ever will, but I have got to.

And then I need to blow out and go to Mexico or Hawaii or Argentina or someplace for a few days. I've just got to! Brazil would be okay. I could dance upon the equator. If some of those women that you always see pictures of, undulating their way through the Mardi Gras, were to dance upon the equator at the same time as me, that would be okay.

Even when you are married and love your wife, who may or may not be with you, depending on whether she wants to go or not, it is good to watch women dance upon the equator.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I am not going to Brazil when this project is done. I will be lucky if I can make it to Glennallen. And any woman who tries to dance outside there had better be well-bundled, or she will turn into a popsicle.

I'm not going to proof read this damn thing, either, so if there's any mistakes, that's just too bad. I probably wouldn't catch most of them, anyway. 

Holy cow! My email just pinged. It was an Anchorage Daily News update: Former Anchorage Mayor George Sullivan has died. Oddly enough, the sharpest memory I have of him is of him sitting in a big car in the parking lot of the Sullivan Arena, named for him even before he died.

I must have photographed that moment, but who knows where the image is?

My condolences to the family and all those who loved him.

Well, he just kept rambling.

Not Mayor Sullivan - he's done rambling. Me, I'm the one who kept rambling. But I will stop one day, too.

But not today.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 14: Three shots of the road through a rainy window

I was driving along, the temperature was 38 degrees and the rain was coming down hard, when I noticed that every now and then, a drop of rain would seem to shatter when it struck my windshield. It could only shatter if it had ice crystals in it. I thought maybe it did, I thought maybe it was a soggy snowflake. 

I could not be certain, as immediately after it would happen my windshield wiper would sweep it away before I could examine it.

So I turned the windshield wiper off, to see if I could determine whether or not the raindrops that seemed to shatter were actually soggy snowflakes.

And then I noticed that everything looked pretty neat, with the windshield wipers off, so I took a few pictures.

I know... looking at these little images this must look insanely dangerous, but the road was clearly distinguished to my eye even if not to the pocket camera and I never took my eye off of the road, which, furthermore, I saw in three dimensions rather than the two that you see here, so don't get upset and start calling me a lunatic. In fact, I had both hands upon the steering wheel, as I had braced the back of the pocket camera against the top front of the wheel in such a way that my fingers pulled the camera tight against the wheel even as my thumb gripped it.

So calm down. 

Just before I pulled into my driveway, a drop shattered that did, indeed, appear to have ice crystals in it. However, before I could determine for certain, other raindrops came and swept it away. I'm hoping that it snows down here in the valley tonight, but it probably won't.

I heard on the radio that it is supposed to snow in Colorado tonight.

That would be awful.

According to Jason Ahmaogak's Facebook wall, it snowed in Wainwright a couple of days ago and everything was freezing up. He was excited - pretty soon he will be snowmachining.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 13: Three shots through the windshield: rain falls, I see the darkness of the day in the clouds above me and on the road in front of me; Taco Bell money taker

It has been a unusually warm and pleasant September, but today was cool and rain fell from dark clouds. A voice on the radio said there could be significant snowfall in Hatcher Pass tonight. That's fine with me. Let the snow come. Let it move swiftly down the mountains to cover this valley in white, because the colors that have taken the green from our trees will now fall fast. The light of the day will grow ever more brief and dim. I will welcome the white of the snow.

Not all the darkness that I saw while driving today came from the clouds above me.

The Wasilla Taco Bell is rebuilt and open. This young woman is about to take my money. In exchange, a young man at the next window will give me tacos, burritos and Pepsi. 

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

I attend the grand opening of the Metro Cafe, where Wasilla's mayor shows up with big scissors and a young girl gathers pennies to aid a classmate stricken by leukemia

As recent visitors to this blog know, I have been beginning all of my coffee breaks lately at the drive-through window of the Metro Cafe, built on Lucille Street where the dog wash used to be. On Saturday, Metro staged its grand opening and I stepped briefly out of cocoon mode to attend the event. As the guests gathered, this kid came scooting by on a skateboard.

Many owners of classic cars came and parked their vehicles in the church parking lot just across the street.

When I was young, I had a red Ford Mustang exactly like this one. I got it at a church bazaar, where I gave a lady a dime. She handed me a fishing pole, I dropped the line behind a screen that was supposed to a lake. I felt a tug, pulled it back up and there, hanging from my fishing line, was a nice little red Mustang.

It was a superb catch. I rolled it all over the house, out on the sidewalk and over hills of dirt, making engine noises as I did. As to this red Mustang, "Isn't it beautiful? Very clean!" this lady, JoAnne Kessler, a member of the Valley Cruisers, stated.

Inside, I spotted this attractive trio and so sat down to ask what brought them out. It is Liane Nagata and her two daughters, Madeline and her older sister, whose name slips me at the moment. As it happened, in high school, Liane was the best friend of Carmen Starheim, who started the business with her husband Scot. Even back then, Liane says, Carmen worked hard at everything that she did.

I did not ask a question to the couple at right, as they looked quite absorbed and I did not wish to disturb them.

It would have been a better photograph, had I moved the camera a quarter inch to my right, but I didn't.

I asked many questions to this family, and had each of them give me their names. But hell. I don't remember the names, and I don't remember the questions or the answers to them. At the time, I was sure I would, just like I would have before I overstressed my brain for too many decades, but I don't.

I had either better start recording these things or writing them down.

They live in Wasilla, though, I remember that. This was their first stop at the Metro Cafe. They had watched it come up after the dog wash disappeared and had been curious. They had a good time and enjoyed the drinks and food.

At least I remembered that much.

They also thought the little Nash Metro car behind them was quite cute. That's one more thing I remembered.

Oh, yeah - they said they would be back.

Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright roared in on his motorcycle, with a big pair of scissors strapped to the front.

BIG scissors. Perhaps he planned to do some budget cutting.

Madeline was smiling happily when she first showed me the pennies that she was carrying. I thought she had brought the pennies to spend, but I was wrong.

She was collecting them on behalf of a schoolmate at Sand Lake Elementary in Anchorage. Madeline's countenance grew sadder and sadder as she explained how her school mate had leukemia and that the little girl and her family needed money to be able to travel Outside for her treatment.

I hope she gathers lots of pennies and that all tears may be staunched.

The Metro Cafe.

This is Tank, traveling with his human Calvin Culverwell. Tank works in the Golf Shot in Wasilla. So, if you ever want to buy some clubs and balls but don't quite know what to get, go talk to Tank. And if you want a Coke talk to the lady, Loni Mrozik, Coca-Cola's local rep. Me, I prefer Pepsi.

The view from behind the counter.

This poor little girl spilled her drink. A man, who I think was her father, picked up her fallen cup and then disappeared. I hope he got her another one, but I can't say for certain.

The view from inside, looking outside, where a man looks inside.

The staff was busy taking orders from both the counter and the drive-through.

Scot, Mayor Rupright and Carmen use the big scissors to cut the ribbon. Afterwards, Scot and Carmen share a kiss.

I'm pretty sure that kiss had a coffee flavor to it.

Scot loves the old International Metro vans. He explains that he is the kind of person who is always building something and so is forever running back and forth to Home Depot. He found the Metro van to be the perfect vehicle to haul materials and equipment about.

Then, as he and Carmen were building their coffee house, it occurred to them that they could name it "The Metro Cafe," after the van, which would then become a rolling ad for their business.

The yellow, 1957 model had sat for decades near the Deshka Landing, where it had to be sawed away from the birch tree that had grown between the body and the rail before he could bring it here. He plans a full restoration. As for this turquoise 1939 model, he is going to cut the back of the body away and reshape it into a utility truck.

Carmen and her sister, Teresa, who lives in Anchorage, but came to help out just for the grand opening. I think Teresa should stay and help out everyday, but I have no say in the matter.

I'm just happy to have a good coffee shop within an easy bike ride from my house. Some days, perhaps, I might even walk here. Perhaps I will even bring my laptop, go inside, sip, type and eat pastries.

You can do that kind of thing at the Metro Cafe.

Now I must go back into Cocoon Mode.