How I took my R&R - part 2, the bike ride: I see a beautiful grandma with her granddaughter and dog and many more things; I make a softball throw straight out of my old nightmares

As mentioned in my first post of this gorgeous three-post day, I had a great need to get out under the open sky and do something physical, but I did not know what. My first choice was a long, long, long, bike ride, but I knew that I was not yet in shape for such a thing. 

If I had been younger, no big deal. I could go out and pedal and pedal and pedal all day long, even if it was the first time in a long time. I might be a bit sore the next day, but so what?

It would feel good in its way.

I thought of various options but, when it came down to it, I still wanted to ride my bike. So I contemplated having Margie drive me 25 miles or so away and then drop me off so that I could pedal back. In this way, I could at least cover some ground that I had not covered by bike in awhile and it would be a decent, though not a long, long, long, ride. And if I had her drop me off as far up as we could get on the still snow-blocked road that goes over Hatcher Pass, then the first long portion of that drive would be all downhill and would not strain me at all - although there was a chance that I would gain such great speed coming down the very steep grade that I would have an accident and kill myself.

In the end, though, I decided just to hop and my bike and go, no destination in mind, and see where I wound up. So as not to overdo it, I would try to limit myself to three hours and I would not push it.

If I wanted to stop and take a picture, I would stop and take a picture.

Maybe I would find myself passing by Dairy Queen. I could then stop and buy a small strawberry shake.

So I got on my bike and went. I had gone no more than a few hundred yards when I came upon these three, walking. 

They looked too beautiful to simply pass by, plus I recognized the woman as a waitress who had served Margie and I years back at La Fiesta Mexican restaurant.

So I stopped to chat just a little bit, and to take this picture.

"Your daughter is beautiful," I told her.

"Oh, she's my granddaughter," she answered. I had forgotten her name, so she told me and she gave me the names of her granddaughter and the dog, too.

Stupid me. I was certain I would remember, so I did not bother to speak them into my iPhone.

Now I have forgotten all of the names except for one.

The dog is Maui.

It is a little bit tricky to hop on bike with the plan of not planning where to go, other than to wherever your wheels roll to, because right away you start thinking of possible destinations to go to. The first one that I thought of was the bridge over the Little Susitna River, but I rejected it right away because that would only give me about a six or seven mile ride.

I wanted to go further than that.

I then decided that when I came to an intersection and got an urge to turn one way, I would turn the other, so as to make my destination all the more unpredictable.

But how does one do such a thing? As soon as you decide to turn one way, you have actually decided to turn the other, but then if you go ahead and decide to turn in the direction you had originally decided upon, you have still blown the whole plan.

So I began to pedal and ponder this situation. Then, before I came up with an answer, I found that, without even thinking about it, I had turned right on Lucille, headed in the direction of Metro Cafe.

I pedaled on, until I heard an airplane approaching. 

I stopped my bike, picked it out in the sky, waited until it passed over the first wire and then shot.

I then pedaled on toward Metro Cafe, thinking that maybe it was just the right kind of day to try one of their frappes.

Yet, when I reached Gail Street, it suddenly dawned on me that this was entirely too predictable, so I made a sudden right turn onto Gail, away from Metro Cafe.

I cannot quite tell you how it happened, but after I made a few more unpredictable turns, I found myself at Metro Cafe, ordering a frappe, served to me by Sashanna.

I then went out and sat down at one of the patio tables, so that I could photograph any kids who might pass by on bicycles. These two soon did.

Then Carmen took a five minute break, came out, sat down and visited me for ten minutes.

We talked about many things, including her childhood in Mexico, when she lived in a house with dirt floors in a tiny inland village. 

No telephone, no refrigerator. "We had to buy our food and eat it the same day," she recalled.

I thought about mentioning how Margie was born under the open Apache sky and lived her early years in a bear-grass thatched wickiup - the Apache version of a teepee - but decided to hold that information for another time. At this moment, the focus was upon little Carmen in Mexico and that was where it should stay.

I had resolved that I would not pedal by the park, but then I realized that I needed to make a restroom stop and they had one there, so I headed for the park.

As I pedaled by the skateboard area, I saw a kid come down one ramp and shoot toward another. I knew he would catch some air so I raised my pocket camera and shot this frame from the bike trail as I coasted by.

Just a little further down the bike trail that passes through the park, I saw these two boys pushing their bikes up this hill. I figured that they would then turn around, shoot down the hill as fast as they could and then commit some dare-devil act, but I did not hang around to see what.

I pedaled on to the restroom.

After that, I found myself drawing near to the Charlie Bumpus ball fields, named for the former mayor who, before he was buried at too young of an age in the Wasilla cemetery, built the Raven View subdivision, named a street within it for his daughter Sarah and then sold us our house on her street.

All three of my boys used to play American Legion Baseball at this field with the Wasilla Road Warriors. I decided to pull over and see if the current Road Warriors might be practicing or playing.

They weren't. But this baseball was lying in the parking lot. 

No baseball players were in sight on any field. I figured the ball must have fallen there when the parking lot was full, rolled under a car and so nobody found it.

There were some adult men doing batting practice at one of the softball fields adjacent to the baseball field.

I stopped to see if I could get a shot of Chris, whacking the ball.

Before I did, a pitch went a little wild and rolled to the backstop behind me.

I did what anyone would do and picked the ball up so I could toss it back. Then a horrible feeling hit me.

Have any of you out there ever had a bad dream, a nightmare, where you are trying to throw a baseball but you can't do it? You throw, but instead of flying the ball weakly leaves your hand and falls to the ground?

Remember how, last summer, for the first time after I broke my shoulder and got it replaced, I tried to toss an apple core and it just tumbled to the ground?

At that time, I resolved to build up my strength by tossing rocks every day until I could throw again.

I did for awhile, too. But now it has been a long while since I last tossed a rock.

The pitcher raised his glove as a signal for me to throw the ball to him.

"I broke my shoulder," I said, "I can't throw so good now." I then tried to throw the ball, but instead of going to the pitcher, it went to the left, hit the ground about ten feet away from me and then rolled a little ways away.

"Sorry," I said.

"It's okay," the pitcher said.

How the hell am I ever going to go surfing at Yakutak on July 14, my birthday, like I committed myself to doing?

Why the hell did I ever stand on that stupid rolling chair to take that worthless picture and then when I fell, why did I protect my camera instead of myself?

Dumbass!

After I got the picture, I pedaled away, carrying the baseball with me. Maybe I can't throw so good right now, but a baseball is just not something that a person such as me would ever leave behind in an empty parking lot.

A ways down the road, I dropped the baseball. I decided to see if I could stuff it into my pocket. It fit. So that is how I brought it home.

Next, I found myself going down the bike trail that follows Church Road. 

When I got to Seldon, I could have turned towards Sarah's Way, toward our house, but I didn't. I kept going. And soon I came upon these four.

Soon after that, I found myself on the bridge that crosses the Little Su. Despite my best anti-planning, I had wound up here anyway - but by a rather convoluted route, one that greatly increased the distance. My camera battery died right after I took this picture.

I headed home, but I took the long way to get here.

My journey lasted about three hours. When I stepped into the house through the front door, I saw Margie standing on the porch outside the back door.

So I went out to join her. Royce came through the door with me.

It was his first excursion outside since October.

So that was good to see.

I will leave this as the lead post probably until about noon on Mother's Day.

Then I will put up a special post - a Mother's Day tribute. 

So if you come here Mother's Day morning and see this, be sure to come back Mother's Day afternoon. 

And remember - it is four hours earlier in Alaska than on the East Coast.

The Vietnam veteran and the returned Mormon missionary; the bicycle and the wrecked airplane

Doubtless, regular readers are wondering what a man in my financial situation is doing dining out at Mat-Su Valley Restaurant for breakfast? Four nights have now passed since Margie went into Anchorage to stay and take care of baby Jobe and one more will pass until she returns to spend just two nights here before she goes back again.

As much as I love this house and the cats who wake with me, it feels awfully chilly and damn bleak in here in the mornings. Whereas, it will be warm at Family Restaurant. There will be smiling people there, waitresses who will serve me coffee and laugh even if I make an unfunny joke.

This is Jobina, doing just that.

I like the name, "Jobina." It's like a feminine version of Jobe. 

If I can, I always like to get this spot, because from here I have a good view not only of all the people sitting and moving around inside this busy, warm diner, scented with the aroma of breakfast cooking, but of those wandering to and fro outside.

My observations tell me that a very broad array of Wasilla life passes in and out of this diner, particularly at breakfast time.

Also, if I am very lucky and the train comes bye, I can often get a pretty good look at it from this window seat.

So I would rather be here in the midst of all this than all alone inside my chilly house. The melting snows did expose a fair amount of firewood that had been hidden in our yard, so I can always heat the house up, but, by the time it gets comfortable, I will be done with breakfast. 

And even if I have no cash, I do have a credit card. So its off to Family I go.

Plus, to eat here is a sign of optimism, that things will soon get better and I will be able to pay all my bills.

I took this picture for future reference and it had not been my intent to post it just yet. Many veterans come into Mat-Su Family, and I have a desire to know their stories to the extent that they would be willing to share - just as I would like to know the stories of so many who I see gathering at Family. 

I have this idea in my head that as time progresses and I figure out how to fund this blog so that I can have the time to more effectively pursue my goal of finding the soul of Wasilla and to tell such stories, I will do just that. Seeing the hat, I thought this veteran might have a good story to tell, so I took the picture to remind me to look for him in the future, when that time comes.

As it happened, we wound up in line together at the cash register, so I asked if he had been a POW. No, he said, he had friends that had been and the experience had been hell for them. However bad combat might get, he said he had always kept a bullet in reserve for himself, just to make certain that he would never become a POW.

He served in Vietnam in the very early '70s, in what he described as the clean-up stages of the war, as the US was deciding to quit and pull out.

When I talk to such men, I am always self-conscious of the fact that they risked their lives in Vietnam and I did not. It had been my intent to go. When I was a senior at El Camino High School in a suburb of Sacramento, I decided that I would break with what had become the tradition in my family and what all of us males were expected to do. I would not go to Brigham Young University and I would not serve a two-year Mormon mission. I would enlist in the Army, and go for the Green Beret.

But I was in love with a red-headed girl who did decide to go to BYU. I knew that if I did not follow her there to protect my interests, she would marry a returned Mormon Missionary, as any good Mormon girl would.

So, at the last possible moment, I surrendered my plan to enlist, applied to BYU and was accepted. I followed the red-headed girl there and lived in misery as a returned Mormon missionary courted her. We would still get together to share an occasional lunch or movie or a concert and I took her motorcycle riding a couple of times. The the RM who courted her ordered her not to ride with me anymore, as it was just too damn dangerous.

I might crash and break her neck.

She did marry him, but by then I was in love with her best friend and was not troubled.

Vietnam was a very unpopular war and many people felt that the draft was being most unfairly applied. If you were wealthy, a college student, a Mormon missionary or fell into a number of other categories, you could get a deferment and most likely never be drafted to serve.

But if you did not fall into such a category and you were in good health, then you could pretty much count on being drafted.

This unfairness created such an uproar that a lottery system was instated in which each date of the year was drawn at random. If one's birthday came up number one, then, in theory, whether he was rich, a genious in college, a Mormon missionary or whatever, he was going to be drafted.

If one's birthday came up at #365, there was no chance in the world that he would be drafted.

My number came up 321. After that, the draft was not an issue for me anymore.

In the meantime, I found myself the object of a horrendous amount of social pressure, filled with exhortations that I repent, make my life right with God, yield to The Spirit, accept the call and go serve a mission. Worse yet, I looked into the eyes of my sweet mother and saw that if I did not go, I was going to break her heart. And there was no chance that the best friend would ever marry me if I didn't.

So I told everyone that The Spirit had come to me and so I had repented and was ready to go on a mission. No more weed for me. I had toked my last joint, taken my final hit off the hookah.

That's how I wound up not going to Vietnam. Instead I went to South Dakota, to teach the Lakota that they must never drink coffee. It was my mission to remake them, but they remade me. After two years, I returned to BYU - but found that I could not really return. 

As to this gentleman, he remarked that Vietnam was an unpopular war and that when he returned, he found out what it felt like to feel the wrath of the people for whom he had served. He said that people sometimes ask him why served, did he believe in the war?

It was not a matter of whether or not he believed in the war, he told me, but rather that the fact that he had a duty to serve his country and so he did.

This is what passed between us as we paid our bills at Family Restaurant. It was a very brief visit, and I thought that I would wait until another time and then have him tell me more of his story. I would take a portrait to go along with the interview, and would then include this picture as well.

But what if that time never comes? What if I do not see him again at Family?

What if I forget I ever took this picture and it just slips away unseen into my archives, as do the vast majority of the pictures that I take, never to be seen by anyone?

So here it is, with this tiny fragment of the man's story along with one from my own.

I got lucky! The train came rumbling by!

Yes, many veterans come to eat at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

When I came out, I saw this dog in the back of a truck. When I see such a dog, I find the urge to reach out and touch it to be...

...irresistible!

Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #8881: Carmen and Tyler, who is ten and loves to play football - and me, too.

After I completed the study, Carmen caught the unmistakable scent of cologne wafting off Tyler. She teased him a little bit for that, as she now knew that he had interests even beyond football.

After driving away from Metro Cafe, I saw a man riding a motorcycle.

And another sweeping the place where his driveway meets Church Road.

Some days I see Caleb and some days I don't. As he works all night and sleeps in the day, our waking paths seldom cross.

They crossed here, though - with me going one direction down our street and he the other. They also crossed when he stepped into my office to pay me a surprise visit.

"Dad," he said. "I patched your back tire. Your front tire was low, so I put air in that, too."

So I took my first bike ride of 2010. I am badly out of shape now and did not know far I should go. I decided to pedal the 1.5 miles to Church Road and see how I felt when I got there. If I felt good, I would turn right, go to the Little Susistna River and put my front wheel in the water.

If it felt like that might be overdoing it, that the return trip, largely uphill, would overstress my flaccid muscles and tear apart my weak lungs, then I would turn left and follow a shorter, flatter, more easy route.

The final approach to Church Road is all uphill, and I was a bit upset when I realized how it was taxing me. I deemed myself unfit to make the return from the Little Su and so concluded that I must turn left.

I turned right, anyway, and headed for the Little Su.

I did not put my front wheel in the water, though, because I felt that if I did, the under-cut ice might break beneath me and I would get my shoes, socks and pants wet. I wanted to keep them dry.

After I left the Little Su and neared the curve that leads to the biggest and steepest hill, I saw this guy ahead of me, cutting down the vegetation alongside the road before it can begin to grow.

No more snow plows for awhile.

After I topped the first big hill, I pedaled along on a flat stretch toward the corner where I would turn back onto Church Road and then face the next set of up and down hills. At some point, I glanced behind me and saw another biker, who had just topped that hill. I pedaled a little further and then looked back again. It seemed he was gaining on me.

I did not want him to pass me, but I realized that he was almost certainly younger and stronger and in better shape, that he was going to pass me whether I wanted him to or not.

I reached Church Road, turned right, climbed up the first big hill, then began my descent towards the next upward grade.

As I coasted down, I glanced back and there he was - closer yet, I was certain.

Damn. He was going to pass me.

Oh well. I would take a picture of him as he pedaled by me.

I decided that I would take a series of pictures of him closing the gap, passing me, and then moving on. I began with this one.

I then climbed the next hill and then again coasted toward the bottom of the third. Again I looked back. I was surprised to see that my competitor was now further back than he had been.

I figured maybe it was because I was going downhill now and he had been going up. Now he would be going downhill and I would soon be going up. I was certain he would yet close the gap and pass.

But no, he never did - even though he turned left on Seldon just like I did and followed me all the way to my street. In fact, each time I looked back I found him to be a little further behind. It became pointless to take any more pictures, for he had become such a small dot, readers could not have even picked him out.

That's what he gets for deciding that he, being so young and strong was going to humiliate a much older man who hadn't pedaled a bike since early October.

Of course, he never came close enough for me to actually confirm age or sex for certain.

I supposed it is possible that he was actually an 87 year-old woman who was pretty damn pleased that, though she never caught him, she kept that young guy worried every pedal of the way that an old lady was going to smoke him.

Or maybe it could even have been Patty, out keeping her cancer at bay.

When I got home, I parked my bike by the wreckage of my airplane, The Running Dog. I thought about the good days, when this dog and I flew together all over the main body of Alaska, up and down the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, through the valleys of the Alaska and Brooks Ranges, across Canada's Yukon Territory and into The Northwest Territories.

Why did I ever have to get cocky and crash the damn thing?

I can't stand it, being grounded like this. As I have said before, I dream about airplanes - usually this one, every night.

I have a friend in Cordova who says that if I really wanted another plane, I would have one by now. He cites himself as an example, pointing out how he wanted a big crab boat once, didn't have the money for it but got one anyway.

I'm glad for him, but he's 100 percent wrong about me. He is a bachelor and lives in a house that he inherited from his father and he simply has no idea what I face.

But he's right, too. To accomplish what I want to accomplish, I must get another airplane. Somehow, there is a way.

On this day, when I have no money to pay the simplest bill, when I owe the IRS, when I go to Family Restaurant only because I have a credit card and then I bring the leftovers and derive a second meal from them later and to Metro for coffee only because Margie has given me access to the bottles full or quarters that she has saved up over years, it seems utterly impossible.

But it's not impossible. It can be done. I must yet find the way.

A Pay Pal donation button to help with this blog isn't going to do it, but still, you who have urged me to put on on here have convinced me that I am not begging if I do, so I will.

Soon.

My lens smudged and dirty, I walk into Central Park, where I am greeted by a smiling dog

I had barely stepped into Central Park when I saw this little dog, smiling at me.

I also saw this woman, photographing what I took to be a cherry tree. She said that she did not think it was a cherry tree, but rather a tree that she thought was pretty, but could not identify.

I still think it was a cherry tree, but I could be wrong and she could be right.

I saw a big rock, with many people upon it.

A jet passed overhead.

A girl slid carefully down the rock...

...another slid down a slippery slide...

...as did still another.

I saw a bunch of boys, sitting upon a rail fence as they watched...

...another boy leap over a picnic table.

I saw a young man practicing his rock climbing skills. I asked him if he ever did serious rock climbing and where. He said yes, and named the Adirondacks. He radiated pride when he told me that, so I did not tell him that I was from Alaska.

He was loving his mountains and I did not wish to upstage him in even the smallest way.

I saw a little boy, shooting bubbles at a little girl.

I followed the sound of a drumbeat, and then came upon this fellow. I looked for a container into which I might drop a coin, but found none. He was not begging, he was practicing.

I was amazed to see leaves like this so early in the spring.

I found a little road upon which a pretty woman roller-bladed.

Other people pedaled bicycles...

...some rolled by on push scooters...

...one fellow cranked his way past on a hand-cycle.

Along came a trike, followed by a horse-drawn wagon.

I found a pair of lovers, intertwined with each other, oblvious to my presence.

Another pair of lovers had just taken their vows before a justice of the peace. Now, they had begun their honeymoon. They told me their names, but I did not speak them into my iPhone and so I forgot.

A helicopter passed overhead...

...as did a squirrel.

A little girl rode a horse without using her hands while eating a sucker...

...and a teen wearing high-heeled boots jumped between two oppositely oscillating ropes.

Since I got this pocket camera in December, I have been working the battery hard and heavy and all of a sudden, it has grown weak. It died immediately after I took this picture of a young woman teaching a younger boy how to manipulate his skateboard. If the battery had still had the ability to retain a charge that it had up until very recently, it would have still been good for at least 200 more frames - maybe 300. There was much left in Central Park for me to see and photograph.

I did not feel too badly about it, though, because I figured that I had taken enough pictures and if I were to take anymore, I would just have to spend that much more time editing them.

Yet, just as I was exiting the park, I saw something that I had to photograph.

So I pulled out my iPhone - as I would two more times after my pocket camera battery would again die in New York. I will post some iPhone pictures on another day.

Next up: A quick stop in the old graveyard across the street from where the Twin Towers once stood.

After a long, uncomfortable flight with another delay, I am back in Wasilla, with my wife and cats

Twenty-four hours and about $350 after I had been originally scheduled to board the first leg of my Delta Airlines flight home, I followed these guys onto a plane bound for Salt Lake City from New York's JFK airport.

We filed between the rows of those seated among the elite in first class, where serious business was being conducted, and then entered the cabin.

My first choice is always a window seat, then an aisle and I hate the middle, just like most everyone else does. The worst of all is a middle seat in an emergency exit row, because the seats do not recline and instead of a regular armrest that can be lifted up and down, the armrests are solid from the seat up. This creates the effect of being forced to sit in a rigid box.

I had originally successfully booked non-emergency row window seats all the way from New York to Anchorage but now, I had been assigned to a middle seat in an emergency exit row.

Worse yet, when I sat down, I discovered that there was a big, irritating, bump right in the middle of the seat. I would have to sit on that bump for five-and-a-half hours.

The situation worsened even more when I discovered that I been sat between two people, who, whenever they were awake, from the beginning of the flight to the end, continually and intentionally did all they could to try to push my elbows off the armrests altogether. I did not totally begrudge them, because it is just a plane fact that those three seats are just too squished together. There simply is not room for three adults to sit comfortably side by side in them - although I am usually reasonably comfortable in a window seat, because I can lean against the wall and away from the shared armrest. Yet, it was still incredible. I had been stuck in middle seats plenty of times, but I had never before experienced anything like this.

When my adjacent passengers would nap, they would relax into their most comfortable positions, which meant they would lean away from me toward the window or the aisle and their arms would follow them off the rest, no longer to push against me.

Even so, I managed to read most of what was left of the book, Into the Heart of the Sea, before we reached Salt Lake City, but it was the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had in a jet airplane. I am still sore from it.

Yet, compared to the travels of those who were part of the final voyage of the Whaleship Essex, I rode in comfort and luxury and traveled to my destination with amazing speed. I have nothing to complain about.

In Salt Lake, the flight back to Anchorage had already begun to board. I was hungry, so I bought a not-very-good ham sandwich and a bottle of water at a diner right across from the gate, then got in line.

Just as I was about to board, it was announced that the flight had suddenly been put on a weather hold, due to high winds and snow. Out the window, I could see that the snow had turned to rain and it did not look that bad, but apparently it was.

So, as I took note of a bar and grill just a short distance away where I could have got a hot meal, I sat down and ate my sandwich.

Then Lydia Olympic, who had been in the bar and grill watching basketball, sat down beside me. 

I first met Lydia many years ago when I followed her and several other Alaska Native tribal leaders on to a forum in Washington, DC, where they also did some lobbying among House Representatives and Senators.

Lydia is from the Lake Iliamna village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay Region. Right now, she is living in Anchorage where she relocated in order to fight against the Pebble Mine, because of the harm she fears it could bring to the salmon and other wildlife resources of her home.

"Do you get back to Igiugig much?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said. "Every summer I go back to cut fish."

Finally, they let us board the plane where, once again, I was seated in an emergency exit row. This time, at least, I had an aisle seat and the middle was empty. I did not have to contend with battling elbows. We seated in the emergency rows all paid strict and rapt attention as the stewardess told us about our duties should the need arise to evacuate the airplane.

After the lecture, we sat on the tarmac for about two more hours as we waited for the plane to get de-iced.

It was strange to let my mind wander outside the plane and into the surrounding community. I let it wander to my sister Mary Ann's house, downtown. I had tried to call her right after we landed, but she did not pick up. It was a bit after 9, but some people go to bed early.

I let it wander to the house up in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, where Margie and I used to so dearly love to drop into during our early days of marriage. We visit my parents, eat and watch TV with them and sometimes at night, being as quiet as we could possibly be, make love as the old folks slept. Sometimes, we would drop baby Jacob off so we could go out and do things like go to movies or climb a nearby mountain.

I pictured that house now, with only my older brother Rex in it, he living in a state of declining health.

I pictured the place upon a hill at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, where lay my Mom and Dad and my brother Ron. Ron never wanted to be buried but cremated but in the end, his wish was overwhelmed by the force of the Mormon faith that he had journeyed away from long before and he got buried, anyway.

I thought of the later years when I would visit my Mom and Dad, and how hard those years became. I thought about Mom and Dad and Mary Ann and Rex had always hoped that, at some point, I would come to my senses, say my Alaska adventure had been good but was now over and that I might settle down nearby in that same valley to one day be buried on that hill with them.

I love Utah, but, damn, I couldn't live there. I just couldn't.

I lived in Utah for one year when I was a baby and for the five years total that I attended BYU.

That was enough. I can't live there anymore.

Sometimes, though, I awake from a dream. In it, I am in the basement of my parents' house where I am at last writing my books.

I am alone in that house. Nobody else lives there. Just me.

I really don't like that dream.

Then the flight was off - five more hours to sit in a box seat with a stiff, non-reclining back, having already sat in it for two on the ground - plus, of course, the New York to Salt Lake ordeal.

After about four of those hours had passed, I headed back to the restroom.

When I came out, I heard a female voice speak out of the near darkness of the cabin, in which all the main lights had been turned out: "Bill? Is that you?"

It was me, and Courtney was the young woman who asked. I first met Courtney when she showed up at the hospital emergency room after a Saturday Wasilla High football game, probably in 1992.

Caleb had been injured in that game and his memory temporarily knocked out of his head.

Courtney, a cheerleader, was right there at his side, hovering adoringly over him, smiling warmly upon him, caressing his hands in hers'.

They were an item for a long time after that, hanging out, going to the prom and such, but in time she went her own way. Now she was on the plane with her daughter, Abby, and a son who was sleeping in such a dark spot that I could not make him out. They had been living in Texas with her husband, who had just becoming qualified to fly a C-130.

Now she was going back to Wasilla. "I can't believe how much I have missed being home," she told me. "You don't realize how good it is until you go away."

"How old is Abby?" I asked Courtney. Abby answered for herself.

Margie picked me up at the airport and we arrived home in Wasilla about 4:15 AM - 25 hours after I had gotten up at the Comfort Inn that I had stayed in by JFK.

It was nearly five by the time we got to bed and I had hoped to sleep until 11:00 AM, ten at the earliest. But I began to wake up at 7:30, perhaps in part because Jim kept going back and forth from beneath the blankets to resting on top of me.

Everyone tells me that Jim has a hard time when I gone. He gets lonely and anxious and a bit desperate. When I come home, he will come to me with the most anxious expression. Then he will dash this way and that way out of sheer joy. Finally, he will settle down wherever I am at and will stick as close to me as possible.

As I have been working on this blog, he has alternated between resting upon my chest and shoulder to my lap.

Anyway, I gave up on sleep shortly after I took this picture at, as the clock says, 8:44 AM.

Pistol-Yero was sleeping there, too, but when I got up, it woke him up. I do not think he was ready to wake up.

Next I went out into the garage, where Royce and Chicago had already begun to dine on food put out the night before.

I then went outside to get the paper. 

According to our tradition, I next took Margie out to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, just as I always do when I return home from a trip, whether I can afford to or not.

I ordered my hash browns to be cooked "very light." They came back cooked dark, hard and crispy on the outside, mush on the inside.

Oh, well. The ham and eggs were very tasty, the coffee just right, the multi-grain toast and jam quite excellent.

Overall, breakfast was a good and pleasant experience - as long as I did not think to much about what we now face.

Although I am back in Wasilla, I will return to New York and then Nantucket very shortly - at least in this blog. I will begin by showing readers how my search for a New York City pretzel turned out, and most definitely I will bring you along on the tour of Cloisters and the very northern tip of Manhattan that Chie Sakakibara took me on. I will tell you a bit about the unlikely story of how she, a girl in Japan who originally believed Native Americans to be Caucasian because that's how she saw them in the movies and Aaron Fox became bonded to the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope and brought a treasure that had been lost back to them.

As to Nantucket, I am now completely fascinated with the place and want to learn all I can about it.

Stranded at JFK: Two scenarios that caused it, plus one that should have saved me but didn't

My Delta Flight out of JFK was scheduled to leave at 5:05 PM, so I reasoned that if I set out from the Alaska House guest house at 2:00, I would be in good shape. I think I would have been, too, had it not been for two setbacks - the first a miscalculation on my part and the second a bit of faulty information given to me by one of those guys who sits in little booths in the subway stations to sell tickets and answer questions.

First, my miscalculation: the guest house is very near to the subway station at Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue and so it was my plan to walk there, get on the train and go. Just before I set out, I decided I wanted to know of any train changes I might have to make along the way and so I pulled up HopStop.com. Hopstop allows one to enter his starting and ending points and then it gives directions as to what subway station to go to and what trains to take.

It instructed me to go to a different station, one in the opposite direction than Christopher, but in the actual direction of travel. So I set out for that station, thinking that it might take about 5 minutes to walk, certainly no more than ten. It took closer to 20. Even so, I should have been in decent shape.

Once I got to the station, I went to the booth, manned by an ornery man who likes to make people who do not know as much about the New York subway system as he does feel stupid.

From Hopstop, I knew that I had to take the A train, but I asked him about it and where I should go to most quickly access it. "You go down those stairs and you take the A train - the A train to Far Rockaway," he emphasized authoritatively.  "Only that A train. Not the other."

I went down the stairs and found myself on an island between two tracks. To my right, an A train was arriving at that very moment. I looked at the sign above it and it said "A local." I looked to my left, where there was no train at the moment and it said, "A, Far Rockaway."

So I let the A train to the right go without me and waited for one to come in at the left, the A to Far Rockaway, just like the man said.

As I waited, a B and then a C train came in on the track to the right, but no trains on the A to Far Rockaway track. Then another A local came, but still no A Far Rockaway.

Still, the man had said to take the "Far Rockaway" only and, as ornery as he had been, I figured that he knew what he was talking about. That faith would wind up costing me over $350 that I simply cannot afford. I would put it all on a credit card, of course. While at the moment I do not have one concrete paying job set to go in April or anytime in the future and I begin the month with barely enough money to support Margie and I for about one week - as long as we delay paying a few bills that long - there are always prospects out there and perhaps enough good things will happen in the future to allow me to get that credit card bill paid off and make a living, too.

I have been a freelance photographer/writer now for 25 years and I love it - but sometimes I hate it, too.

And to those who have bought into the cynical rumor, started by one who knows better, NO, NO, NO! I am not retired.

I will retire on the day that I die, or become too incapacitated to keep working.

That is the only way that I will retire.

But I grow angry and digress. This does me no good, so I will return to the story:

The cycle of A local and non-A trains on the left track continued unabated, but not a single train showed up on the Far Rockaway track. I began to grow very nervous that I was going to miss my plane if I waited much longer. So, finally, I jumped on an "A local" and asked a savvy looking man if this would get me to Far Rockaway and JFK.

Yes, he said, but I would have to change to a different A at a certain station about 40 minutes away. As to the Far Rockaway train that I had been waiting for - it was shut down for the weekend and that damned, ornery, smart-ass, authority in the booth whose instructions cost me all this lost time and money should have known that.

Suffice it to say, though, that I eventually made it and then found myself on the Airtrain, the last leg to JFK, where I took this image of all the many happy travelers traveling with me. While I knew I was cutting it close, I thought I was still in good shape and would be fine.

When the A Train dropped me off at Terminal 2, where Delta is based, I was a little surprised by the distance still ahead to walk. It was just about 4:00 PM. I was a little worried about what it might be like to go through JFK security, but still figured I would be okay.

So I made the walk, crossed the road, found the elevator, took it up and worked my way through the bustling crowd to the check-in kiosk. I used the "swipe your credit card" card method to check in. At first, the computer did not recognize me, so it asked me a string of questions before it finally figured out who I was and where I was going.

It then asked for the number of bags I would check in. I selected one. It then told me that all bags for this flight had been checked in and no more would be allowed. Did I want to continue? Yes, I did, but when I tried, the computer would not issue me a boarding pass. It told me to go to the "assist kiosk." I checked the time at that moment. 4:10 PM. My flight was scheduled for 5:05. I I had missed the baggage deadline by three, maybe four minutes at most.

Flying out of Anchorage it is never this tight. 4:10 for 5:05 departure would still easily get your bags on the plane and you would make it through security and you would fly.

Getting to the assist kiosk was a tedious, time-consuming process. It seems that many people coming to JFK arrive too late and so the lines were long and packed with frustrated and angry people, trying to get to clerks who were tried, frustrated and angry from having to deal with them all day.

As frustrated and frazzled as I was, I decided that I would be nothing but polite, friendly, and courteous to the poor, frazzled, frustrated, impatient woman who would deal with me, because it was not her fault and nothing that I could do now would change the situation. Nothing would put me on my scheduled flight home.

Indeed, she was impatient. She did not want to explain anything to me and, once she had determined that there was not a single other flight that I could take out that evening, she made it clear that she resented the fact I now expected her to help me find one the next day.

"There's just nothing," she said. Then she looked at me as that was that was that and we were done.

"I have to get home," I told her. "I can't stay here. If you can't get me out tonight, then you have to help me find a flight for tomorrow."

With an expression of great pain and annoyance, she got back into her computer. "I can put you on the same flight tomorrow, but there will be a $200 penalty."

"I have to get home," I reiterated, "but is there anything earlier tomorrow?"

She sighed wearily and then got back into her computer. After a few minutes, she told me should could put me on an earlier departure that would route me through Minneapolis instead of Salt Lake and put me in Anchorage a bit after 6:00 PM instead of 12:54 AM Tuesday morning. This would cost me another $653.

There was no way. I paid the $200 penalty and got rebooked for a 5:05 PM departure Monday, to arrive in Anchorage at 12:54 AM, Tuesday. I left the assit kiosk and headed back to the Airtrain. As I neared it, my phone rang. It was a recorded courtesy call to let me know that my 5:05 flight - the one I had not been allowed to check in for, not the new one that I had rebooked - had been delayed until 5:30.

So, you see, if Delta gave as much thought to its passengers as it does to their money, they could easily have still checked my bag in and put me on that plane and saved me all this time and money.

There was no way that I wanted to face the prospect of working my way back to JFK from Manhattan again Monday, so I booked myself at a Comfort Inn near JFK. I took the above picture from Federal Circle as I waited for the Comfort Inn Shuttle to come and pick me up.

I never get bored, but I got bored last night - only because I was too tired and weary to blog, write emails, work, or do anything. I took a walk. I ate. I called home and talked to all the Easter celebrants - that eased the boredom for awhile, as did this image of Kalib and Muzzy hunting Easter eggs in the back yard, iPhoned to me by Lavina. Wow! Look at what a huge patch of snow has melted away out of the back yard!

I lay on the bed and then stared, bored and bleary eyed, at my motel-room TV, watching nothing complete but different segments from different programs and movies plus bits of news about an earthquake in Mexico, felt strongly in California, among other happenings.

My flight is schedule to leave in just under 6 hours from now. The Comfort Inn lady has given me a late checkout time of 1:00 PM - one hour and 40 minutes from now.

I will go take a short walk, return here, see how much time I have left before checkout, decide what to do with it, then take the shuttle to the airport, check in early, go through security and then just hang out for awhile. I will buy something to eat and take a few pictures - although I already have far more pictures from this trip than I will possibly ever get around to dealing with at any time in my life.

But I will deal with some. Interested readers will see which ones. In the meantime, here is an iPhone image of Kalib and Jobe sent to me by Lavina: