Tomorrow, I will return to the wedding and India, but for now I must take a break and go bike riding in Wasilla

At the moment, I am frustrated to the extreme. Bike riding is a good thing to do when you are frustrated. I am frustrated because I just spent the past few hours taking a first look at my shoot of Soundarya and Anil's wedding. Now I face the terrible irony that I journeyed all the way to India specifically to photograph their wedding, got a decent enough take of various events that preceded the wedding, plus a pretty good shoot of all the things that we did in India after the wedding, but my shoot of the wedding itself...

Despite the fact that I was in their country, I should never have yielded to the hired photographer and his videographer. I should have made an issue of the fact that I traveled all the way from Alaska to India to do a shoot of love, a shoot of the heart, and I should have insisted that they back off, kill that glaring light and let me do the shoot that I had come to India to do!

Ohhhhhhhh - that monster floodlight!

Ohhhhhhhh - that out-turned palm and push of the hand!

Still, my dear Soundarya and Anil, remember always the deep friendship and love that brought me to India and your wedding. That is what matters now, more than the pictures. They will never be as they would have been, but the friendship will be.

As frustrated with this take as I am, I will still post a wedding series. At the very end, it will take a rather nice turn.

Back to bike riding: I have just loaded pictures that I have taken over the past three days or so as I rode my bike about Wasilla.

In the image above, I am coming down Ward's Road, nearing home, after a short ride of less than five miles.

Even when I bike ride, I am cognizant of any airplane that flies overhead. When I was in India, I decided that I should give myself a goal to replace my crashed airplane by July 14, 2010.

This is an absurd goal, given the fact that it is going to be a genuine struggle just to hang on to what we have until then.

Still, I want to have an airplane again. I need an airplane again. I can hardly stand not having an airplane. Time is running out and I am tired of being bound to the ground, able to fly only in other people's airplanes.

Plus, this blog can never be what I want it to be unless I get an airplane.

This is Alaska, my friends, and you cannot get around this place properly unless you have an airplane.

No, not even flying commercially, unless you are very, very, wealthy.

Consider my last trip north, to the Arctic Slope - to Barrow and Wainwright, just before I went to India.

My airfare for those two relatively small hops cost me about the same as did my airfare to Bangalore and back!

How absurd is that?

I bike down Lucille Street towards Shrock Road, towards the Talkeetna Mountains.

And then yesterday Lavina surprised me when she came into my office to tell me that she and Jacob were going to take Kalib on a bike ride. She asked me if I wanted to come. It would be a short ride - three miles round trip - at a slow pace, but I had never been bike riding with my grandson before, so off I went.

Lavina and Kalib.

Today, towards the end of an eight-mile bike ride, I traveled through Upper Serendipity. How I detest Serendipity! I do not detest the people who live there, nor do I resent them. They are just doing what people do.

But when one knows untrammeled country the way I knew Serendipity before it became Serendipity, and then one is forced to watch helplessly as it becomes what it is today, it is an extremly painful thing. Back then, I would also ride my bike through this area - on narrow trails originally tamped out by moose. I would see no roads, no houses, no pavement; seldom would I see another person.

Now this is what I see.

In a way, though, it is a good exercise for me, considering how much of my life has been spent with Native people, from the Lakota to the Apache to all the Alaska Natives. The loss that I feel in Serendipity is so tiny, by comparison.

And the area now called Serendipity was their loss even before it was mine.

As I came down the Upper Serendipity hill toward Lower Serendipity, I saw a robin standing in the road in front of me.

As I approached, I pointed my pocket camera at it. At the moment it raised its wings, I snapped the shutter. Compared to my DSLR's, the pocket camera is a bit slow to react, but it is easy to carry when I ride a bike.

Just beyond the robin, I turned the pocket camera toward the Talkeetnas. Up there is Hatcher Pass, and Gold Mint Trail. I hope to take the bike up there, before the summer is over, and do some real trail riding. First, I need to get in better shape. Pretty hard to do, given all the traveling I have ahead of me.

Still... maybe by August or September.

Watch this blog and find out.

A saree for Melanie (part 1); two girls show me their bull; Sanju rides the bus

Melanie needs a saree to wear to Soundarya's wedding. Vasanthi, our most generous host, has saree material just waiting. She shows a sample as little Sanju walks through the room. If Melanie looks tired, just remember that the two of us had just finished a 41 hour trip from Alaska to India.

We were both tired.

Vasanthi drapes a saree-in-the-rough over Melanie. Melanie likes it. Next, we must go to the tailor to get it fitted.

We are going to walk to the tailor now, and then we will catch a bus into downtown Bangalore to do some more shopping for saree material. Jesse, Buddy's mom, helps little Sanju into her sandals.

Jesse, originally from Malayasia, runs a small school for little children. She used to hold it right here, in the living room of her sister and brother-in-law, Vasanthi and Murthy. Sanju was one of her students. Sanju has graduated now and moved on, but she sees Murthy, Vasanthi, Jesse and household as her own family and so comes over almost daily just to hang out, to love, and be loved.

Sanju walks with Jesse as Melanie follows.

Vasanthi leads us to the tailor, but his little shop is closed for the day. So we walk a little further and there is another tailor, in a tiny, open-faced shop. That's how it is in India. Little tiny shops, everywhere. 

As I photograph Melanie, I feel someone tap my elbow. I turn and see these two girls. Although they do not speak much English and I know nothing of their language, they let me know they want me to photograph them with their *bull.

Murthy tells me that India has more than 700 active, indigenous, languages. 

After I take their picture, I show it to them on my camera's LCD monitor. They are most pleased. "Beautiful!" they say, "thank you." Then they walk away, waving as they go.

Sanju, Jesse, and some other little kid at the bus stop.

Sanju and Jesse ride the bus toward downtown Bangalore. I will continue this story shortly, meanwhile...

...I jump ahead to today, right here in Wasilla, Alaska, USA, where I took a ten-mile bike ride after I ate breakfast at Carl's Jr. My first two days back home were filled with warmth and sun, but today it rained.

The rain in India is warm, but this rain was cold. It felt good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When I got home, I took a hot shower. I enjoyed that, too.

*I originally referred to this little bull as a cow, but was corrected by Sandy's cousin, Kavitha V. Kavitha wrote:

"In India the bulls are used for ploughing the fields, the bulls that are born with large humps and disablities are not used for ploughing.  These bulls are decorated and brought from house to house accompained with music. It is considered aspicious when a bull visits a house. In ancient India, people used to worship thier livestock. It was only after the white revolution beef eating came into picture. Now it is considered as a form of beggary."