Wasilla on a 78 degree scorcher: I go biking with Shadow Me, Tony and Taiga prepare for the hunt; relief from the heat at Wasilla Malibu

Yesterday, I had speculated that I would not post at all today, as people go out to play on summer Saturday's, my readership goes way down, I'm still jet-lagged from and getting over the sickness that struck me down in wonderful Greenland and maybe I should just relax and play today myself.

In fact, I decided that was exactly what I would do - not blog today.

But then it seemed silly to just leave things sitting where they were, when we had all baked at 78 degrees in Wasilla and I could easily put up a very quick and easy post to tell you so.

So here is Shadow Me, biking at 78 degrees in Wasilla. Shadow Me never sweats, but I do - and I did.

Usually when I bike, I try to take all my pictures as I pedal past the subject. But when I saw Tony and his new pup, I had to stop. Tony is a hunter and he was training the pup how to be a hunting dog. The pup is named Taiga, because that is where they are going to go hunting - on the taiga.

Tony is a good neighbor, by the way. A very good neighbor. And he is an author - like me, but his subject matter is different. Related, but different.

His dogs are always good dogs.

I have never known Tony to have a bad dog.

I liked Barney the best.

Barney grew old and died, as dogs do with alarming frequency.

As we all do, unless we die young.

I miss Barney.

As I pedaled down Church Road toward the Little Susistna River, I saw a man working in his yard, where pretty flowers bloomed.

Such is summer life in the Great, White, Eternally-Frozen North.

Here we are, passing by Wasilla Lake's Wasilla Malibu Beach, Margie driving, me in the passenger seat, kids cooling off in the water.

Yesterday, Lisa read the part in my blog where I speculated that perhaps today I might want to play myself. She called. She should be here soon. Then we will go out into the country and play.

View images as slideshow

My trips to Arizona and Anaktuvuk Pass - the connection; on the home front, Jobe, a horse, and some kids

As regular followers of this blog know, I was recently in Arizona, where I journeyed to see my friend Vincent Craig just before he died, and then stayed for his funeral and to visit family. I traveled straight from Arizona to the Brooks Range Alaska village of Anaktuvuk Pass to attend the wedding of Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee to Ben Hopson III (B-III).

I have mentioned that there is tie between the people I gathered with in Arizona and those whom I joined in Anaktuvuk Pass.

You can see that connection right here, in the above photo. This is Velma Kee Craig, Vincent's daughter-in-law through his and Mariddie's oldest son, Dustinn. I took this photo inside the Fort Apache LDS church house during the lunch that was served to family and friends of Vincent right shortly after his burial.

Please note the necklace and earrings that Velma chose to wear to her father-in-law's funeral. Both were made by Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee, whose wedding I would photograph in Anaktuvuk.

The moment that she saw the necklace in an online ad posted by Rainey, Velma loved it and wanted it. "Sorry," Rainey informed her. "That necklace has already been bought."

She did not tell her that it was Dustinn who had bought it. Dustinn had sworn her to secrecy.

In the summer of 1981, two months after Margie, little Jacob, Caleb, Rex, baby Melanie and I rolled into Alaska, I found a job at the Tundra Times, a now defunct weekly newspaper that served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities. I started as a reporter/photographer and then became editor/reporter/photographer for a short time.

Back then, each October during the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, he Tundra Times would host a banquet. Entertainment would usually include at least one Native American act from Outside. In 1984, I suggested to those planning the banquet that they consider bringing Vincent Craig up to perform and that is just what they did.

Mariddie came with him and they stayed with us in our Wasilla house throughout the convention.

Vincent and Mariddie wanted to take a memento of Native Alaska back to Arizona and so they purchased a pair of mukluks - caribou, if I recall correctly - at one of the arts and crafts booths that are always set up at the convention. They were very pleased with those mukluks.

One night, as I drove them back to Wasilla from convention happenings in Anchorage, the Northern Lights climbed in a glowing green arc over the Talkeetna Mountains, and then divided into various curtains to shimmer, dance, and flash in different colors. Vincent and Mariddie were fascinated

"Dustinn would love this," Vincent said. "He would feel awe."

That's Dustinn above, with Velma and their four children, Chance, Ashlee, Tristan and Kraig. I took this picture in their home, approximately five hours before his father died.

As Dustinn grew, he would often look at those mukluks. He would touch them, smell them, feel the texture of the fur. He would wonder about the place they came from, the people who made them. He would feel a sense of awe and fascination. His dad would tell him they came from Alaska; he would tell him about his friend, me, who lived in Alaska, who had his own airplane that he flew all about his mysterious, northern, land.

After Dustinn became a filmmaker, the primary center of his work became centered on Arizona, primarily on his Apache people, but he also branched out elsewhere - into Northern Alaska. 

In the image above, he is showing me his "Freshwater Ice" film. It tells the story of how, when a loved one dies, Iñupiat people will sometimes venture out onto the salty sea ice to find a certain kind of clear, blue, coveted piece freshwater glacial ice that yields the purest, sweetest, drinking water to be found.

They will chop it up, bring it back to the village, melt it and this will be the drinking water that will quench the thirst of those who gather to bring comfort to the deceased's family.

It is beautiful. It was also a bit amazing to me, to sit in his living room in Mesa, Arizona, and to watch this film that he made, people with faces and voices from Arctic Alaska, all well-known to me.

Dustinn was also hired to teach a film-making workshop at Barrow's Ilisagvik College. One of his students was Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee and another was Iñupiat filmmaker Rachel Edwardson. The three were all about the same age and after class got to spend a good amount of time visiting. 

Dustinn later got to work with Rachel on a film in Point Hope. Here is a trailer showing some of Dustinn's Point Hope work.

They discovered that, as young Native artists working to make a life in Native society that for them was different even than it was for their parents, they faced similar challenges and had much in common. They all became good friends.

And here is Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, who made the necklace and earrings that Velma Craig wore to her father-in-law's funeral in Arizona, on the evening of the day that she got married in Anaktuvuk Pass.

With her is her sister, Angela and her new brother-in-law, Byron Hopson.

I have a number of pictures and stories yet to post here from my trips to Arizona and Anaktuvuk. Now you will know how the two tie together.

In time, I intend to bring Rachel into this blog as well.

I don't know how to state this without sounding like I am bragging, but it is part of this story, part of this connection, so I have to say it. When I got to Rainey's home, she showed me her stack of the battered Uiñiq magazines that I made and she saved. She told me that she grew with my pictures, that my inspired her and that is why she kept the magazines, why she wanted me to come and photograph her wedding. That is why, after I made my final stop in Arizona at the home of Dustinn Craig to visit he and his mother, I got on an airplane and began the first of the four-leg that would take me to Anaktuvuk Pass.

Now, a little bit from the home front:

Yesterday, I had to go into town to take care of some business. I stopped at Jacob and Lavina's to visit Margie, who is babysitting Jobe. Jobe was asleep in his cradleboard.

Another view of Jobe.

Late in the evening, I took a ride on my bike. I had not gone far before I came upon this group of young people. The girl on the horse told me her name, but I was so certain that I would remember I did not bother to record it. I have forgotten. I do not know the name of the horse, either.

I should have lingered, spent a bit more time with them, learned a bit about that horse and how the girl feels about it and what the kids on the bikes think.

But I didn't. I just quickly stopped, told them what I was doing, got the name that I would forget and then pedaled quickly on.

Update, 11:35 AM Friday: AKponygirl left a comment and identified the horse-riding girl as Marcella. Thank you, Akponygirl!

A man wearing an orange shirt pedals his bicycle north on Tamar, toward the Talkeetna Mountains

This is the ONLY picture that I have taken since I put up my last post. Although I never let a day go by without taking at least one picture and usually anywhere from a dozen or so to a thousand or more on a big, intense, shoot, I did not want to take very many pictures today. I already had a post planned for this slot and I knew that if I took a bunch of pictures, at some point I would have to take some time to edit them.

I did not want to take the time.

But I have to get up early Wednesday morning to take the Escape into the shop for some warranted work and then I must drive the loaner car to Anchorage to take care of a very important task. Despite thinking that I would just veg all afternoon and evening, that I would walk, ride my bike, drive my car, do whatever, I found myself with a cascade of tasks to attend to and so I did not veg.

I did take one very short walk, late in the evening, and that was when I saw this guy riding his bike ahead of me.

As to the post that I had planned - one that would make a tie between what I did in Arizona and Anaktuvuk Pass - it is just going to have to wait one more day.

It is 10:26 PM and, just like last night, I haven't the energy to continue tonight.

So I will set the blog-timer for this to appear at 11:00 AM and will do the post that I had planned for today tomorrow.

I have one more task I must do before I go to bed. It, at least, will help bring in some genuine revenue.

I apologize for being so exhausted.

I must get a bit rested over the next couple of weeks so that I can go to Greenland and exhaust myself all over again.

That should be fun. I will take you all with me. It will be good - not what most of you probably think - but very good.

Even though I had to worry about chips and dings, I witnessed some pretty marvelous sights from the Kendall Ford loaner car

Last week, I brought up the fact that the "check engine" light had come on in our Escape and that I had taken it to the shop at Kendall Ford, got the problem diagnosed, made an appointment and had then dropped it off very early in the morning for what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half to three hour repair. Yet, come the end of that day, I learned that it had proven much more complicated than that and I could not pick up the car. They would have to keep it for another day.

I had planned to follow the story through, but I got sidetracked by matters such as Jobe's baby shower and my Mother's Day tribute.

So today I got up thinking that, concerning this story, I had blown it. The time had passed. It was too late to post it now and that I might just as well forget about it, pretend that it never happened and let the pictures that I took to illustrate it slip quietly away into that vast, unseen, archive that holds the big majority of images that I have ever shot.

Then I decided, what the hell - this is not a daily newspaper, this is my blog, I can do with it whatever I want. I don't always need to be perfectly timely. Ultimately, my goal is to continually wrap the past and the present together here, anyway, so what's wrong with wrapping in the recent past?

Anyway, no matter how current the images and the memories, by the time I post them here they are the past. So, here goes:

Come the next day, I waited and waited for the call that would tell me the car was done. My plan then was to ride my bike the five or six miles to Kendall and pickup the car. Or, if Caleb was awake, I might have him take me. Instead, near the end of the day, I got a call from Mark, my intermediary at Kendall, and he informed me that in the process of making the repair, the mechanics had accidently ruptured the fuel line and it was leaking gasoline.

They had ordered a part from Anchorage, but would have to hold the car for at least one more day, possibly two.

Mark said they could provide me with a loaner car and they could send someone to my house to pick me up and drive me over. "Okay," I said.

This is Ginger, the driver who came to get me. Ginger spoke with a strong southern accent.

Ginger has two jobs at Kendall - driving customers like me back and forth and doing custodial work. 

"It's either cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a costumer," she expounded. "Which one do you think I'd rather be doing?"

Yet, driving customers was not so pleasant that morning when two women were killed in a head-on collision just a few hundred yards up the Park's Highway from Kendall Ford. It was a busy morning, but she found herself repeatedly stuck in slow traffic as she crept by the accident scene.

Her theory was that the woman who had crossed over the suicide-left turn lane and into the oncoming traffic must have been struck by a medical problem. Otherwise, how could anyone possibly make such an error?

One of the customers she gave a ride to later that same day believed otherwise. He thought it was most likely driver distraction. His job, perhaps as an EMT, had put him as a first responder at many accident scenes and in such cases it almost always proved to be driver distraction, he told her - something like eating a hamburger, drinking coffee, putting on makeup or, most often these days, talking on the phone.

While she respected his expertise, she was not convinced. "If you start to cross four lanes of traffic because you get distracted from drinking a cup of coffee, you're going to figure it out and you can through that cup of coffee aside and save yourself. I still think it was probably a medical problem."

Before she could expound further, her cell phone rang. It was the office, calling to tell her she had a visitor waiting for her. She speculated as to who it could be - a higher up from the work place, perhaps, or, "it might be my boyfriend."

After we turned off the Park's and drove past the Kendall dealership toward the big shop at the back, she studied the cars in the parking lot. "Yep, it's my boyfriend," she said. "There's his car." Then she stopped to let me out. "You have a right good day, sir," she said with that southern accent.

"Where are you originally from?" I asked.

"Viriginia," she said.

Before I went into the office to do the paper work to pick up the loaner car, I saw Mark looking at our Escape. The way he held the blanket kind of reminded me a bit of someone about to drape a shroud over a dead body. I walked over to investigate.

Mark points toward the original problem, before the fuel line was ruptured, and explains how all that stuff that in front of his finger had to get removed before they could replace the bent camshaft in the solenoid. 

This is Sharon, who took care of the paperwork for the loaner car. It was regular rental-car paperwork, it's just that instead of me, Kendall and Ford would pick up the tab. If I heard it, I forgot the name of the lady in pink. She did say that she was glad that it was Sharon who was working with me and who would be in my blog, because she does not think she photographs well and so does not like to appear in pictures.

We had to do a walk around to look for dings, dents, nicks, chips, scrapes, cracks and scratches before I could sign off and take the car. Sharon was very thorough in noting all the little mars, including ones that I would never spotted if she had not pointed them out to me.

On the one hand, this leaves one feeling grateful because now you know that these almost invisible mars are not going to get charged to you, should someone find them on your return. On the other, it makes one nervous, a bit afraid to drive the car much at all because there's no telling what she might discover when you do return it.

While it was a loaner car, the driver is still responsible for any damage it sustains while in his custody. My insurance would be there for big things, but there is always a deductible and I did not want to have to pay any deductible.

I signed for it, then took the car and drove away - feeling very nervous. Remember Larry, the Harley rider who came here from Florida and then gave up motorcyle riding, in part because the air above highways here tends to have an abundance of little rocks and gravel flying through it?

I am certain that you have noticed the cracks that lace our windshield along with the chips that pock it.

Yet, it was not long until I found myself in a parking lot as a train came rumbling past. This is that train, as seen through the windshield of the loaner Escape. I must admit, it is worth the risk, to be able to sit in a loaner Escape and witness such a wonderful, dramatic and exciting sight such as this.

That afternoon, I drove the loaner Escape up to the drive-through window at Metro Cafe. Branson, Carmen's four-year old son, rode this bicycle right up to the front of the loaner car, looked at me, smiled, and wiped his nose.

As I drove off with my coffee, I saw these two, through the window of the loaner Escape.

Then I saw this girl walking...

...and this guy riding his bike.

All these things I saw from the loaner Escape. 

When I took it back two nights later, it was given another thorough inspection. Not a single new ding was found in it.

Here I am, back in my own red Ford Escape. I have just driven away from the Ford Kendall shop and am waiting at the intersection so that I can turn onto the Park's Highway. It will be a long wait, as there will be no breaks in the traffic for many minutes.

Given the view, I do not really mind. In fact, if I could show you this picture at its original size, you would see that the words above "MOTEL" on the sign say, "Alaskan View."

Except for the motel, it was a grand Alaskan view indeed.

Oddly enough, every single view that we have around here is an Alaskan view.

Then, of course, someone had to turn in and cut off that view. Fortunately, he would not cut it off for too long.

Unfortunately, the next guy cut the view off even worse. Yet, look at the pleased smile upon his face - it looks like he is returning to Kendall from a test drive in a new car.

I wonder if he bought it?

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.