I pedal my bike to Taco Bell and back; along the way, I see many amazing sights, including a polar bear that passed by

I got up this morning, went online, checked my bank balance and saw that it was $79.85. So I decided that I might as well go to Taco Bell for lunch. Lavina had driven off to Anchorage in the red Escape to get an ultrasound of our new grandchild. Margie and Kalib went with her. I needed exercise, so I pedaled my bike the four-and-a-half miles to Taco Bell.

Along the way, near the west edge of Wasilla Lake, I saw this guy carrying the front wheel of a bike. He studied me with great suspicion. "Hello," I said. He said nothing. So much for The Brotherhood of the Bikers.

I should get a check next week. Hopefully early.

My whole career has been like this. I would not advise anybody to be a freelance photographer/writer, unless you have no choice, like me, because that is just what you are and nothing can be done about it.

In that case, I hope you have more business sense than I do. I have been in business for myself for over a quarter of a century and I haven't learned a damn thing about business.

I wonder how it is that I have lasted so long? Raised a family? Supported how many cats, how many dogs, how many schools of tropical fish? Most freelance photographers don't last long at all and those who do tend to have business sense that I lack and a willingness to do work of a nature that I won't do for any fee - if you try to hire me to do that kind work my mind goes foggy and I freeze up inside.

It's not because I lack the talent.

It's something else, something that I feel, and I can't get past it.

And now I ride around on a bicycle, shooting blurry, pocket-camera pictures and I put them in a blog that costs me $8.00 a month to maintain and grosses me not one cent, distracts me from tasks that could put money in my pocket, and all the time I somehow think that prosperity will yet come to me.

Someday, perhaps soon, the realities that I have managed to avoid for nearly three decades will explode upon me and wipe me out. That would be okay, if I could find a warm place with power and internet where I could sit down, put my books together, and blog.

I don't think Margie would be very happy about it, though. She's been through a great deal, to stand by her ever dreaming, roving, restless, husband who does not know how to make money. She's done it without complaint. She does not deserve to go through something like that, too.

Otherwise, I don't think I would care at all, as long as I could work on my books, do my blog and find a few dollars to go to Taco Bell, now and then.

But here's the thing: at all points in my career, whenever it has appeared that I am absolutely done for, something has materialized to keep me going - and it has always been something that I like to do. I have taken some enormous risks, but something has always happened.

Will I be saved once again? We will see.

Isn' this ridiculous? Just awhile ago, these mountains were bright, white, and snowy and they were supposed to do nothing but get snowier and snowier and stay that way into next summer. When we first moved up here, national cross country ski teams would come up from the Lower 48 every October to train at Hatcher Pass, because, they said, it was the one cross country ski area in the country where good, deep, snow was assured this time of year.

But look at it!!!

This, by the way, is the view from the seat of my bicycle as I pedal past Wasilla Lake. If it looks to you like the picture was taken near sundown, no, this is what noon-hour light looks like around here this time of year. This "sunset at noon" look will intensify over the next couple of months.

And here I am, pedaling into Taco Bell.

Two of the strangers with whom I ate lunch.

Just as this worker stepped out for a smoke break, I climbed onto my bike and began to pedal away. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "this shopping cart sure traveled far!" Target is maybe 200 yards from Taco Bell.

Many amazing things happen in this town.

As I pedaled past McDonald's, I was pretty impressed to read the sign and learn that "the world's best crew works here." 

There are hundreds of millions of crews on this earth, perhaps even a billion or more. Why would the best one in the world choose to work at McDonald's?

I did not even stop at the Post Office, but kept going. This guy stepped in front of me as I pedaled toward the corner. If we had collided, it would have been okay, because we could have went straight in to see the chiropractor.

Sometimes, you see an excellent photo in front of you, but you just can't get it, no matter how hard you try. This is an example. I had just turned off Wasilla's Main Street, which is not at all what a certain rouge-clad rogue has cracked it up to be, and was pedaling toward Lucille Street when suddenly I became aware that a polar bear had just rolled by me. Yes - a polar bear that had once roamed the Arctic ice but was now stuffed and lying in a pallet on a flat wagon towed by a pickup truck.

I had put my pocket camera back into my pocket and by the time I could pull it out again, the polar bear had gone too far past for me to get any kind of picture. Even though I knew I could not catch the truck, I began to pedal my bike as fast as I could. Way up ahead, the light turned red. The pickup truck stopped. There was so much distance between us that I knew that I could not get to it before the light turned green again, but if a polar bear can roll past you, something else might happen to delay its progress, so I pedaled like I was Lance Armstrong.

As the distance between me and the polar bear closed, I began to think that I had a chance - but then, while I was still out of range for a good picture, the light turned green. The truck took off. Knowing it was hopeless but determined to try anyway, I raised my camera and, still pedaling as hard as I could, shot this frame. Then the polar bear was gone. If you know what you are looking for, you can bearly make it out, wrapped in the orange pad.

I could have made such a good picture, if only that light had stayed red for 15 more seconds. Even 10. I think with even just five more seconds, I could have got something.

As I neared home, I passed this guy jogging with his dog. "Now you decide to run!" he shouted at the dog, immediately after I shot this frame with my pocket camera.

Later, Margie got home and picked me up for coffee. It was nice to have her drive - nice that she could drive. We passed this lady and this little boy. If I had saw them sooner, I would have rolled the window down, but we came up over a rise and I had to turn on my pocket camera and work fast, just to get a chance to shoot one frame through the window as Margie shot past. I decided to go for impressionism.

It was extremely difficult, and it wasn't a polar bear, but I did it.

And if I had been driving, it was one of those situations where I would have just sighed, because there would have been no way I could have got the image.

Sometimes, I wish Margie would drive all the time, so that I could concentrate on taking pictures. But she seldom wants to.

I expect to win a Pulitzer for this picture.

I don't see why not. It is the best picture anybody has ever taken on this earth, in this spot, at this time and I'm the one who did it.

When we got home, Lavina and Kalib were about to leave on a walk.

As for cocoon mode, I am just giving up.

I will still try to restrain myself a bit, to limit my blogging time a little more than I did tonight, to do enough just to hold the cyberspace until the day comes that I can really go at this blog the way I want to - but I give up on cocoon mode.

CM*D31: I go shadow biking, I get a strange look from a solid kid

I was struggling with my project, going nowhere, so I decided to go shadow biking.

OH NO! Head on collision! Damn fool! He should know to watch out for shadows!

But shadows are tough. I continued on.

And on and on and on. But not as on and on as I would have liked. I wanted to go on all day, and then to camp out under the stars at night. But my shadow would have died in the night, so I came back home to wrestle with my project, which has vexed me to a degree that no other project ever has. I don't know why. It just has.

I have placed all my pictures, long ago. Now I sit down to write, but the words just don't come. I can spend two hours and etch out one sentence that I don't like. Then, at the end of the day, I sit down to this blog and words pour out of me and through the keyboard into the computer and out to anywhere in the world that someone happens to log onto this blog, either by intention or accident, as fast as I can move my fingers.

Here is a kid riding with no shadow. I think that he is pretty unhappy about that. And why isn't he wearing a jacket? It is October 13, for hell's sake.

But the warm weather continues. Last year, the snow was piling on now but it was 49 degrees at the moment I snapped the photograph - nothing at all for a kid pedaling a bike up a hill. I can just hear his mom when he gets home, though.

"Billy! What are you doing going outside without a coat? You'll catch your death of pneumonia!"

No, wait. That was my mom, decades ago, when she still breathed, still loved, still smiled, believed in the resurrection and I thought life would always be that way and that I would never die, not of pneumonia or anything else.

I think this boy was very curious about the detached shadow coming down the hill on his shadow bicycle. I am certain he had never before seen such a sight in all his many days.

One day, I suspect, his grandchildren will tire of the story. "Yep, kids, there I was, pedaling up Wards Road in Wasilla, Alaska, when all of a sudden I saw a shadow coming down the hill. Just a shadow - a shadow man, riding a shadow bicycle..."

"Yeah, right, Gramps, we've heard this one before - like 20 billion times."

*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.

The Railroad Condos - the most elegant, pleasant, exclusive neighborhood in all of Wasilla*

Not so long ago there was a big plot of vacant land by the railroad tracks across the Parks Highway from Wasilla Lake.

We all knew that such vacant land could not be allowed to stand. When we saw the contruction begin, we wondered what someone could be building, right by the railroad tracks and the highway.

Of course. A huge condominium complex. I am quite certain that it is the hugest in all of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.

I actually took this picture on September 17, when I was riding my bicycle back from Kendall Ford, where I had dropped the Escape off for an oil change and routine maintenance. I didn't use the picture then, so I will use it now.

I wondered why anyone would want to live here and why it is that developers insist upon doing this kind of thing to Wasilla.

Have you ever driven down the Parks Highway through Wasilla?

Truly, it is an appalling sight. And it just keeps getting worse.

One of the most beautiful locations on earth, and this is what they do to it.

And then a few days ago, I passed by at the same time as the train and I understood - at least the part about why anyone would want to live here.

A straight line from our house to the railroad tracks is about 2.2 miles. Sometimes at night when I am lying in bed, not quite asleep, I hear the train clattering down the tracks. I hear the whistle blow. And I like the sound of it. It is pleasant, dreamy and soothing.

My mind drifts off to that train, and travels with it to far away places, even beyond the reach of the Alaska Railroad. I am a child again, hoping freight trains in Montana.

And that's from 2.2 miles away!

Think how much all that pleasant, dreamy, soothiness must be amplified when you are lying in bed and the train passes by just outside your window and the engineer blows the horn.

Maybe we will sell our house and move into these condos ourselves.

As long as I'm posting pictures from September 17, I might as well post this one, too. I took it immediately after I photographed the man driving by the Railroad Condos on his motorcycle. I liked the moment so much that I was tempted to pull off the bike trail, go a little closer, stop, get off the bike and practice some careful composition - but here's the thing - when you set out to see what kind of photos you can take with a pocket camera while pedaling a bicycle it destroys the whole project if you stop, get off the bike and carefully compose.

You can only do such a project while pedaling a bicycle.

It's kind of like being a quick-draw artist on horseback as opposed to a sharp-shooter lying prone on your belly with your rifle braced on a tripod.

So I photographed the motorcycle and the condos and then, still pedaling, swung my camera 180 degrees and photographed this scene, too.

Just like Clint Eastwood, swinging his Colts from atop the back of his mule.

And just ahead was this guy. It was the first time I ever saw a person who, instead of a human head, had two dogs growing out of his neck. Can you imagine what life is like for him, when he must walk upright and there is no table for him to support his dogshead on?

I never want to see such a sight again.

This picture was really hard for me to take, but I took it.

And here's a shot I took from my bicycle today. As you can see, the leaves are pretty much down now. As I noted yesterday, by this time last year the snow had set in for good.

But it was warm today. Really warm. The temperature rose into the 50's. Maybe it was a record. It felt like it. I was sweltering. All day long I sweltered. It made me wonder if it will ever snow again.

*I'm still officially in cocoon mode: it's just that I'm feeling really lazy and burned out tonight.

A memorial to a mother, fetus and teenage girl killed by a drunk driver is destroyed*

Today I found this little angel reaching out with a flower from the tumble of stones that remain of what very recently was a memorial to a mother and a baby who died in a car crash at this place.

I did not touch the angel, I did not move it. This is exactly how I found it.

This is what the memorial looked like on May 6, 2005. Until I pedaled my bike up to it today, I had never before stopped here. I had taken a few pictures as I zipped by in the car and from my bike as well, but I never stopped. 

Other than that two lives were lost, I have no knowledge of what happened here. I do not recall reading about it in the paper, seeing the story on TV or hearing it on the radio. Perhaps someone who reads this will know and will fill me in. (Three lives, it turns out. Update at bottom.)

All I know is that one day, well before I took this picture, the white cross appeared. I wondered why. A lady who is now dead and who I would often see in her yard and who seemed to know about everything that ever happened anywhere near this neighborhood told me that a young mother and her baby had been killed when she crashed her car here. She thought it was a single-car crash, that she had just gone off the end of Church Road, across Shrock and into the embankment.

This might be correct, it might not be. I did some googling today, but I could not find the answer.

Later, the brown cross, decorated with the engraved bear, appeared.

Throughout the years, the memorial always seemed to be well-cared for.

It was the work of an ever-loving and forever-pained heart.

Only a very different kind of heart could vandalize it.

I chose this photo because it was the only one that my search engine found when I typed in the word, "cross."

One day very recently, as I passed by, I noticed that the white cross had been split and knocked down. It looked to me to be the work of vandals. I do not know for certain. It is possible that another car lost control here and drove over the cross and damaged it.

Perhaps someone driving a four-wheeler off the side of the road too fast after dark did not see it and ran over it.

I do not know.

But it looked like the work of vandals.

I had intended to take a photograph of the damaged cross, but I never did.

And now both crosses are gone.

If you look closely at the upper-left hand corner of the rock pile, you can see the little angel, lying at the junction of three rocks and a leaf.

And if you look to the right, you can barely make out some wilted flowers, and some plastic flowers.

These are the plastic flowers.

Not far from the destroyed memorial, I rode my bike through a blanket of downed leaves as fast as I could without losing control while reaching as far forward with my pocket camera as my arm would extend so that I could photograph the action.

It was hard, but I did it. How about that, Charlie? (Explanation in Wednesday's comments).

Later in the afternoon, as I was returning home from my coffee break, I saw this lady checking the mail. As you can see, the leaves are just about all down now.

Last year, by this day, the snow had set in for the season.

I am still in cocoon mode, but I have gone maybe 15 minutes over my time limit.

I wanted to keep my title short, anyway.

*Update, 8:42 AM: I originally posted this under the title:

A memorial to a deceased mother and baby is destroyed

Mark Dent, editor of the Alaska Newsreader at the Anchorage Daily News, read the post and sent me this ADN clipping from October 9, 1999 - ten years ago today - with an account of the fatal accident:

By S.J. Komarnitsky

Daily News Mat-Su Bureau 

Day:   Saturday 

Page:   E1 

Print Run Date:   10/9/1999 

Dateline:   Palmer -- 

Text:   A Wasilla man with a history of alcohol abuse and driving

illegally was charged with two counts of murder Friday in connection

with an August accident in which a teenager and pregnant woman were

killed.

John F. Magee, 37, was arraigned in Superior Court in Palmer on two

counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and

driving while intoxicated. He may also face additional charges in

connection with the death of the fetus, prosecutors said. The woman was

eight months pregnant.

According to court documents, Magee was drunk and apparently driving

with broken windshield wipers in the rain in the early morning hours of

Aug. 15 when he ran a stop sign and crashed into a Subaru driven by

Laura Boles, 20, of Wasilla, at the intersection of Shrock and Church

roads. Boles was headed west on Shrock when she was hit by Magee, who

was headed north on Church, troopers said.

TX: The impact shoved both cars more than 60 feet off the road.

Killed were Boles, the fetus she was carrying, and a passenger, Mary A.

Williquette, 16, of Wasilla. A third passenger in Boles' car - Jacob

Buswell, 18, also of Wasilla - suffered severe injuries. Magee was also

injured.

According to court documents, Magee told troopers he had been drinking

at the Wasilla Bar, and the last thing he remembered was seeing a

stoplight near the Safeway grocery store in Wasilla, several miles from

the accident scene.

He registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.138 three hours after the

crash, according to court documents.

Ira See, an acquaintance who told troopers he was at the bar with Magee,

said the car Magee was driving did not have working windshield wipers

because the wiring had burned out, according to the court papers.

And while troopers said Magee had a valid driver's license when the

collision occurred, that has rarely been the case in recent years.

Over the past decade, Magee has been convicted at least six times for

driving without a license or driving while his license was revoked or

suspended. He also has been convicted of assault, criminal mischief, and

misconduct involving a controlled substance.

In 1980, he was convicted of driving while intoxicated and in 1988, he

was convicted of reckless driving.

Thank you, Mark.

Cocoon mode,* day 25: I lost my G10 pocket camera for nearly a week but now I have found it: the once-missing images

On Monday, September 28, I tried out a hot dog from Ididadog for the first time and documented the moment with my Canon G10 pocket camera. Later, that same day, I lost the camera - that is why you have not seen this week-old image until now.

Margie and I first became aware of the Ididadog hot dog kiosk about the beginning of September. Despite her pain, suffering and the resultant lethargy, I was actually able to use this news to excite her enough to hobble out of the house on her crutches and into the red Escape. Eager to try the dogs, we hurried over to the well-camouflaged kiosk on the Palmer-Wasilla highway, right across from the bowling alley, but we found a sign posted on the drive-through window: Closed. On Jury Duty.

Some damned alleged criminal had robbed us of the opportunity to try the hot dogs.

I checked back a few times afterward, but always found Ididadog closed until this day. So I bought myself a quarter pounder Polish Dog with mustard, onions, dill pickle relish and saurkruat, with potato chips grown and made right here in this valley, plus Pepsi.

Oh, it was exquisite! Superb! It reminded me of being in Chicago, hanging out outside of Wrigley Field.

If fortune should smile upon me, I will buy many hot dogs here in the future.

This is what Wasilla has long needed - a really good hot dog stand.

Later that day, after my coffee break, I stepped into the house, came out here into my office, but then had to go back in to help Margie with something, I forget what. After that, I could not find my G10 pocket camera. I looked and looked, but I could not find it.

"Oh, well," I thought, "it will show up in an hour or two." I typically lose the camera three or four times a week and within an hour or so it always pops up, right were I left it.

Not this time. The whole day passed by. Night came.

No camera.

I grew very worried.

This is among the images that was lost within it. Melanie and Charlie, the day before, when they had come out to visit us.

After I ate the hot dog, I stopped at the post office, hoping that someone might have sent me an unexpected check for $250,578.12. I figured that would solve my problems and allow me to write my books and go at this blog full time, as I want to, undisturbed by anything else.

Instead, I found some bills in my box, plus this car intentionally parked so as to take up one designated parking space, plus half of the walk way.

This happens frequently around here, although its usually one car intentionally parked to take up two parking spaces. It is what Melanie would call, "So Wasilla."

Some people think it is a really cool thing to do.

Others think it really cool to carry loaded pistols in their pockets.

Potentially deadly combination.

Furthermore, from the way she is parked, you can tell that the driver drove the wrong way through the one-way traffic lot to get the spot. Yes, it was a "she," because I saw her and she was not a teenager, either, but a mature adult - mature in terms of age, anyway.

At some point before I lost the camera, I saw Caleb in the backyard, washing his bicycle. Afterward, Margie had him undo the hose and drain the water out of it, because most mornings now we wake up to frost.

Not as much as would be normal by this time. It has been an unusually warm fall, just as it was an unusually warm summer. We are about ten days to two weeks away from when the lakes usually freeze over, but I think it will take longer this year.

Even so, it was time to undo the hose.

This is the last picture that I took with G10 pocket camera before I lost it. Many people began to doubt me, to believe that I had never brought the camera home but had left it somewhere. Yet, I had this recollection of taking this picture as I drove home from my coffee break in the late afternoon, so I was certain I had not left it somewhere.

In time, I myself began to doubt, to believe perhaps that I had never taken this picture at all, that I remembered something that had never happened and that I really had left the camera somewhere else and would never see it again.

This would be worse than forgetting something that had happened.

But I found the camera today. In a place that I looked at least 20 times. My work table. Under some papers. I had lifted all those papers up and looked under them before. 

And just in case you wonder about the pictures that have appeared here in the meantime, I took them mostly with the other pocket camera, the G9, the one my kids gave me after I got hurt. The series of Kalib falling was done with my Canon 1Ds MIII, as was the one of Jimmy sitting on the scanner and maybe one or two more.

There is more that I want to say about this, but I have already exceeded my Cocoon mode time.

I must better discipline myself.

*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.