When it becomes challenge to take a walk; we give Hawaii giant surf, they give us a mess

Despite the warm weather, I have continued my daily walk. With each step, I worry about falling on my still-healing shoulder and sending myself back to the operating table. But I don't worry a great deal. Caleb gave me some spikey little cleats mounted in a shoe-shaped rubber band that I pull over my shoes.

I still slip now and then, but, so far, the spikes have always caught within a few inches. That is pretty easy to recover from. Most of the time, they don't slip at all.

I hate this weather. I miss the cold, and wish that it would soon return. I love the cold. Margie does not share this sentiment.

The only thing that I regret concerning the cold that we had been blessed with from early October up until now is that this shoulder injury has prevented me from getting out and doing what I like to do - like taking my cross-country skis up to Hatcher Pass.

Or maybe venturing into the mountains on the snowshoes that my kids, fearing that I was going to go out on my cross-country skiis, gave me for Christmas.

And now I am going to be traveling for six weeks. When I get back, I will go out. My shoulder is much stronger now, even if still weak, and I think by then I will be well ready to slap on my skis and go.

This sander passed me on a different stretch of road. If you look closely at the window, you can barely see the face of the driver, looking at me. He waved, too.

A friendly sander.

And here is a snowplow, pushing ice and slush off the road. Right now, we suffer from what is known as the "Pineapple Express." There is nothing but open ocean between this part of Alaska and the great state of Hawaii/ Sometimes, we give Hawaii a great gift - our powerful storms kick up the sea and send down the giant surf that has made the north shore of Oahu so famous.

In return, Hawaii sometimes curses us with these warm, wet, winds that shoot straight up from the tropics to make a mess out of everything. 

When this happens, I wish that we did not live so close to the coast. A mid-winter meltdown in the Interior is a rare thing and on the Arctic Slope all but unheard of.

Sometimes, a whole series of Pineapple Express storms line up one right after the other and then ruin everything. It has been much worse over the past decade then ever before. That is why Wasilla lost the Iditaord restart - the true beginning of the race - to Willow. 

Too many times in a row, the Pineapple express ruined our snow conditions, but not Willow's, which is only about 30 miles up the road.

Since I cannot get Margie off the road system, perhaps, one of these days, we will move to Willow.

But then, she wants to go to Arizona for the winter.

One more thing - whenever the Pineapple express gets really bad up here, the cold air that should be sitting here slips south, and plunges the northern plains into the deep freeze.

Just check the temperatures in Montana, Dakota and Minnesota right now and you will see that I write the truth.

All bloggers should write the truth, just like I do.

The weather goes to hell - Margie beats the rap

We are having the very worst kind of weather that we ever get around here - warm temperatures and rain, right in the middle of January. I hate it when this happens. I prefer 40 below over 40 above.

And the wind was fierce and growing stronger - in some places the gusts are forecast to reach 105.

But today, the bad weather was our friend. Back in September, on a bright, sunny, day, Margie drove down a stretch of the Old Glenn Highway that she seldom traverses only to have a cop pull up behind her, lights flashing.

As he walked toward her, she removed her seat belt so that she could get to her driver's license. When he saw that she did not have it on, he wanted to give her a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, but she defied him on this point, held her ground and he backed off. He did give her a ticket for exceeding the speed limit in a school zone. That ticket was going to cost us $350 and put six points on her record. 

While it is natural for a husband to defend his wife, Margie is, in fact, most diligent and conscientious about slowing down to the 20 MPH limit whenever she comes to a school zone. And many has been the time when she thought I was approaching a school zone too fast that she has admonished me to slow down.

So she found it difficult to believe that she had done so on this day. When she went back to take a look, the yellow warning light hung in the midst of yellow leaves illuminated by the bright sun.

So she decided not so much to contest the officer's contention that she had not slowed down in the school zone, but to argue that, on this fall day, the light had been hard to see and to plea for some leniancy - a reduced fine, perhaps; not so many points put on her driving record.

Her court appearance was scheduled for 9:30 AM, so we planned to leave here about 8:00, or shortly thereafter.

The wind was blowing, rain was falling and on the roads water was flowing over ice. Many of the people who were out driving were sliding off the roads. A bit before 7:00, an announcment came over the radio that all the schools in the Mat-Su Valley and in Anchorage had been closed due to hazardous road conditions.

Furthermore, traffic was reported to be moving about 10 mph along much of the Glenn Highway.

So, hoping to get there on time, we set off just after 7:00 AM. All the way in to town, we passed through a gauntlet of disabled vehicles - the vast majority of them four-wheel drive pickup trucks - that had piled into the snow alongside the highway. Some of them had tipped over. Some of them had collided.

Even so, moving traffic was shockingly light. It almost seemed like a ghost highway.

Just before we reached Anchorage, a radio announcement told us that the Anchorage Court System had closed for the day.

Still, I dropped Margie off at the courthouse, then drove around a few blocks while she went inside. She found the judge just about ready to close her court, but because Margie had come all the way from the valley on the slick roads, she took Margie's case - and dismissed it. The officer who had issued the ticket was not there to testify against her. He was probably out tending to cars that had slid off the road.

No fine to pay; no points against her driving record.

I took the above picture afterward, while stopped at a red light, waiting to turn onto Tudor. 

Kalib's first birthday, part 1: flashback one year to his actual birth day

In just 45 minutes, guests should begin to arrive to help us celebrate Kalib's first birthday. I had not yet begun this blog when he was born at 3:19 AM, December 26, 2008, so I am going to flashback one year to that day. This way, when I post the pictures from the party, readers will be able to put them in context.

Shortly after the birth, the scene was calm, peaceful, joyous and serene as Kalib bathed in the love of his mom and dad. Of course, it did not start out that way.

It began in pain, along with a disruption of our Christmas plans. Jacob was working on a roast, which he was marinating and doing various things to enhance the flavor. As usual, we were cooking turkeys out here and pies and all of that kind of thing. The baby was not due for another week.

Then in the afternoon, we got a call that Lavina's water had broke and they were headed to the hospital. Jake had to put his roast aside. 

The emergence was not imminent, so the rest of us ate our dinner and exchanged our gifts. The word was we could confidently wait until after we got a good night's sleep to come in, because the baby was not coming fast.

Still, we could not wait. We climbed into the car and drove to Providence Hospital in Anchorage. We entered the delivery room a bit after midnight and this is what we found.

The stuffed St. Bernard is the original Muzzy, the one Jake gave Lavina years before, when they were in no position to have one of the eating, breathing, slobbering, bounding, loving, pooping kind.

Jake holds Lavina's hand. In this way, he helps her bear the pain that we who sire the babies can never know. Once, Jake caused his mother that same kind of pain. When it reached its worse, she told me that she had changed her mind.

"Take me home," she said. "I changed my mind. I don't want to do this anymore. Take me home right now." She was not joking. She meant it. 

I did not take her home. She got very angry with me. Margie doesn't often get angry, but she did then.

Lavina bore her pain quietly, hugging stuffed Muzzy, holding Jacob's hand as her good friend Natalee massaged her back, moaning and crying out lightly now and then, but never did she scream. Margie and Melanie watched the baby's heart beat on the monitor, as it sped up, slowed down, then sped up again.

Obviously, the baby was having a remarkable experience.

 Natalie Massages Lavina as Jake comforts her from the other side. Shortly after this, a nurse came in and told us that the baby was almost a good ten to hours away from being born and that we should go get some sleep and then come back refreshed for the big moment.

I was leery about leaving, as I did not want to be gone when baby appeared, but I was extremely tired and so was Margie.

At that time, Jacob and Lavina lived in an apartment less than two miles from the hospital. So we drove over there, to bunk with the flesh and blood Muzzy and the calico cat, Martigny.

We had barely exchanged greetings with the cat and dog and settled down to sleep on two different couches when Margie's cell phone rang. The process had speeded up. The baby was about to be born. 

We rushed over and headed for the delivery room. The door was closed. And suddenly a sound penetrated the door - the sound of a baby's first cry. I wept. 

Natalee came out as the nurses cleaned baby and Mom up. She smiles as she listens to the cry of the newborn.

Soon we were in the room with Mom, Dad, and newborn son. Mom and Dad had waited until the moment of birth to learn his sex. For a boy, they had already picked the name, Kalib. In full: Kalib Lokaa'Dine Hess, in honor of his Navajo clan. In both Apache Navajo cultures, the children belong to the clan of their mother, so this worked out just fine.

Have you ever heard a sound more beautiful than the cry of a healthy, newborn baby?

I haven't.

A baby's cry is the most beautiful sound in the world.

Not even Mozart ever created a sound more beautiful than this.

Mom, Dad, Kalib and gramma.

Having missed Christmas dinner, Lavina now eats a corn chip.

Dad kisses Kalib.

Mom kisses Kalib.

Dad and Kalib.

Kalib and Uncle Caleb. Caleb soon proved himself to the very definition of doting uncle.

Newborn Kalib.

Newborn Kalib with new mittens.

Kalib Lokaa' Dine Hess - our first grandson.

Well, Kalib's first birthday party has now been over for about two hours. Yes, I was unable to finish this entry before it began - with no small thanks to the glitches and vagaries of Squarespace - but now I have.

Soon, I will blog Kalib birthday party #1.

Click on any image to see a larger version.

Kalib turns on the charm for Granny B waitress; jet passes overhead; Lisa at work

It was just after noon and I had eaten nothing since last evening, as I had to do a blood draw today. After the draw, we headed toward Anchorage to see a movie and to drop Kalib off with his parents, but first I needed to eat so we stopped at Granny B's, where they serve breakfast all day.

Kalib quickly began to flirt with the waitress.

She was a pushover; she quickly succumbed to his charms.

Kalib enjoyed the attention. Breakfast was good. Afterward, we dropped Kalib off at his Dad's place of work, where they were having a Christmas party and he would meet Santa.  We then headed to the movie.

Slumdog Millionaire is what we saw. One of the characters in it was named Latika and in one scene, when she was a young girl begging on the streets of Mumbai, she reminded of a very specific young beggar girl who crossed my path in Bangalore. 

The movie got out about 3:45, so we climbed into the car to drive to see Lisa and this is what it looked like at that time.

Lisa at work at the admissions desk at the family medicine clinic of the Alaska Native Medical Center.

After we got home, I found the pictures of the girl in Bangalore and I was going to put them in this post. I decided the post had enough images, however.

So I will make a follow-up post, and put the Latika who was probably not Latika at all in that entry.

Two girls from Point Hope photograph themselves

I back up a little bit here, to November 23, at the Challenge Life basketball tournament for middle schoolers, held in Fairbanks. I have finally begun to edit those photos and will incorporate a selection of them into a much bigger project that I am working on.

As I shot the Point Hope boys battling Fort Yukon in their final game, I noticed these two members of the Point Hope girls team photographing themselves from just behind the basket.