Metros and breakfast at Metro Cafe: in search of the invisible Carmen

When I am batching it, as I probably will be most of the time for the 6 next weeks or so until the baby who has not yet arrived is able to fend for him/herself, I can hardly bear to eat breakfast at home. Of course, if you have been reading this blog for awhile, you already know that. But I can't afford to go to the restaurant and have ham and eggs or omlettes every day, either, plus, I am told that it is not good for one's health to eat eggs every day.

Metro Cafe is not really a breakfast restaurant, although you can get a ham and egg or bacon and egg sandwich there, plus they now carry cups of various oatmeal blends that you add hot water to, just like with Cup o Noodles soup. This does not cost as much as a full restaurant breakfast.

So that is what I did this morning - I went to Metro Cafe and got me a cup of oatmeal and a 16 oz. Americano.

I sat by a window through which I could see these old Metro vans, waiting for Scot to restore them.

It occurred to me that, all summer long, I have not taken a photo of the restored Metro Van and Metro car that Scot parks out front in the summer time, kind of like a marque to draw customers in.

So I turned around, looked through the window behind me, and shot the restored Metro van. From this vantage point, I could not see the little Metro car.

Nicole was running the store by herself. Besides, me, there were three customers inside, but there was a constant flow of drive-through traffic.

I hardly see Carmen anymore. As regular readers know, I tend to come to Metro Cafe for my afternoon coffee break, which I usually take at 4:00 PM, to coincide with NPR's All Things Considered.

Now that Branson is six and in the first grade, Carmen is always off picking him up at that time, so I do not see her when I pull through.

Metro opens at 6:00 AM and Carmen usually comes in about 9:00. I thought about coming in at 9:00, just so I could say "hi" to her, but I did not want to wait that long before I ate my oatmeal and drank my coffee.

Carmen has a high level of energy and vivaciousness that her customers, both male and female, like to experience. Aside from the fact that she provides the best drive-through coffee in the valley and also has a pleasant, walk-in coffee shop like none other, I think it is Carmen's magnetism that has won over many of her customers.

"Tell Carmen 'hi' for me," I told Nicole as I left.

"I will," she said.

Then I stepped out the door... and there was Carmen. In her car. Bringing in a fresh load of supplies. So I was able to say "hi" myself and to begin this day with a little extra charge of energy.

As I drove out, I passed by the tiny Metro Car, which will soon be driven away and parked in a sheltered place for winter.

Perhaps some of you have noticed that as of late, I seldom post a truly sharp picture.

I call this "The Jobe Effect." Jobe is drawn to my camera and sometimes I just forget to set it down out of his reach. He likes to use the camera as a hammer to pound upon the floor. He likes to run his fingers all over the glass.

It's not his fault, its mine. But the fact is, this lens that I use for 80 percent of my pictures, and probably 96 percent of my daily, just kicking around blog pictures, is just not sharp anymore.

And here I am, about to go to New York City with my number one lens out of tweak.

I am pretty sure the Canon factory can put it back in order, but I need it, and can't send it in.

So I just keep taking pictures that are not as sharp as they could be.

And I will do so in New York as well.

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UK coffee treat; a shadow, biking through the shadows

When I pulled up to the drive through window at Metro Cafe yesterday afternoon and went to pull my wallet out, Elizabeth told me to put it back. Carmen had received a letter with a purchase order for a Metro punch card from Martin Garrod of the UK.

Carmen came out and read the letter. It was a very nice letter. She said she will make me a copy of it.

Here is Elizabeth, bringing me my coffee as Carmen talks with Martin on the phone... I jokes! I do not know who Carmen was talking to.

Thank you, Martin! It was a big and welcome surprise and the coffee was excellent.

Martin sometimes leaves a comment after a post.

I feel rather bad about comments right now, as it has always been my intent to keep up a daily dialogue with those who leave comments, but my days are so packed and I am always so far behind schedule that most days I just let the comments stand for themselves, without responding to them.

I hope that sometime in the future I can do better.

Be assured, I appreciate all comments that are left here.

If everything had gone according to my plan, I would be hanging out at Era Aviation in Deadhorse right now, waiting for the airplane that I had expected to take me to Kaktovik where I was scheduled to land at 3:45 this afternoon.

However, an order for pictures that must be delivered before I can leave came in yesterday and it involves some searching and lot of sorting, editing, and processing. I thought I could get it all done by 1:00 AM and then get a little bit of sleep and make my 9:30 AM flight out of Anchorage, but I couldn't. So I postponed my trip to Kaktovik by one more day - except that tomorrow I leave on the 6:30 AM flight, which means I must get up about 4:00 and that is going to be tough - but my scheduled arrival is 10:30 AM and that will give me most of the day to get a little work done.

Late at night, I got on bike and went shadow biking.

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Carmen rides a little bike; frog appears; in the long but waning light of early summer, one can feel the approach of winter

Yesterday afternoon when I pulled into the Metro drive through, I saw Carmen, pedaling through the parking lot on Branson's bike. Hence, the above study:

Carmen in the Metro Parking Lot, Study, #52: Carmen transforms into a little kid.

I ate lunch in the back yard, so that Jimmy could spend a little time outside. A frog appeared - the biggest I have seen around here in a long time - the body must have been nearly three inches long - and around here, that is a huge frog.

While the frog population appears to be much smaller than it once was, one must still be careful walking in the backyard, because these guys are well-camouflaged and easy to not see and so step on.

It is an awful thing, to step on a frog.

I took this picture well after 10:00 PM, as I was riding my bike down Church Road. When I looked up and saw these clouds, I could feel the impending darkness. This may seem absurd to people in lower latitudes who have never seen the night sky look like this, but up here, many of us get this feelng the day after summer solstice:

The dark of winter, coming on.

Yesterday, I found fireweed in bloom. The blooms start with the bottom flowers and then progress upward as we move through summer. When the top flowers bloom, it is said that summer is over.

Summer is wonderful right now, and yet I can feel its end so strong.

The feeling is made all the worse by the fact that I have a great deal of production work to do this summer, and that work must all be done inside, at my computer.

I have long had this theory that I should not have any production work to do in the summer. Summers should be spent outdoors, shooting. Winters can be spent inside, producing.

Yet, somehow, I always lose a signficant portion of my summer to production.

Right now, I am producing work based primarily on images that I shot during the winter. So, except for a few fleeting moments, I am pretty much stuck inside this summer. Fish are running, animals moving and I am pretty much stuck inside, producing work built of the images of winter.

Everything is backwards of how it ought to be.

This must be the last such summer.

Next summer, I must be free to spend most of my time outdoors, shooting, living. No more of this summer production work!

An hour or so a day producing this blog would be okay, but that's it.

Next summer!

This one is already lost - mostly. I will still ride my bike most everyday that I am home. I might get in a short canoe trip, a hike, I might catch and cook a fish and next week I do plan a field trip north and at least part of that will be outdoor work.

But I should be able to be outdoors, everyday, most all the time.

Here I am, on my bike, late at night, corner of Seldon and Church. A light rain has fallen. The air smells sweet, and fresh. It is wonderfully cool against my skin.

I bike through a late night sunbeam, down by the Little Susitna River. My shadow follows.

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No car, computer going down at worst time - but that kid George has talent!

I am now in my third day without a car. Once again, Margie has gone off to town to help take care of Kalib and Jobe, this time because Jobe fell a little under the weather for awhile and Jake's job took him out of town. I am a person who likes to drive, but, whenever Margie has gone to town for a few days I have not really been bothered by the lack of a car.

I have my bicycle, and this time of year I bike every day, anyway.

So I just get on the bike and go.

When I get to Metro Cafe, that means I go inside instead of through the drive through. I suppose I could go through the drive-through and then drink my coffee as I pedal my bike, but I don't want to.

So I go inside. And once there I shoot serious, brilliant, studies like this one:

Looking out the Metro window from the inside, Study #3671: Claudia pays for her coffee with a credit card.

Within 8 minutes of posting this, I expect to receive a call from MOMA in New York, offering me $42 million if I will just let them hang a print of this in their hallway for three days. That ought to take care of a few problems I face, and allow me to blog full time and make my new electronic magazine.

Branson always wants to ride my bike, but he is too small for it. Today, Carmen told him to stay off it because he might scratch it. "This bike is already scratched up," he answered.

It's true, too.

Yet, today, I absolutely needed a motor vehicle. I had to take this computer to the shop and see if I could get it fixed. I have been working on layout and writing tasks lately, but now I must switch gears and get into photo processing for CMYK offset reproduction.

My computer has lost all its power and speed. When I am working in Lightroom and in Photoshop, It grinds to a near halt and the Mac color ball spins and spins and I just about go crazy waiting for it. And I will be working with large, high-resolution files - 100 mb each.

This morning, after drinking coffee and working through the night, I went to bed at 6:40 AM, then got up at 9:53, borrowed Caleb's truck and hauled my big, heavy, Mac Pro over to Machaus.

Then, after my afternoon coffee at Metro, I pedaled my bike back home, exchanged it for Caleb's truck once again and headed back toward Machaus.

I had to be there before six and I thought it would be no problem, but then I came upon this cop in the road, directing traffic because the stoplight was out. Maybe that lineman in the background above is trying to fix the problem.

The cop was not nearly so efficient as the light is, when it works, and after five minutes, I was still sitting there. He had sent the oncoming left-turn traffic through twice and everybody else at least once, without even letting us move. So I was worried that I would not get to Machaus until after 6:00, but I got there at 5:55, so it was okay.

Bruce at Machaus did find one thing that he fixed and it helped, but he did not charge because he had a feeling the overall problem was not yet fixed.

He was right. This computer is still dragging like crazy, especially when it comes to Lightroom and Photoshop. And I have over 300 images to prepare for offset. And if this computer malfunction costs me an average of 10 or fifteen minutes wasted time for each image - which, in fact, it is doing and sometimes more... well... make that times more than 300 and you see the problem that I am up against.

I do not know how I am going to deal with it.

It is time for a new computer, I think, but I don't have the money at the moment and even if I can find it soon, which I believe I can, rumor has it that Mac is about to release a brand new, top of the line, powerhouse computer with the pending Lion operating system and it would be stupid to buy a new computer just before that one comes out.

What do I do?

What can I do?

Nothing but slog through it, I think.

Day and night. Slog through it until its done.

All the time, wondering why I have to get stuck inside during the time of long light?

This is George Rasputkov, the aspiring young photographer, and I first met him when he was a boy and I would be out walking our now deceased dog, Willow. George was one of a group of children whose parents were immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Block and they all loved Willow.

"Willow!" they would shout when they saw us coming. Then they would come and pet Willow and wrap their arms around her and she loved it.

She was an attention hound, that dog.

Tonight I met him again as I was out pedaling my bike home from the Little Susitna River.

Now he is grown and he loves photography and wants to become professional.

He showed me a few of his pictures  on his LCD and his iPhone and he is good. He has the talent. I complimented him on what I saw. "I give the credit to God," he told me. He said he is Christian. I do not yet know the history that brought his family and so many others here from the old Soviet Block, but I think that has a lot to do with it.

Now we are Facebook friends, so, when I get the chance, which won't be until I get this project out of the way, I will give his work a good study. Surely, I will look at it right away, but study will have to come later.

Yet, generally speaking, it really only takes me a glance to determine whether or not I like a photograph. My first glance at George's work proved pretty positive.

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Kalib flicks dirt into Melanie's face - is he outgrowing the spatula phase? Branson graduates; Margie goes and I am left alone again

Melanie showed up late in the afternoon and gave Jim a pet as Kalib slyly observed.

This is the shoe Melanie wore on her left foot. The one she wore on her right foot looks pretty much the same, except that the toe tapers in the opposite direction.

When next I observed Melanie and Kalib, they had moved to the front yard. Kalib was busy observing something himself. What could it be?

It was ants. Fat, black, ants.

Not long afterward, I found them back in the back yard, a bit beyond the spot where Margie had placed the dinosaur boots that Kalib had muddied in the swamp the day before out to air dry after she had cleaned them.

But what are Kalib and Melanie up to in the background?

And what is that in Kalib's hands?

Oh - the thing that Kalib holds is a weed plucking tool. And right there in front of him is a dandelion, yet to bloom. Melanie is helping him shove the weed plucker beneath the dandelion so that he can yank it right out of the ground by the root.

Kalib yanks the dandelion from the earth and sends it and dirt flying straight into his Aunt Melanie. This turned into a big game - one that the two repeated time and time again, until all the new dandelion plants had been rooted out.

Even so, those dandelions will pop right back up again.

I view Kalib plucking out a dandelion from another angle.

Dandelion and dirt come flying right toward me.

As usual, Kalib brought his spatula to the house with him - but not once did I see him carry it or play with it. I only saw it sitting here, atop the classifieds on the coffee table.

Margie says she saw him play with it. She said he used to flip junk mail like pancakes. There, lying on the floor, you can see one of the pieces of junk mail that Margie saw Kalib flip.

Still, he basically left it alone.

It makes me wonder if he is outgrowing his spatula phase?

If so, the thought makes me a little sad.

It has to happen, sooner or later, though.

Later would be okay with me.

The original plan had been that Jacob, Lavina and Jobe would come out and pick Kalib up Sunday afternoon. Instead, Lavina called to say that Jobe was still sick and to ask if, instead, we could bring Kalib home and then leave Margie there to babysit Jobe for a day or two or a week or however long it would take until he was well enough to return to daycare.

Since Melanie had come, she drove Margie and Kalib back to town with her.

And once again, after just three days and nights together with Margie, I am left alone with the cats. Caleb is here, of course, but he works all night and sleeps all day, except for when he goes out to hit golf balls.

Now I back up to an earlier point in the day:

Branson Starheim, of Metro Cafe, just graduated from kindergarten Thursday night. I promised Carmen that if she brought him and his diploma to Metro Cafe I would take a photograph to commemorate this landmark achievement.

So she did and I took a pretty standard study of Branson and Carmen, posing with the diploma as Branson sat on his bike, but afterward I took this one of Carmen helping Branson don his crash helmet and I like it better.

Following the diploma photo session, Branson, the graduate, zooms past me on his bike. Branson calls me, "Uncle Bill."

Now - about that delayed Arctic Series that I had promised to run this week: I am going to! Starting tomorrow. It's just that I did not know that Kalib was going to spend the weekend with us. He did, and I had to post a few pics  for all of his many fans from Alaska to Arizona to India to see.

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