Lisa Kelly, Ice Road Trucker and driver of India's most dangerous road, pulls up to Metro Cafe on horseback - followed by CNN

In answer to Saturday's quiz, I was hanging out at Metro Cafe on Friday when I heard someone shout, "horses are coming!"

I stepped out the door and this is what I saw - five women on horseback, coming down the bike trail. One of them, the second one from the left, looked like a truck driver. In fact, she looked like a truck driver who I had seen but a few nights before, on TV, facing terror on a narrow, windy, highway twisting through the Himalaya Mountains in India.

I seldom watch much TV, but this show caught my eye, because I have experienced the deadly madness of the Indian highway - although never in the Himalayas - and also because the truck driver was a beautiful, petite, young woman by the name of Lisa Kelly who lives right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

In fact, what I did not know at the time is that she lives right here, in my own neighborhood.

She gained her fame as one of Alaska's Ice Road Truckers, which has evolved to encompass the Deadliest Roads of all the world.

Now here Lisa was, riding her horse down the bike trail that passes by Metro Cafe.

Would she turn in?

Would she pull her horse right up to the drive through window and order hot chocolate for herself and a biscuit for her horse?

Lisa Kelly did pull in! And here she is, waiting in line at the drive-through with her friends and horses while Nola delivers an order to the customer ahead of her.

Sure enough, the horse ordered a biscuit. "Do we have any horse biscuits?" Nola shouted, "There's a horse at my window who has just ordered a biscuit!"*

Nola found a biscuit and served it to Sky, the horse.

"Damn good!" the horse neighed, after devouring the biscuit. "Now give me that one, too!"** Nola did. The horses behind would also all get their biscuits.

Camera and production people working on contract for CNN were following Lisa. I don't know when, but CNN plan to do a little story in which they follow Lisa as she takes them to her favorite places in Wasilla.

One of those favorite places is Metro Cafe. Another is Fat Boy's Pizza, which sits in the opposite direction from my house.

I bought a pizza there on the day Fat Boy's opened. If Fat Boy's is now one of the favorite places of the famous ice road trucker, Lisa Kelly, they must have figured out how to do it.

Sometime after I get back from my next trip to the Arctic Slope, I will go back and give them another try.

"Wasilla is MY city," she tells the camera people here, "and Metro Cafe is one of my favorite places!"

If one is going to sip on hot chocolate at Metro Cafe, it is more pleasant to sit and sip inside, rather than outside, in the saddle, on horse back.

Lisa... I will not tell you to stay safe out on those roads you drive. That is impossible and would defeat the whole purpose of your adventures. But please, always, do come safely home.

Outside, I had chatted briefly with photographer David A. Van Amber of Mankato, Minnesota. When I asked him who he was working for, he answered, "I'm hers," and nodded toward Linda Kelly.

I inquired a little further, and learned that this meant he was her photographer only, and that she is married.

Inside Metro, in what appeared to be an inside joke, he touched her on the shoulder and then they broke laughing.

Lisa autographs a baseball cap for David.

The cameraman depicts hard-working barista and writer in the making, Shoshana, making a smoothie.

When not out on the ice roads or the Himalayan highways, Lisa says she drops into Metro Cafe about three times a week. Hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls are her favorite.

She likes to come to Metro, she says, because, "sometimes you just want to go to a place where everybody knows your name."

When she said that, for some reason, I began to hear the theme song from Cheers in my head.

And it was a fact - every single person in Metro Cafe knew Lisa Kelly by name.

Lisa and Carmen.

Scott's dad is a truck driver and he drives Kenworth - the same kind of rig that Lisa drives. When he learned that she was a regular at Metro, he asked Scott to be sure to get a photo of Lisa with Carmen and him and send to him.

So, Scott's dad, this is for you.

My printer is broken and I am about to leave to the Far North for a couple of weeks or so, so it will be awhile before I can make a print.

Then I went back outside and to create one of my famous "Through the Metro window" studies with Lisa, Carmen, Scott, Nola and the crew that recorded her visit for CNN. I am afraid I did not get everybody's name, but the fellow at right is Russell J. Weston, of Weston Productions out of Anchorage, who contracted with CNN.

It had been decades since I had last seen him, but I first met him nearly 30 years ago when he was working as a photographer for the Anchorage Times and my family and I were living in two small tents, which we pitched here and there, trying to find a way to survive in Alaska.

There were three newspapers in Anchorage then and so whenever we would run out of money to buy gas for the Volkswagen Rabbit that had transported us from Arizona to Alaska, or food, I would stop in at the different papers.

If they had any extra assignments that staff had been unable to fill, I would take them and then they would pay me $25.00 per published shot.

That's how I met Russell, who is now an independent "An Emmy Award Winner" producer.

He gave his card and it says so right on it.

So here you have it:

Through the Metro Window Study, #3,444,899.23: With Lisa Kelly and CNN

And here is Scott.

Regular readers will recall the post when, after learning that he had cancer, Scott told me that in building Metro Cafe, he had created a stage for Carmen, that it was she who worked the magic that brought the stage and the plays that unfold therein to life.

On this day, another such play had unfolded on the stage that Scott had built for his beautiful and vivacious wife, Carmen.

So here is Scott, alongside the stage that he built.

As for Carmen, when I returned to the drive-through window at 4:00 PM for my regular, we talked a bit about the flurry of activity from earlier in the day.

"It will be very good for Metro Cafe," I assured her.

She remembered when Scott and she had opened the cafe, how much fun it had been and that now, what she wants, more than anything, more than publicity and success in business, is for Scott to get well.

That's it. She wants Scott to be well.

*Sometimes, when a quote cannot be precisely remembered, it must be made up. I am not saying that this is the case here, only that sometimes it happens.

**This is a definite, definite, quote, not made up at all. These are the very words that Sky the horse spoke.

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Finally, I get to see Shoshana again - the Chugach Mountains and the beauty that surrounds us here in Wasilla; kid on four-wheeler in the same place

There is a certain bond between Shoshana and me, and I had not seen her for a full week. I think the bond exists in part because she is a young writer with natural talent who stands right at the threshold of the possibilities before her and I am one with the larger part of my career behind me, but still going, still driving, with many things to do yet.

So, even though our entire contact in life takes place entirely through this window, or, occasionally, across the counter inside, on the average of three or four times a week, if I am not traveling, for total of maybe ten minutes a week, if that much, that is enough time for us to give each other encouragement and we do.

Plus, there are people whom you meet that you just connect with and for me, Shoshana is such a person.

BUT - Shoshana is on a new schedule. On the days that she does not go to school, she comes in early in the morning and she leaves somewhere around 1:30 or 2:00 PM - well before I come in to get my cup at 4:00 PM.

So I had not seen her all week, and I had missed her. "Shoshana misses seeing you!" Carmen* told me Friday. "Saturday she works until 2:45. Promise me that you will come before that, so she can see you."

It would throw my schedule off a bit, but schedules are one thing - friendships are another. And I wanted to see her. On Saturday, I pulled up to the Metro window at about 2:30. When she spotted me, Shoshana began to jump up and down, waving, shouting out in a glad voice and Carmen did, too. The customer in the background seemed very amused by it all.

We were happy to see each other. It felt good to be greeted like that.

See you next Saturday, Shoshana. Same time, same place.

And keep writing, talented young friend.

So I headed home, sipping the Americano that Shoshana had prepared for me, listening to Garrison Keillor, since it was too early for the news.

On the last leg of the drive, I came down Seldon, toward where the Chugach Mountains tumble off to the east.

My normal practice would just be to shoot a few frames through the window as I drove on, listening to the news. But the news was not on. So I stopped, got out of the car, put the 100-400 zoom on my camera and shot a few frames.

Over the past couple of years, I have often heard or read disparaging things about the little community in which I live. I have traveled Outside and have had many people cast judgment upon me, just because I live in Wasilla.

But... my friends... this is what living in Wasilla means to me.

Whatever absurdities may sometimes happen down in this valley, however mocking of the land much of the development might be, we are still surrounded by beauty here - 100 percent of the time. It is always there. Day and night. Beauty! It never goes away. We know it, we feel it.

And when you go beyond the beauty that your eye can see from here, guess what you find?

Alaska. More and more of Alaska, reaching out, stretching ever further beyond in all its wild magnificence. More often than not, it is very difficult to get to and get into, but every inch of it is beautiful to the most exquisite degree.

Even when we can't see it, we feel it.

So take that, Maureen Dowd!

I have been to your New York City and I love it, cherish it, find wonder and amazement in it and the pretzels there were once the best in the world, but you will never find anything like this in New York City.

No, no, no! Nothing at all!

It does not exist there.

But it exists here.

In Wasilla, Alaska.

I still needed to listen to the 4:00 o'clock news - All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, but I had already drunk my coffee.

"Well," Margie said, "we could go get some lunch and sit in the car and eat it and listen to the news."

So we did, I heard the news. For the most part, it was not good. I still enjoyed it.

On the way home, as we came down Seldon, right at the very place where I had taken the pictures of the Chugach, I saw this kid on this small-wheeled four-wheeler.

*As should be clear to all regular readers, I also share a bond with Carmen and when I do not find her at Metro, I miss seeing her, too.

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Looking for Lisa on the Rachel Maddow show; iPhoning it with Carmen, Scott and Shoshana at the Metro Cafe

The day before yesterday, I answered my iPhone to hear the very excited voice of my daughter, Lisa, whom I have not seen since before I left for Kaktovik at the beginning of the month. "Dad!" she exclaimed. "Did you know that Rachel Maddow is going to be doing her show in Anchorage tomorrow?"

It was the first that I had heard - although right after the call ended, I saw it plastered all over the Alaska blogosphere.

Only 200 tickets would be given out, first come, first serve, and Lisa had put in her name. If she was successful, she would get two tickets only.

So it was agreed that if she got the two tickets, her mom would drive into town and go with her.

Sadly, Lisa was not successful.

Happily, Charlie's mom was and she invited Lisa to go with her.

Trouble was, Lisa's car is out of commission. She had no transportation. So her mom volunteered to go into town, pick her up and take her to the Taproot Cafe in Anchorage, where Maddow would be doing the show live.

This meant that I would have no car in the afternoon, which was fine by me, because I would have my bike and I needed to do some bike-riding.

Still, I wanted to venture out in the car at least once that day, so Margie and I drove to Arby's for a sandwich.

Here we are, in the car, along the way, at the corner of Lucille and Seldon, where I have stopped at the sign until this vehicle passes by.

At about the same time that I would normally have gotten into the car to drive to Metro, I plugged the headset into my iPhone, tuned the radio to KSKA, put on my helmet, climbed onto my bike and pedaled to Metro.

In some ways, it was a horrifying pedal. I had not ridden my bike since before I left for Kaktovik and I have not even been taking any good walks. I have had no exercise to speak of all month long and I felt it - in my lungs, in my muscles.

Still, I pedaled resolutely on and soon I was in Metro, where I found Shoshana and Carmen in Halloween dress.

I cannot find my pocket camera, which I think might be under the bed somewhere, I did not want to carry my 5d II, so, again, the only camera that I had was my iPhone and the lens was extra smudged.

That's okay, because when you shoot pictures with a cell phone, you do not look for technical perfection. You look to see if you can capture some kind of feeling, even through the smudge and motion blur and if you do, that is good enough.

So here is Shoshana, photographed through my smudged iPhone. I get a good feeling when I look at the picture - just as I always do when I pull up to the Metro drive-through window and see Shoshana smiling, ready to take my order.

She is just the kind of person who gives one a good feeling.

Carmen, with Scott in the background, as seen in the mirror. In this blurry image, I get the feeling of energy, vivaciousness, friendly warmth and slightly devilish mischievousness that Carmen always brings to Metro Cafe. Although he occupies but a small part of the frame, I feel the absolute, determined, doggedness of Scott as he battles to defeat his horrid cancer.

I believe this is one of Scott's brothers, washing the Metro windows. Scott sat down with me and we talked for a long time - not much about cancer, but about other things, about America, Alaska, where we are, how we got here, what the future looks like.

It would all be worth expounding upon one day.

Afterwards, I pedaled home upon pavement coated with a thin layer of splotchy, frost ice. I wondered what would happen if the bike slid out from beneath me and I came down upon my artificial shoulder.

I did not really believe there was much chance of that happening, but soon, if I keep riding my bike, the chance will be fairly high. In the past, when this would happen, it was never a big deal, because you slid on ice, went down on ice and slid across ice - but now...

I had no cover on my ears. They got a little cold.

The Rachel Maddow show was nearing its end when I arrived home. I scanned the crowd, looking for Lisa.

I could not find her. As it turns out, when Margie picked her up at work she forgot her driver's license, left it behind and so was barred from entering the Taproot Cafe. Lisa did not get to be part of the crowd. To help make up for it, she plans to go do some volunteer work for Scott McAdams.

Later in the evening, I watched the repeat of the Maddow show. What I saw was Alaska, bursting with energy across the political spectrum, some of it rational, some of it irrational and a great mystery to me, given what has been made so obvious - all of it passionate and heartfelt. It looked like yesterday would have been a fun day to have been in Anchorage. 

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My final day in Utah - Julie and her family, minus the chipmunk; surprise birthday dinner with a silent Bacon scream; back in Wasilla - Carmen's new do; Mahoney horses

This is Matthew Oliphant, youngest son of the very first niece that ever came to me, Julie, and her husband Kerry. We have not spent a great deal of time together but, my favorite memory of him comes from the time period after Mom died. He was very small then and I took a picture of him eating a chocolate chip cookie. It was part of a batch that his mom and brothers and sister had made and brought over for Dad and those of us who were hanging out to mourn with him.

As the rest of us visited, Matthew kept eating those cookies and by the time they left, the cookies were all gone. It's possible his brothers and sister might have helped a bit, but Matthew was the real Cookie Monster.

I didn't see him with a cookie on this trip, but I have a feeling that he is still a cookie monster.

Julie is the daughter of my brother, Mac, Rex's tall twin. Mac got his tall genes from Dad, whereas his twin and the rest of us all got Mom's short genes. Mac grew to be 6'4", Rex 5'7".

The tall genes were passed down to Julie, who also married a very tall man. All of their children are very tall and whatever age they are, they are taller even then their grandpa Mac was at the same. Six foot is nothing to them at all. Even in junior high years, six-footers have always stood short beside them.

Matthew is only seven, but he already stands eight foot, nine-and-three-quarter inches tall.

Well... maybe I exaggerate a little bit... but give him a couple of years.

It takes a lot of cookies to fuel such growth, but Matthew is up to the task.

That's Kerry off to the side and the nine-year old hefting the two-by-fours is Charlie. 

And this is Chase - Chaseninja. Now, the thing is, I may be the short one, but I am still the toughest member of the entire family and everybody knows it.

Well... maybe I boast a little too quickly. At nine, Charlie weighs in at 156 pounds and plays tackle on his Pee Wee football team. If you doubt that he hits hard, notice the abrasions on his forehead. He wears a helmet, alright, but when he hits someone he practically shoves his head right through that helmet and right through his opponent.

That's what those abrasions are from - the impact of his forehead against the inside of his helmet.

And yet, tough as he is, when his mom mentioned that a neighbor had some kittens, he lifted his hands to the praying position and began to plead that she let him adopt one. I was a little slow and caught the moment just a second too late, after he noticed the camera lens was upon him.

The family, minus daughter Riley, in the backyard. Riley had been to the dentist and, as I noted earlier, felt like a chipmunk and refused to be photographed.

Next time.

Julie and Chase.

In the evening, just before I drove to the airport, turned in the rental car and boarded the jet back to Anchorage, I had dinner with Ada Lakshmi, Rex, Tom and all the children of Mary Ann except for the one who had gotten married the day before, plus their husbands and boyfriend. We ate at Thai Gardens, just blocks from the house where Mary Ann and Greg live. The wedding and all its preparations had exhausted Mary Ann, and so she and Greg had stayed home with the two dogs.

As to the son who had gotten married and his bride, nobody had seen either, all day long, even though they were not scheduled to leave for their honeymoon in Vermont until the next day.

I did not get to say goodbye to them.

Tom's children who had not just married planned the dinner as a surprise birthday party for their father. He was completely surprised, especially since his birthday is in September. His children had not been able to be with him then, so they celebrated it now.

As you can see, Tom is now four years old. Either that, or each candle represents 15 years.

Eric, Amber's adventurous, mountain-climbing boyfriend.

And then I found myself in Wasilla, once again, and totally exhausted once again.

In the afternoon, I went to Metro Cafe at the usual time and found Carmen at the drive-through window. She had done some fancy things to her hair and wondered if I would notice.

Of course I noticed.

Carmen's beautiful new hairdo, from the back.

Scott was there, working, too. His cancer battle has been rough, with radiation and chemo subjecting him to ordeals the description of which make me cringe and I will not pass them on here. But he is a fighter, determined to win this battle.

We talked a bit about our separate wanderings into the same places on the Arctic Slope. We thought it might be good to one day write up some of our stories, side by side.

Shoshana came to the window to say "hi, stranger," so of course I photographed her, too. She is not there on Mondays and Wednesdays, as she has class those days.

After I left Metro, I did the old drive, down past the Mahoney Ranch and the Mahoney horses. I don't know why it hasn't snowed here, yet. I hope it does, soon. I saw some footage from the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in Fairbanks and there is snow there and of course there has been snow on the Arctic Slope for awhile now.

Some may wonder why I am not at AFN and why I was not at the Alaska Tribal Leaders Summit and the Youth and Elders conference that immediately preceded the convention. I have been going nonstop for months, traveling here, traveling there. I am exhausted. And I can't afford either the time or the expense to have spent this week in Fairbanks.

So I am here in Wasilla. I plan to stay put for a couple of weeks, if I can get away with it.

I have not seen Kalib, Jobe or any of my children except for Caleb yet, but I am going into Anchorage this afternoon, so maybe I will. If I do, then readers will, too.

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On a day that I am too lazy and sleepy to even blog, someone gives me a gift to keep me awake

I always feel exhausted when I return from a trip. I thought today it might be different, as I had been gone for such a short time, only from Friday afternoon until this morning about 12:30 AM.

But no, all day I have felt lazy and listless. Sleepy. So much so that I decided that even the most simple blog entry would require an effort that I was not up to.

I did, however, make the effort to drive Metro Cafe at the usual time.

There, I found Shoshana at the window, informing me that I had a free Americano and pastry waiting for me.

It had been paid for by a woman who drove up Friday, told them that she liked this blog and then bought this gift for me. She did not identify herself.

So now I am alert just enough to make this simple entry.

Thank you, anonymous reader!

Carmen was there with her red-headed friend, Amanda, who she used to work with at Northern Air Cargo.

So they posed for Through the Window Metro Study, #6201.22222229: Carmen and Her Red-Headed Friend.

Not long after I drove away enjoying the gift, I came upon this fall cat. I could tell that it is an excellent cat, so I took this picture and now I am going to put it up as the wallpaper for this monitor.

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