My fairweather biking friend; off to a glacier to cook ice worms; cat on a stump

With the good weather that we have had lately, I've been out everyday at coffee break time riding bikes with Mr. Shadow.

He is good company, Mr. Shadow - but only in fair weather.

When the weather is bad, he tends to desert me.

Mr. Shadow: my fair weather friend.

So I bike to Metro Cafe and there I find short Carmen, being hugged by tall Sarah. Tall Sarah has come to say goodbye, because she is leaving for Skagway, where she will spend the summer on a glacier, cooking for people on tour.

She didn't say, but I believe Sarah will be cooking ice worms for her guests. Ice worms crawl around on the glaciers by the multi-millions. A cook can just step outside the cook tent, scoop them up, throw them into the vat and boil them up.

Put them in tomato sauce and they look just like spaghetti. So I think is what Sarah will do. She will cook the iceworms and then tell the guests that it is glacier spaghetti.

"Hey!" one of her guests will invariably shout, "This is the strangest damn spaghetti I have ever tasted! Tastes like worms!"

"Eat your damn spaghetti and quit whining!" Sarah will shout back.

The guest will eat it, too, but will mumble to himself, all the way through.

Back home, I hang out with Jim.

It seems odd to me that some people probably look at him and see just another cat. 

I look at Jim and see a friend. A close, close, friend who hangs out with me every day, from morning until night and then through the night - unless I am traveling of course.

Margie reports that he can hardly bear it when I am traveling.

When I return, he goes a bit insane. He jumps onto me, clambers all over me, jumps off, jumps on, clambers, jumps off... maybe 50 or 60 times.

Unlike Shadow, Jim is not a fair weather friend. He is an all weather friend.

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On Soundarya's birthday, cake was cut on three continents, there were animals: small, big, newborn, passed on and symbolized

Manoj, fiance and more to Sujitha Ravichandran, Soundarya's younger sister, put out a request for Sandyz birthday that we who loved her should celebrate with cake for us and her. Although I had put up my birthday remembrance on the 12th, so that her family and friends in India could see it early on her birthday of April 13, I waited until the morning of the 13th here to begin our celebration.

Margie then mixed up a cake and put it in the oven, to bake for Soundarya. As it baked, I went walking. I came upon a frozen puddle that held this face - or faces. One can clearly see the ears and face of a cat, its chin resting atop its front paws. Yet, look closely and you will see that within the face of the cat there is a human face as well.

One of those little odd things that happens in nature, and on a day such as this.

Cats played an enormous role between Sandy and me. A gigantic role. I have been told from multiple good authorities that cats are very rare in India, but for Sandy and me, they were ubiquitous; they were everywhere.

As I walked in the morning of the 13th, her birthday, it was late night of her birthday in India. So I placed a Skype call over the local AT&T 3g network to Sujitha in Bangalore. It was an exquisitely beautiful morning - the sky clear and blue, the snow on the mountains bright against it, the clean, frosted air wonderfully chilled and pleasant.

So I tried to describe what I was seeing and experiencing to Niece Suji, which is very different than anything she would ever see in Bangalore.

It seemed to me that my description was inadequate. I wanted her to somehow sense and feel it herself. Suddenly, it struck me - I could break the ice of a puddle with my foot and let her hear the sound of the ice cracking and crunching beneath my shoe.

I stopped, held the phone near to the puddle and then crunched it repeatedly with my foot.

Sujitha, I am pleased to say, was pleased.

After Margie baked and frosted the cake, she cut it into three pieces - one for me, one for her and one for Soundarya. Jim observed. That's Margie's thumb, there at the edge of the plate.

I was a little unsure as to what to do with Sandy's piece of cake. I could eat it myself, but that didn't feel right. "Why don't you take it out back and leave it for her where we have buried the cats and dogs?" Margie suggested.

So I took Soundarya's plate to the back door and then opened it. Jim shot out ahead of me and led me across the grass in the direction of our pet cemetery, but stopped short of entering there himself.

Although she never met them, Sandy knew my cats - both the living and the dead. She knew Royce and sent me words of comfort after his death - just about one year ago. So I put her piece of cake at the head of his grave. I then looked through the trees into the clear blue sky and spoke a few words to her.

There was nothing more to do after that, so I stepped out of the cemetery. I found Jim waiting for me on this stump, right at the cemetery edge.

Manoj, "Manu" - posted these pictures on a special web page set up by Sandy's cousins to commemorate her birthday. He took them at his celebration in London, where he is looking for work. Sandy's brother, Ganesh, also told of his cake in Pune - and of course there those in Bangalore had their own cake.

So on her birthday, Soundarya... Sandy... Sound... Soundu... Muse... was remembered on at least three continents. 

Not long after I pedaled my bike to Metro Cafe, Kristine from almost next door showed up with a bagful of puppies - born at 2:00 AM, 14 hours earlier. 

It was a nice touch to add to Sandy's birthday... and not the last one, either...

In the evening of Sandy's birthday, this young bull moose came to our house. I was sitting on the couch when I saw him trot through the backyard, so I grabbed a camera and followed him. He stopped in the low growth that lies just beyond the pet cemetery and there allowed me to take this portrait.

So, Soundarya - this moose is for you. This is your birthday moose. I hope you like him.

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Cat on screen, cat on desk - big day for blog leaves me discouraged but not defeated; four studies of the tiny hockey player

In terms of numbers of visitors, yesterday was a pretty good day for this blog - and that kind of discouraged me a bit - it kind of made me feel like this whole blogging effort touches on futility. I must assure you that this is in no way a signal that I am going to retreat or quit blogging. No - I aim to go bull-headedly forward just as I have been. But still, yesterday was a mighty discouraging day for me as a blogger.

Saturdays tend to be my lowest visitor days of the week. Typically, on Saturdays, my readership drops off by more than 30 percent. But yesterday, Saturday, my readership soared to about three times the weekday average - somewhere between four and five times the usual Saturday average.

How could this be discouraging?

It happened because of one thing - these three words in my headline: "Sarah Palin's buick."

Actually, the word, "buick" was but a small part of it. It could have read, "Sarah Palin's dog... Sarah Palin's frog... Sarah Palin's duck... Sarah Palin's mop... Sarah Palin's oatmeal... ... etc. etc." The result would have been the same.

Oh well. Life is what it is, I am what I am, and will continue on as I have been until I find the time and means to do as I want and then I will all but ignore Sarah Palin, except as a teaser now and then to see if her name will still draw hordes of extra readers into my blog.

One good thing about this life is cats. Yesterday, I entered my office to find that my slideshow screen saver had been activated. Melanie's Diamond was on the screen and Pistol-Yero sat by the keyboard. When he visits, Kalib loves to watch all these grand cats scroll across my screen when I step away from my computer.

Also, please note the little contraptions sitting on my desk to the left. What you see is docks and harddrives. I can move harddrives in and out of those docks at will. I have more harddrives in the computer, and more harddrives stuck in old-fashioned enclosures lying here and there.

The three you see here are eacg two terabyte harddrives. There are several more 2 TB's sitting in a drawer beneath my computer.

A while back, I had an extremely bad hard drive nightmare and one of my good-hearted readers suggested that I pick up one of those little plastic-encased harddrives that can hold a terabyte and thus solve my information management problem.

I got a good chuckle out of that one - although I definitely appreciated the thought and concern.

I have a number of those little plastic hard drives. They are what I take into the field.

I shoot a lot, you see, and I shoot high resolution files RAW. I don't throw any images away, not even the blurry ones. It would take too much time. Plus, I have discovered that I can pick up a take a year or 20 after I first shot it and find that some of the images that I rejected are actually better than the ones I used.

I go through harddrive space like you would not believe. Tomorrow, I plan to buy two more two terabyte harddrives, but I really need to buy four or five more, if I could only afford to.

Yesterday, when I pulled into the Metro Cafe drive-through, it was Branson, the tiny hockey player, who came to greet me. He wanted to pose for a study. So here it is:

Study of the tiny hockey player, #242: Branson wears his Metro baseball cap as the young writer, Shoshana, prepares coffee in the background.

Then Branson decided that he wanted to do a study without his cap, so he took it off. His mom hurried right over to touch up his hair for the picture. So here it is:

Study of the tiny hockey player, #237: Carmen makes Brandon's hair look nice.

Study of the tiny hockey player, #239: Carmen admires the hair of her tiny hockey player.

Study of the tiny hockey player, #241: His hair looking good, Branson poses for Study #1.

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Branson, Metro Cafe's 38 pound hockey player, knows how to score and celebrate; cat and baby at the door

Not long before I headed off on one of my Arctic Slope trips last fall, I promised Carmen that I would take some pictures of Branson, her five-year old son, doing some hockey stuff. Well, you know what happens to time. His regular season ended and now he is attending a hocky camp at the Mernard Sports Center.

He had sessions schedule for Saturday and Sunday afternoons and then one more on Wednesday. I was pretty sure I would not be able to make the Sunday session, couldn't say about Wednesday and so I decided that I had better go Saturday. I arrived with a little more than one-half hour of the session left.

Here he is: Branson, the 38-pound, five-year old, hockey player.

Branson was, in fact, the smallest person on the ice. And he was competing against some older and bigger boys - six and seven year olds who have been playing for years.

But you can see - Branson was skating hard.

Branson and competitor go after puck.

Who will get it?

They are fighting hard, now.

Now they are in front of the goal, Branson on offense, his competitor on defense determined to stop him.

Branson belts the puck past the defender.

The defender knocks Branson to the ice, but it doesn't matter: the puck he slammed is shooting right between the feet of the goalie and into the net.

Branson skates away from his successful goal shot in celebration.

Pretty soon, he does it again... and then again after that. 

He raises his puck in victory, but now he is also searching the bleachers for a familiar face. Could it be Mom? Is she there? Will he find her? Did she notice?

She is there and he does find her and she did notice.

After the scrimmage ends an adult skates by. "Congratulations on your goal," he tells Branson.

Branson, the hockey player.

Branson with his friends, Colin and Caroline. They do not play hockey. They play soccer ("football" to all my relatives and friends in India and the rest of the world).

Carmen is pretty proud. 

After I returned home, I came here into my office and went to work. I had not been working long before I heard a knock on the door.

Puzzled, I got up and opened it. Who do you think I saw standing on the other side?

It was Jim, my good black cat. "C'mon on in, Jim!" I invited. He entered and soon walked across my keyboard as I was typing.

Then I heard another knock. Again I got up and opened the door.

This time it was Jobe, who had just driven his mother and older brother out from Anchorage.

Jobe came in. Jim decided it was time to leave, jumped off my keyboard and walked to the door.

And this from India:

Feral street dog at Ooty tea farm.

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Paralysis

Ever have a day when you feel so weary and drained that you wonder how you can possibly carry on? Today is such a day for me. I won't bother to explain... I lack the energy. Anyway, I took this picture last night as I was working on Kivgiq, just before I hit the wall.

As both he and Jim so often do, Pistol plopped himself right down in a spot that made it difficult for me to use my mouse.

After I hit the wall, I did not want to just stop, because I have so many things I am trying to do, so I shifted my attention to another project, thinking that in this way I might keep accomplishing something, one way or another. So I did a search of my computer, looking for a certain picture that I hoped was still in it or on one of the hard drives currently plugged in.

It was not, but a bunch of pictures that I was not looking for popped up, including this one of Jim standing atop my monitor back when I had a monitor that a cat could actually stand on top of.

There are multiple big personal stories in this picture, some of which I have hinted at but never told in full. I actually just now got carried away and wrote one of them out in some detail, but thought better of it, cut it out, saved it as a word file and will return to it one day in the future through this or another outlet.

Now I think I will take a long walk and see if I can start putting myself back together. I've got too much to do to let myself be paralyzed like this.

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