Time forces this blog back into Wasilla, but it will return to Cross Island tomorrow and will romp with polar bears

After spending too many hours* working on what I had planned to be today's Cross Island post, I realized that it would still take me a couple of hours more to finish it. So I stopped, put it off until tomorrow and then quickly pulled these three Wasilla pictures off my pocket camera.

I was having great fun - because it is fun to wander among polar bears on your screen when you know that they can't hurt you, but, really, I can't afford to spend that much time working on this blog in a single day, especially when I did so just the day before, and the day before that as well, so I decided to spread the work on the polar bear entry out over two days.

So here I am in Wasilla in my car a couple of days back, before I drove to Nikiski.

I am on Church Road. I have been directed into the left lane and a flag lady up ahead is ordering me to drive slow.

Judging from the stain on the road, it would appear that someone crashed here recently, although this had nothing to do with that but rather with road repair.

And this was Sunday morning, after I had returned from Nikiski late the night before. Whenever I come back from a trip, I always try to take Margie to breakfast the next morning. True - this had been a very short trip of just one night, but tradition is tradition.

Regular readers know that Margie and I have been on a strange routine, lately. When I am home, I pick her up from babysitting Jobe in Anchorage on Thursday nights, then take her back Monday morning.

I was so tired this Monday that Margie volunteered to drive herself to Anchorage and said that I could just stay home, sleep in and use my bicycle that day.

Oddly enough, I found that I greatly enjoyed not having a car but only a bicycle.

So we did the same thing today. 

I think we will do it tomorrow, too.

The only problem is, I bought a new plecostomus to eat the algae that is taking over one of my acquariums, as the pleco who used to live there died, but I couldn't bring it home. They said they would be open until 7:00, but Margie didn't get back home until about 7:30. 

And here I am, at Metro Cafe, after pedaling over on my bike.

That's Jason Starheim in the photo with Carmen. Jason is her nephew through one of Scott's brothers.

Scott is fighting hard, staying as busy and active as he can as he battles his horrible cancer. Jason has come to help out around the cafe.

Tomorrow, I will return this blog to Cross Island and will drop you into the midst of polar bears. It will be fun. You will enjoy it.

*Note: I actually created this entry last night. Before I went to bed, I set it to publish for 7:00 AM this morning. I'm afraid that in Squarespace my blog hosts have created a trouble-plagued platform filled with many inefficiencies and time wasting features where anything can go wrong at any time and today Squarespace did not publish as scheduled. I just discovered it, and am about to manually post it.

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On the day of his dad's first Chemo, Branson brandishes a hockey stick; Metro Cafe is one year old; moose, dog - truck for sale on trail

When I turned off Lucille Street into the drive-through lane of Metro Cafe, I saw a tiny, heavily- bundled and padded figure run across the parking lot on the blade protectors of his hockey skates. It was five-year old Branson, who then posed for Through the Metro Window Study, #2081. True, he was outside the window, but I could still see through it to the customers behind.

Branson's father Scott had just undergone his first chemo treatment as part of his fight against the colon cancer that he is determined to beat. Today, Branson will attend his first day of kindergarten. While he is trying to prepare himself early, his first official hockey practice will not happen until late September.

I had not seen Carmen since before I left for Barrow, but she was here when I pulled in and so she came to join in with Branson. She let me know that today also marks the first anniversary of Metro Cafe's opening. She pondered all that has happened in that short year, from the family efforts to create a new kind of place in Wasilla to Scott coming down with cancer to Branson now entering kindergarten.

It has been quite a year for Carmen, Scott, Branson and Metro Cafe.

And on top of all this, Alaska buried Senator Ted Stevens yesterday.

As I drove home the long way, sipping my Metro order, this moose crossed the road in front of me. See how summer's colors have begun to give way to fall's?

Very soon, the colors will all be fall. And then, once again, it will be white... I hope. The weather just keeps getting stranger and stranger and that which we could once take for granted can no longer be counted on.

I had not walked down this way in a long time, but now I did. Tequila greeted me just as she always did in the past - barking, growling, acting tough, but I knew better. She didn't scare me.

This is one of those situations that my daughters would derisively describe with the phrase, "That's so Wasilla!" As you can see, this truck is parked across the trail that borders Seldon Street, with a "For Sale" sign on it. Another sign faces the road, so that those driving by can see it. 

This is a busy trail, used by many. Pedestrians use it, adults and children pedaling bicycles, mothers and fathers pushing baby strollers, people on four-wheelers.

It is a very busy trail, but what the hell. Someone wants to sell a truck.

So, if perchance you are looking for a truck and you are interested in this one, here is the price and phone number. Give a call, make the deal, take the truck. You will be doing many trail users a favor.

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Aarigaa - a good place to warm up after a cold football game; Dustinn is now back in Arizona

Not only was the air at the football game very cool and moist with the occasional raindrop flying through it, but the wind was stiff, strong and steady. I wasn't dressed warm enough and was thoroughly chilled pretty by the end of it.

So I went to Aarigaa Java to get a beverage that would warm me.

This isn't that picture, though. This is from yesterday, when Dustinn took me there, where we found Thelma, always ready, at 40 above or 40 below to keep her good customers from Barrow warm and awake.

And this is where I said goodbye to Dustinn - in front of Roy Ahmaogak's bungalow, where I am staying. Dustinn wanted a picture of him with the Ilisagvik College van that he used to drive his Media Camp students around.

Here it is Dustinn.

Here is Thelma again, today, handing me a warmup after the football game. I am not in a vehicle but on foot.

This is all I am going to post today. Perhaps by Sunday morning or hopefully early afternoon at the latest, I can get a post up on today's season opener for the Barrow Whalers football team.

For now, I won't say who won or lost. If you are from Barrow or any Slope village, you already know. If you don't know, I might as well keep you in suspense until I can show you a few scenes from the game.

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Five cyclists from Kentucky pedal onto the stage that Scot built for his wife, Carmen - Metro Cafe; the huge challenge Scot and Carmen now face

When it comes to Metro Cafe and the couple who created it, it is mostly Carmen who appears in this blog. Her husband Scot gets in now and then, but Carmen is the public face of Metro and it is her face with its bright and exuberant smile that tends to appear in front of my camera and then wind up here. On the day that I took this picture, sometime last winter, I was inside the cafe, visiting with Scot and I told him what a remarkable thing he had brought to us when he designed and built Metro. 

For those fortunate enough to have taken the time to stop in, this little coffee shop has given a whole new feeling to this neighborhood. It has created options to relax and enjoy that never existed here before. On a cold day, it is a warm place where people gather - warm not only in temperature but atmosphere and spirit. In my opinion, the coffee is the best to be found in Wasilla; Children come here for smoothies and Kalib really likes the hot chocolate. It is a place for old people, teens, young adults, conservatives, liberals. It doesn't matter. Carmen wraps her warmth around all who enter. She causes all to feel that they are special to her and that this place that belongs to her and Scot is theirs, too.

Metro is a pleasant place for us all. There has never before been anything like it in all of Wasilla. This is what I told Scot that day.

"I see Metro Cafe as a stage," Scot answered. "All I did was build the stage. It is Carmen who directs the show. She is the one who gives it spirit and brings it to life."

Take a close look at Scot's face, and then come back and look at it again after you finish reading this post. News of great import had just come into his life, into Carmen's life - the life they share together, the life they share with their five-year old son, Branson.

Late yesterday morning, this three-year old girl, Robin Harrison, pedaled into the Metro parking lot from Kentucky. She entered the stage that Scot had built and ordered a hot chocolate from Carmen. Yes, you read right - she pedaled in from Kentucky. I am not making this up. It is true.

On August 1 of last year, she pedaled away from her home in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky, headed south to the tip of Florida, turned north again and continued on in a 7,000 mile bike ride that took her across the south, through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon and on to Seattle, Washington. From there, she put her bike on a series of ferry boat rides up to Prince Rupert, BC, Juneau and then to Whittier, from where she had so far pedalled on to Wasilla but still had more than 300 miles left to go.

I asked her how it had been for her, a little girl, to ride a bike all that long way?

"I'm not a little one!" she shouted in feisty indignation. Well, she looked kind of small to me, but how could I argue, given what she had done?

I pressed on. How had she liked her bicycle journey?

"Good!" she shouted. What she had liked best? "I like riding the ponies!"

Readers probably suspect by now that Robin had not pedaled all this distance alone. This is correct. That's her seven-year old sister, Cheyenne, sitting across the table from her. Cheyenne had pedaled with her. I asked Cheyenne what had been her favorite part of the trip.

"I liked riding the horses," she agreed with her younger sister. So far, they had had two horse-riding excursions - one in Tennessee and the other in Texas. Since entering Alaska, the sisters had also seen a moose, eagles and bears.

Could two girls of such young age really have made such a journey alone?

I must confess... no, they did not pedal alone...

Their five year old sister, Jasmine, pedaled with them. And what had been Jasmine's most memorable experience thus far?

"The sea horses," she answered. "I loved the sea horses. All the colors, the texture..."

These they saw when they stopped at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California.

Okay... the girls' parents came with them and they all rode on one bike, a five-seater. Here they are, all together with their bike and with Carmen, Scot and Metro Cafe. That's their dad, Bill, on the left, and their mom, Amarins, on the right.

The family name may be Harrison, but on this trip they call themselves the Pedouins, which, they explain on their website, is derived from the Arab word Bedouin, "signifying a member of an adventurous family" traveling the continent by bicycle.

They have had adventures and they have met many people, most of them helpful and good. They plan to write about it in a book. Once that book is released, they hope to come back to Wasilla and do a book signing at Metro Cafe.

Many people, such as the dentist seen waving at Robin in picture two, have put them up for a night or two and have fed them. They have been helped in many ways, but on occasion they have met unfriendly people, too. The worst incident happened in Alabama, when they were pedaling up a hill on a four-lane highway in the right hand lane of the two that went up. There was no shoulder so they had to stay on the road, but there was plenty of space for drivers to go around them. Even so, a man driving up that hill grew angry with them. He honked and shouted.

After they topped the hill, they pedaled into a gas station and there he was. He scolded them and called the cops. An officer came, but he took their side, not his.

What they have found on the whole is that truck drivers generally show them the most courtesy. They give them a wide berth and appear to radio ahead to their colleagues so that they can be on the lookout. The most problematic drivers they encounter tend to be driving big RV's. All too often, these are the ones who crowd them the most closely.

Many people honk and wave in a friendly way. Some stop to take their picture, or invite them to dinner.

They have pedaled over mountains ranges and the uphills have grown harder as they have progressed - in part because the girls have grown and their weight has increased. On the downhills, they never let their speed climb above 20 mph. "If we did, we would become just like a runaway train," Amarins explains. "There would be no stopping."

Amarins says they have been most impressed by the magnificent beauty of Alaska. She has visited Wyoming's Grand Teton Mountains, which were breath taking - but Alaska "quardruples that - and we have only seen a little bit of Alaska," she adds.

From Metro, they pedaled off toward Denali - 200 miles, hoping to go 20 miles a day. Many people visit Denali National Park and never see the mountain as it spends so much time buried in the clouds. The Pedouins have already seen it - on a clear day from Anchorage. Before they get to Denali, they are going to make a little detour into Talkeetna. Now, on their behalf, I make a plea to anyone in Talkeetna or who has good relations with any of the mountain flying services that operate out of there.

Think what this family has done! Please, if the weather is suitable, load them into a 185 or 206 or 207 or whatever the hell you've got and fly them up the Ruth Glacier into the Great Gorge. They have come so far - please! Let them see the Great Gorge. Then they will truly see the truth of Amarin's statement about the Grand Tetons, not merely quadrupled, but multiplied ten times over.

After Denali, they will go on to Fairbanks, where their bike journey will end.

Bill and Scot found they had something in common. They both love old cars and machines, particularly machines that transport people from one place to another.

That brings me back to Scot, to the day that I took the picture that opens today's entry as well as this one. Not long before that day, after undergoing more tests than he was comfortable with, Scot and Carmen learned that he has a dangerous - but not unbeatable - colon cancer. Until now, I have been quiet about it but many of their regulars know. On this day, one of them, a church-going Christian man, had given Scot the book that he holds in the hope that it might encourage him.

I have few left and it is hard for even me to get more without paying more than I can afford, but I gave him a copy of Gift of the Whale. I did so because Scot has a long history in the oil fields of the Arctic Slope and operates his own, very successful spill containment business there. An Iñupiat man who is the son of the late Mary Edwardsen, the woman who made the white hunting parka that protected me from the cold for so many seasons before it finally wore out, has often worked with him.

This man respected Scot so much that he secretly had his mother prepare a polar bear ruff for him and then had that ruff delivered to Scot by snowmachine to a camp nearly 200 miles from where Mary had made it.

I figured that if Doug Edwardsen respected Scot that much, then I would give him a copy of my book. Plus, he had brought this fine thing called Metro Cafe into my neighborhood. I wanted him to have the book.

Scot, who is determined to beat his cancer, says it is okay to let people know about his cancer now. Carmen adds that Scot is a fighter and does not give up. She hopes that maybe someone else who has cancer and who feels like giving up can learn about Scot and find more courage to wage his or her own fight.

Scot, sitting where he had told me that he built the stage, but Carmen had created the play.

I should add that Amarins told me that in all her travels across the United States, she had never found a coffee shop to equal Metro in warmth and coziness. "You just don't find something like this," she stressed.

Carmen now carries this token of divine strength with her. It quotes from Psalm 23:

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures

and leads me by still waters...

It was a gift to her from her friend, Elaine, who lost both breasts to cancer and carries her own, pink ribbon, pendant.

Scot and Carmen, late last winter, before Scot went in for his first surgery.

Once, as Scot was out of state for medical care, I was in the shop with Carmen and their son Branson, who was still four. Scot called on the phone. Branson talked to his dad.

Carmen shows me - and a young visitor whose name I have forgotten - some of the drawings that she and Scot made as they put together their plan to build Metro Cafe.

Yes, many people have stepped into this stage that Scot made for Carmen. Several of them have appeared in this blog.

There is Sashanna, the 19 year-old barista who uses her earnings to help fund her college courses. This summer, she is taking a creative non-fiction writing course. Last week, she let me read a piece she had written, about rain and how rain not only nourishes the soil and plants, but helps to heal the hurt soul.

I was moved by that piece. When I read it, I knew that, as one way or another we all must, the writer had experienced pain but knew she had to continue on. In the rain, she found the courage to do so.

The fellow she is serving is named Paul, another player on the stage. He is a regular, comes by just about every day. That's all I know about him.

Yesterday, Jobe was carried onto the stage that Scot built for Carmen. He was warmly received...

...by Scot as well as Carmen.

I took this picture in late spring, of Branson as he rode his bike past my rearview mirror. Close to the same time, Scot told me how he planned to teach Branson to drive a snowmachine, because he wanted him to be a responsible driver. He told me how he had discovered a Metro bus, decades old, how he planned to rebuild it.

Two days ago, on my birthday, as I sat at the Metro drive through window, I looked out the passenger window. I saw Scot on his Harley. 

"You look really good," I told him.

"Yes," he answered. "Today."

On Monday, he will go in for his regular Chemo treatment. There is no way to describe that experience, he told me. He will not look so good afterwards. He will feel awful for days. But to survive this cancer, he must survive the chemo. Survive is what he is determined to do.

It was a hot day, so I ordered a raspberry mocha frappe. As it was my birthday, Scot would not let me pay for it - not even with the gift card Funny Face had purchased for me. He pulled out his wallet, removed the few dollars that it would cost and handed the money to Carmen, who stood within the stage that he had built for her. He paid for my frappe.

I think it just may have been the very best frappe I have ever tasted.

I mean it. It was that good.

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Airplanes, ice cream and the need to escape; the final picture of the living Royce

I just want to escape for a bit now - not forever, not for years, not for months, perhaps not even for weeks. Days would be good, but I don't have days to spare. Hours, perhaps?

Just for a bit - and then while I am in escape to imagine that this little bit is forever. I want to climb into my airplane as I once used to do and go up there, into the clouds, into the sky, as I witnessed someone else do here, above me, late yesterday afternoon or early evening as I pedaled my bicycle.

But I want to be more free than the folks in this plane were. They were in the air, but they were completely controlled by people down on the ground, people who gave them orders as to just what altitude, heading direction and speed they could fly.

I want to be in the air, my hand on the stick and my brain free to choose what direction to push that stick and if I should push it that way and then change my mind and decide I want to go the other way and climb or descend to a different altitude than that is what I want to be able to do.

I want to fly into the updraft and then just let go of the damn stick altogether and let the wind carry me; see how high it will lift me into the sky before it turns me loose, and then to see what the view looks like from that perspective. There will be many mountains to look at, I assure you, and fields of ice and snow. 

I know, because it has happened just this way before.

And if I should come upon an eagle, bald or otherwise, I want to push the stick so that the airplane goes into a hard bank, to fly a tight circle with the eagle at center, it's pivot point, close enough to my cockpit window so that I can see the eye that it locks upon my eye.

When this happens with an eagle, even though one is flying a 360 degree circle around it and it is matching the turn degree for degree, the eagle appears not to move at all. The only hint that the eagle is rotating is that the areas of light and shadow upon the eagle change. Only the rays of the sun mark its turn, for its eye stays connected with yours, it's eye looks right into your's, and does not blink. It's wings do not flap, it's body appears to remain stationary.

But my airplane is broken and I cannot do such things now.

Yet I must break away for a bit.

What will I do?

Will I ride my bike, on and on, never stopping?

No, I am not fit enough right now to do that.

Will I walk, hike, up in the mountains?

I don't know.

But I've got to break free for a bit, somehow.

Of course, there is always ice cream. We have a Dairy Queen in Wasilla and I love their soft ice cream. This is from one week ago. Jacob, Kalib and Jobe were visiting us while Lavina went to Homer with Sandy for Sandy's early bachelorette party. She is getting married September 4 at Lake Lucille, here in Wasilla.

So us boys went and got ice cream. The chocolate coated cone Jacob is grabbing is for him. The other one is for Kalib. The milkshake, strawberry, is for me. Poor Jobe! He got none.

He didn't feel bad, though.

It didn't bother him at all.

Kalib, with his ice-cream cone.

Remember the patch of dandelions in the black and white series that Royce defended from Happy the dog and then floated above? This is the very patch, 15 years later. And that's Kalib in it, the little boy that has emerged from the baby that Royce loved so greatly.

If Margie were not spending her week days in town, babysitting Jobe, there would not be so many dandelions here. She loves to spend the days of late spring pulling dandelions out by the roots. There have been years where it has appeared that she has gotten them all, but, of course, with dandelions, you never get them all.

The dandelions are always there, surviving, even when not seen, even when the ground is frozen solid and the snow piled atop it. The dandelions are there, preparing to proliferate again. To a young boy, this is not a bad thing.

To a young boy, it is a magical thing, one that supplies him with many tiny parachutes to launch into the breeze.

Oh, dear! I have gotten things completely out of order! Chronologically, this picture should have preceded the ice cream shots. In it, we have just begun the trip to Dairy Queen. Muzzy needs a little exercise, so he runs alongside the Tahoe as Jacob drives down Sarah's Way toward Seldon. When we reach Seldon, Jacob will stop the car and Muzzy will get in.

Then we will continue on to buy the ice cream.

Now I am in the car. I have just stopped by Metro Cafe where Carmen and Sashana presented me with smiles and a cup, plus a muffin and I did not pay for either one. Someone out there, one of you my readers who refused to identify yourself, felt badly when s/he read about Royce and so bought this cup and muffin for me.

It was a very nice thought and I thank you.

So I proceeded on, to escape as best I could while drinking from the cup and eating the muffin. I passed by Grotto Iona, the Place of Prayer, and there were horses there.

On my way towards Grotto Iona, I came upon a place where a vehicle had gone off the road and was down in the bushes. A tow truck had just arrived and there were a few guys there. Before I could safely turn on my camera and get it ready, the picture was behind me.

On the way back, I knew they were there. As I passed, I lifted the camera as high as I could, hoping that it would catch the vehicle down in the bushes, but it didn't.

Out of chronologically order again - here is Carmen, before the Grotto and the horses, before the vehicle off the road, even before I got my cup and muffin. I have not even reached the drive-through window yet.

Metro Cafe, headed to drive-through window study, #32.9: Carmen and Branson

Financially, though I have managed to go far and do many things, these past few months have been hell. But finally my latest contract has been activated and yesterday I got my first check. I took Margie to the movie in Eagle River - Jonah Hex. 

In many ways, it was an absurd movie and the bad guys came to predictable ends, but it was fun. It was escape and I enjoyed it. Afterwards, Margie and I dined at nearby Chepos.

The food was good and the atmosphere pleasant. 

And then, last night, as I was going backwards through my largely neglected take of the past week, I came upon this, the very last picture of Royce, alive and aware, that I ever took or ever will take.

Since his passing, Chicago has been a very needy cat. She wants to be with me constantly. As much as is practical, I let her.