Feeling lazy, I step backward in time a bit

When I started this blog, I said that I would alternate current photos of Wasilla (and elsewhere) with images that I had taken in the past. I haven't really done much of that. It is too hard to keep up with the present, let alone visit the past.

But today I went to town for a doctor visit (shoulder surgery followup - yes, after all this time, I still must do followups. The doctor, by the way, is most impressed with how I have healed. He said most people who suffered the same injury I did would not be able to raise their arm more than 90 degrees out from their body one year later and he could hardly believe it when I held mine straight up above my head. Two reasons, I figure - he did a good job on the surgery and I worked really hard to put that arm back in action. Margie got upset with me sometimes, said I was pushing it too hard, but I had to push it hard) and when I came home, I started sorting through pre-blog photographs for a project I want to do.

I worked on it until just a little bit ago and now I am lazy, so I am just going to blog a few past photos, like the train above.

I love trains, don't you know?

And then there was the time the Little Su overflowed, but I drove through and across the bridge anyways, as did these happy kids.

A couple of hitchhikers that I once picked up on Church Road, sitting in the back seat, as seen in my rear-view mirror.

A barista by the name of Melanie at Cafe Darte. Cafe Darte is up for sale. My daughter Melanie wants her Mom and I to buy it. We have no money to buy it.

Becky bounces on her trampoline as I drive by.

And how about Wasilla Main Street? I am pretty sure she rose from the ground wiser than before she fell.

This girl is not on Main Street, but on the Parks Highway, which was mistakenly identified as Wasilla Main Street on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I admire him, anyway. 

I was going to pull up an India shot, too, but I see there is only seven minutes left in this day and I have not taken a single picture. I will go take one, now. You will probably never see it, but I cannot let the day pass by totally undocumented.

Today, part 1: Before the ash fell - Scenes from my walk; hot water heater ruptured, replaced

I had barely begun my walk today when I came upon this moose. If you look closely, you can tell that it is the very same moose that I came upon yesterday, the one that inexplicably scared me. Well, today I redeemed myself. The moose did not scare me at all. I hung out with it for awhile and we visited. I learned that its name is Gertrude. 

Gertrude has a calf nearby and I photographed it, too, but I want to get this done and get to bed, so I will leave the calf out of the post.

A little further on my walk, I saw this kid on a four-wheeler.

Please note that this is not a state trooper, but a Wasilla police officer who is taking the driver's license from the poor sap in the van. (Should you ever happen to read this, poor sap, please do not get offended. Sooner or later, frequently or infrequently, we all do our time as poor saps.)

Even though they call this area Wasilla, and the mailing address is Wasilla, it is just beyond Wasilla city limits and the Wasilla police did not used to have jurisdiction here. Remember how I told you about the time I had to make a citizens arrest on the drunken ice cream lady and hold her as my prisoner for one hour while I waited for the Alaska State Troopers to come, because the Wasilla police would not?

Or did Wasilla finally incorporate my neighborhood and I just didn't hear about it?

I hope Wasilla did. I am tired of paying all these sales taxes to Wasilla and not getting any direct benefits back.

So maybe this cop who has pulled this poor sap over is finally a direct benefit.

As I neared home, a Tahoe stopped on the road beside me. It was Jacob and Muzzy.

After that, somehow, I wound up walking the rest of the way home with a St. Bernard.

As I neared the house, I saw Jake pulling someone who had slipped into the culvert directly in front of our yard out of it.

Jacob and the guy he pulled out.  Jacob told me that this guy is new in the nieghbor and has three big dogs.

If I were to tell this full story, it would take all night, so I won't. Suffice it to say that, this morning, when Margie got up, she heard the sound of rain hammering plastic, but it was not raining.

The sound came from the crawl space beneath our house. It was hot water, pouring out of our ruptured hot water heater through a vent in the floor down into the crawl space.

So here is this Don, putting a new hot water heater into the laundry room.

Don attaches the natural gas line to the new hot water heater.

As for us, we were $1000 poorer than we were when we woke up in the morning.

That was a pretty hard blow to take.

Don lives in Anchorage where he has a plumbing business. We did not hire Don, Sears did. They keep him on contract just so he can help people like us out.

Don has been coming out to the valley to install water heaters and do other plumbing work for 20 years.

Besides Sears, we also checked Lowes, but they would not have been able to install until maybe Tuesday - and their installation fee was higher, even after the $90 emergency fee to have Don come out on a Saturday was added into the Sears installation fee.

Kalib with pan that he wants us to fill with hot water. He wants to boil a fish in that pan, that's why.

Three fellow photographers at the Iditarod Restart - for one, Governor Palin rides to the rescue

If I had searched, I could have found several more tons of my colleagues as they wielded their cameras at the Iditarod Restart in Willow, but I didn't, so I only photographed the three that popped up in front of me.

This is Jim Lavrakas of the Anchorage Daily News, who I first met 28.5 years ago. He was shooting for the Daily News then as well. The Daily News has always had an extremely talented photo staff and Jim is one of the best.

If you doubt this, then please take note of the extremely difficult technique that he uses here to photograph the race. It is called the "Lavrakas Two-Gun Technique" and he spent over a decade perfecting it, but finally mastered it on July 22, 1994.

Jim's theory is that the photographer should always hold two cameras in his hands, on either side of his vision, but never bring the viewfinder of either to his eyes. He then focuses each eye on a different subject. Then the photographer, like the two-gun gunslinger who, with dead-on accuracy, simultaneously fires in multiple directions, shoots both cameras at the same moment.

In this case, a Super Cub was flying overhead while down below a little boy was reaching over the fence to high-five a passing musher.

I did not see the results myself, but I understand Jim caught both moments grandly, in perfect unison, as he always does.

I have tried this technique myself, but have never succeeded at it.

This is Wayde Carroll, a fine architecture photographer who also conducts photo safaris not only in Alaska but Costa Rica as well. As you can see, Wayde also employs some pretty sophisticated technique. He asked if I would pose for a portrait so I did. He threw in some light with the umbrella held in reverse.

Then I shot this portrait of Wade.

We photographers like to go around shooting portraits of each other.

We want someone to remember us when we're gone.

And this is Al Grillo, who shoots for the Associated Press. He is a most likable guy and I often come upon him anywhere in Alaska, and I also see his pictures from all over the state published regularly in the news. This has been the case for many years.

I commented on this. "You've got a really good job," I complimented.

"If it wasn't for all the interest in Sarah Palin, I wouldn't even have a job right now," Al answered. As AP does its part to keep our governor focused in the national eye, they tend to send Al anywhere in Alaska where she does something that might be noteworthy.

And there I find a second reason to be glad that Sarah Palin is our governor.

I found Al kneeling in the snow at a gap in the fence. A bit later, an official hall monitor came by and told him to move, that he could not be there.

Al protested. He told the hall monitor that he was with AP, had press credentials and was acting within his right and duty.

"I don't care who you are or what credentials you have," the hall monitor fired back. "You have to move, now."

But Al didn't move, and for this I was mighty proud of him.

The hall monitor walked away, murmuring threats that Al had better have vacated that spot by the time he came back.

Then a lady who was standing behind the fence (that's her elbow in the upper left corner), piped in and told Al that she knew Governor Palin personally. "I've got her phone number right here in my cellphone," she spoke authoritatively, "I can give her a call right now and she'll straighten that guy (the hall monitor) out for you."

Al gave her a polite smile and kept on shooting.

This is not a photographer, but a kid named Ian, who lives in Palmer. I took this picture as the second musher to come out of the chute passed by, waving at the friendly crowd as he did.

Ian told me that he loved the Iditarod. "It's lots of fun," he said. "It's exciting."

When it was all over, and after I had visited and photographed Rose Albert, as seen in yesterday's entry, I discovered that I was hungry and wanted to eat. Given the setting, only a hot dog would do.

I found this stand, selling "Reindeer Dogs," made of genuine Alaska reindeer.

I ordered one, plus a bag of Lay's Classic Potato Chips and a super-chilled Pepsi that the lady pictured above pulled from the ice chest that had protected it from freezing altogether.

I bit into the reindeer dog and discovered that it was mostly gristle and fat. It was hot, so that fat oozed out in great drops of oil.

Oh, geeze! It was good! Scrumptious! Just what I needed.

When I think back upon it, I wish that I had bought two.

There were still mushers leaving the chutes as I pulled away, hoping to beat traffic that I knew from experience would come to a standstill. As I did, these two tiny kids, towed by a snowmachine, zipped by.

As I neared Miller's, where I bought the chocolate-dipped ice cream cone recently pictured on this blog, I came upon this scene and found that someone had been pulled over by a state trooper. 

How I love this place! How could I not? Can you see how beautiful it is?

It is an honor to get ticketed in such a place as this.

Still, I was glad that the honor went to someone else, and not to me.

A little further down the road, I turned off the Parks Highway and onto Pittman, towards home and on that corner passed by this familiar roadside tourist shop. It was a great reminder of the thrill of the Iditarod.

Soon, the tourist season will begin. Many tourists will pass this shop and they will gaze upon it with proverbial wonder; they will realize what a majestic and beautiful state they have the privilege to pass through.

Insundry Images from today: Kalib on walk; Muzzy misbehaves; cell tower goes up, airplane passes by moon, cop-stop; kids on Schrock

This morning, I cooked eggs, bacon and hashbrowns and afterward I needed to go on a walk. It was a warm day, so Lavina put Kalib in his stroller and the two came with me.

Ever since Margie got hurt, I have had little exercise. I have taken only three walks and all have been short. I have eaten a great deal of junk food. I could feel it on this walk. My breath headed in the direction of short on slight uphills that, at the time of Margie's accident, I would not even have noticed.

Lavina asked me if I was going to go snowshoeing anytime soon. Ha! Before I even think about it, I've got to turn this around. Today was a start. A small start.

Muzzy misbehaved. But only because he loves to play with other dogs so much that sometimes he forgets who is boss. So he chased after a dog, hoping to play with it. The poor dog fled in terror. Afterward, Lavina reminded him that he is not the alpha male; she is. No striking, no violence - she just spoke firmly and he submitted.

A bit later, we saw some goats. She put the leash on him, just in case he forgot.

In the afternoon, I drove to Little Miller's to get some coffee for me and to bring back a cup to Margie. The coffee was very hot, much hotter than she likes, so I meandered a bit on the return, until finally I came down Wards Road. I was surprised to see the cellphone tower up. Given yesterday's entry, I don't know why I was surprised, but I was.

Cellphone tower and moon. The coverage here is still weak and spotty. I wonder when they will turn it on?

As it looks now, coming down Wards.

After I park the car in our driveway and get out, an airplane flies by. Moonlight grows.

Come night, Margie and I needed to eat. Everyone else was gone. So I went to Carr's and bought some food, including fresh raspberries and blackberries. They were identical to raspberries and blackberries that I had bought in Washington, D.C. and that Mary Ann had fed us in Salt Lake City.

As I drove home, I passed a "cop-stop." The officer had just returned to his car from the Chevy Trailblazer that he had pulled over and was about to get into it. I can only speculate as to why he had pulled the Trailblazer over to begin and that speculation could be completely wrong. On the other hand, it could be absolutely true, too.

Still, I will keep all such speculation in my head.

As to this photo, I place it here only to remind myself that it exists - assuming that one day, I will come back and read this post, because I will forget all about it, otherwise. It is a picture that I think has potential, but the foreground is severely underexposed and the sky, overexposed. So here, right now, it will look like nothing.

But one day, maybe, if I can spend some time working on it, drawing out what is in the foreground and smoothing out the resultant noise a bit (this will be difficult) and bringing the sky back in line (this will be easy) it just might be a good photo.

It might not be, either. It might be beyond hope.

Right now, I don't have the time or energy to fool with it.

Speaking of energy, sooner or later I must deal with Margie's accident in here, and the aftermath. Maybe tomorrow. No, wait! Grahamn Kracker has been promising to get a certain post up on his Kracker Cat blog, so I think perhaps I should hold back here, keep tomorrow's entry simple, and let him get it done.