As I enjoy a good breakfast at Family, two women die just down the road; I meet a friend of Cheech and Chong who witnessed the aftermath

Once again, I had to do it. I got up, the house was empty, the dishes were dirty, and I did not want to sit in the cold air that still permeated the house, there to eat oatmeal alone, so I got into the car and drove to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. Connie was again my waitress, so I showed her the Moment in Time picture on my iPhone as it appears in this blog, then she brought my ham and eggs-over-easy and I began to eat.

It was superb - from the hashbrowns cooked just right to the ham dipped in the runny egg yolk. A bit after 9:00 AM, I looked up from my food, saw this scene, thought it worth a click and shot it.

What I did not know, what none of us gathered there at Family Restaurant yet knew, was that just up the road, a silver Chrysler Pacifica had crossed the suicide turn lane all the way into oncoming traffic and had struck a Tahoe head-on. The woman who had been driving the Pacifica was already dead and the one driving the Tahoe soon would be.

Just as she and the other Family waitresses always do, Connie waited until I finished the main course and then she brought me my two slices of 12-grain toast, each cut in half. One at a time, I spread strawberry jam over the halves and then ate very slowly, stopping frequently to take a sip of coffee. I wanted to savor every bite, every sip, every moment of it.

Then, feeling pleasant and satisfied, I got up, paid my bill, climbed into my car, turned right on the Parks Highway and then came home via Church Road. I arrived with much to do, but feeling good.

I would have felt completely differently, had I turned left on the Parks Highway instead of right.

I had a rush of work to do and stayed with it solid and non-stop, taking no time for lunch, because, really, one does not need lunch after eating breakfast at Family until 4:00 PM, when I took a break and drove to Metro for my All Things Considered cup.

As I drove along, sipping, I passed this fellow driving his four-wheeler. Do you notice anything happening in those trees behind him? Something we haven't seen for awhile?

Shortly after that, as she does every afternoon, the KSKA announcer jumped in during a break in All Things Considered to drop in a kicker for the Alaska Public Radio Network's Alaska statewide news. Barrow hunters had landed the first two bowhead whales of the season, she said.

I shouted, and clapped my hands for joy!

Later in the evening, Maak in Wainwright dropped a comment into yesterday's post to tell me that her village had also landed its first whale.

It was a joyous day in the two northern-most communities of the United States of America.

I came upon a little dog, walking down the road. I passed by at about one-mile per hour, because I did not want to run over it.

I then returned to my computer, but by 7:30, my muscles were screaming for exercise. I got up and invited Shadow to go bike riding with me.

We had not gone far when we spotted a little fourwheeler putting down the road in front of us.

"Do you think we can pass her?" I asked Shadow.

Shadow didn't answer, because Shadow never speaks.

I passed her! I soon reached the end of Sarah's Way and turned left toward Seldon. Then I heard a small engine, whining loudly, gaining on me. "Well," I said to Shadow, "it sounds like she didn't like us smoking her and now she is going to show us."

The pitch was so high, I wondered if her engine might blow apart.

Then the vehicle passed me, but it was not the girl on the fourwheeler. It was a little tiny blue car. I don't know what make.

Shadow and I continued on. Half-an-hour later, I photographed Shadow as the two of us pedaled down Church Road. Then I spotted another man on a bike, coming in our direction. "When we draw near, I will photograph this guy," I told Shadow.

I readied my pocket camera, but, unfortunately, I forgot the lesson that I had learned at the Wasilla park on that day tht I flipped my bike and leaped over the handle bars in front of the shocked little kid. I held my camera in my right hand. This meant that I had only my left hand available to brake, should I need to. As we know, left-hand brake stops front wheel only - sudden stop means bike flips.

But this guy could see me coming and I could see him. No cars or trucks could be seen anywhere. It would be okay. I would not need to brake.

As the biker drew near, the camera zoom was its widest-angle setting. As I began to lift my lens toward him, the oncoming rider looked straight at me and with a mischievous chin and a somewhat maniacal glint in his eyes, issued a challenge: "Wanna play chicken?"

He stood up and pedaled hard, straight toward me.

For an instant, I was determined to get a shot that captured that grin on his face and the force in his body as he pedaled at me. If I had been in the same exact situation prior to June 12, 2008, I am quite certain that I would have succeeded.

But, as regular readers know, the risk that I took that day to get a truly insignificant photo that no one will ever care about put me inside a Lear Jet ambulance on a $37,000 + ride from Barrow to Providence Hospital in Anchorage, a ride that my insurance company, contrary to the promise they had verbally given me when I bought the policy 15 years earlier in anticipation that, given the way I lived, the day would inevitably come when I would one day need an air ambulance, refused to pay.

That's why I have this titanium shoulder and that's just one of the reasons why I hate the insurance industry.

That coupled with the fact that I had flipped my bike in front of the little boy when I had braked with my left hand, added to the fact that I suddenly believed that this guy coming at me truly might not chicken out nor veer away in the slightest degree, added to my painful knowledge that my titanium shoulder is a fragile thing, and my memory of spending the summer of 2008 mostly in bed and the long convalescence that continued for a good year-and-half caused me to chicken out.

I knew I had to brake with my left hand but I reckoned that I had just enough space to do it gently, and not flip the bike. Even as I applied the brake, I shot this image.

As you can see, the oncoming rider was, in fact, chickening out, veering to his right. He, too, was applying his brakes.

We came to a stop side by side. My rear wheel did lift up about six inches and, fearing that I might yet go down, he reached out to grab me - but I had it under control and was not going to go down.

Some of you may recall how, way back in March, I had become shaggy, in both hair and beard. I was scheduled to do my slide shows in Nantucket and New York and so had committed myself to good cut and trim before I left.

I ran out of time and decided to get the cut and trim in Nantucket. When that didn't happen, I decided that I would get it in New York.

I absolutely will get it done before I leave for Arizona in just ten days.

This is Dave, by the way.

We pedaled side-by-side for just a short distance.

Then we stopped to visit. Dave was animated in his conversation, smiling continually. He said that he had just pedaled his bike up a road that climbs up the Talkeetnas and it had sure been hard, but it was easy coming down.

He asked if I biked often and I said, "yeah."

I asked if he did and he said he pretty much had to, if he wanted to go anywhere. I asked if he enjoyed it. As he thought about his answer, a big, white, Chevy pickup that looked to be almost brand new came driving by. He looked at. "Well," he said. "I'd rather be driving that. You can imagine how I feel when I'm on my bike and something like that comes by. But, hey! I can go all the way downtown and back and I don't burn any gasoline, I don't put any pollution into the air."

I wanted to catch his smile, and the glint in his turquoise-green eyes and told him so. He struck this pose. The smile disappeared.

OK - look at these trees. Now do you notice something happening?

I had him try another pose, but I quickly realized that, as long as he knew a camera was pointing at him, his smile was not going to be there.

I then showed him the pictures. "I look terrible," he said. "You can see all my scars!" He pointed to the one that starts between his left eye and the upper part of his nose. "I got that one when someone kicked me in the head." He then began to point out other scars, and tell me the histories behind them.

"Man! I should have shaved. My hair looks so dark. My eyes look blue - but they're green!"

He then mentioned that earlier in the day, he had been pedaling alongside the Parks Highway on the other side of the police station when he came upon the aftermath of a horrible accident.

"That little silver car had shot across the dead man's lane right into the SUV!" he said. "I could see that the air bag on the passenger side had worked."

The victims had already been removed. He did not know that two people had died in that crash until I told him. He seemed a little shook.

"Men or women?" he asked.

I did not know. The news bulletin I had read online had identified the dead only as the drivers of each vehicle.

"I'll read about it in tomorrow's paper," he shook his head.

The conversation fell to more pleasant topics. His smile returned. He had just painted his bike silver, earlier in the day. He was proud of it. He asked if I smoked and if I had a light. I said no, and I didn't. He pulled out a paper and a bag and began to roll.

I wanted to catch his smile, so I took this shot without raising my camera. Afterwards I showed it to him. "Hey," he said. "I want to tell you about when I went to Mexico with Cheech and Chong. We tried to come back across the border in our van, but the border guards wouldn't let us cross." He said he and Cheech and Chong then backed up, traded the psychedelically-painted van for a more conservative vehicle, returned to the border and were allowed to cross back in. They drove on to El Cerrito, where he checked into a bed and slept hard and long.

"You know Cheech and Chong?" I gushed.

"Oh, yeah!" he answered.

"Famous guy!"

"I'm not famous," he said. "They're famous."

"But you hang out with famous people."

"That was a long time ago."

As to the contents of that plastic baggie, I know what you are thinking - but it actually looked and smelled like tabacco.

As they say, "that's my story and I'm sticking to it!"

Dave and I said, "see you around." I pedaled on home.

That was last evening. This is from this morning. Now, surely, you notice what is happening in those trees... they are turning green! The leaves are coming out!

The first year that we lived here, the leaves came out May 14, as they did for the next 15 years or so. Then they started to come out earlier and earlier and earlier.

This year, they came out May 3.

And here is the place where the two women were killed, as I saw it this morning. God be with them, and even more so with those loved ones they left behind.

Detoured by death on the highway as I take Margie to the airport; bright, red, fingernails; Kalib rides the escalators

The plan was for me to drop Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center so that she could pick up the medications she will need for the nearly four weeks that she will be in Arizona.

I would then drive to Camai Printing where I had a little business to take care of, come back, pick her up, we would get together with the kids for coffee or maybe even dinner, should time allow.

I would then take her to the airport.

But, just before we got to the South Birch Creek exit, traffic came to a halt. There had been an accident ahead.

I knew that if I could get to the exit, we could get off the Glenn Highway, switch to the Old Glenn and go around the accident.

Several other drivers had the same idea, so it was a slow process, but, after close to half an hour, I made it onto the ramp, where traffic was moving maybe one mile-an-hour - but it was moving.

See all those cars still on the highway? They are beyond the exit and they will be stuck there for hours.

Furthermore, if we had been perhaps as little as one mile further back, we would also have been stuck. We would not have been able to make it to the exit.

As we crept along, a bulletin came on the radio. A very serious accident had happened and the highway was closed at this exit.

It is a strange thing when you find yourself in this situation. You are annoyed at the slowdown. You think of the inconvenience and trouble that it is going to cause you - in this case, Margie could potentially miss her flight, or have to go without her medications, which we would then need to get and mail to her.

Yet you know that, up ahead, at the source of the slowdown, someone might be badly injured, in terrible pain, perhaps facing a different kind of life from here on out. Or someone might be dead, or dying, their entire life now behind them. Several people might be.

And yet, you still want to get moving.

As we crept further, a new bulletin said that a helicopter was coming. We knew then that someone had been hurt very badly.

And still I wanted to get Margie to the airport, on time, with her medications, and I wanted to get my business taken care of.

Finally, we got to where traffic was moving and then arrived in town right as the rush hour was beginning. I dropped Margie off at ANMC, then headed to Camai and arrived just before closing. I took care of my business and then returned to get her.

But she had got stuck in another long line - at the ANMC Family Medicine pharmacy. Kalib was there, waiting for her with his parents. Margie had entered an area in which only patients picking up medicine are allowed, so I sat down as Lavina helped Kalib learn how to operate an iPhone.

See how red Lavina's fingernails are?

A friend at work had chosen Saturday to be her wedding day and had asked all her lady co-workers who would be participating to paint their nails bright red. She also wanted them all to wear black dresses.

So Lavina painted her nails red, went out shopping on her one free day and bought a black dress.

Then her coworker changed the wedding date to June.

Kalib watches the movie, Cars.

Lavina had heard an update on the accident - it involved a pedestrian. That seemed pretty strange, since it happened on the freeway.

Later, on the radio, we heard that a man was trapped beneath a vehicle. I hoped he was unconscious. How miserable would that be, to be broken, injured, and have a ton or more of steel sitting atop you, jamming you into the cold pavement?

By the time Margie finally got her medications, there was no time to get together for coffee, let alone dinner. So all of the Anchorage part of the family came to the airport, to see her off.

Kalib and his dad led the entourage toward airport security.

Kalib soon dashed into the area where only ticketed passengers are allowed. Thankfully, he turned right around and dashed back out before he could get arrested and thrown into jail.

Traffic was very light in the security area. Kalib gave his grandma a goodbye hug.

As Rex gives his mom a goodbye hug, Kalib reaches out to hug one of his aunties. Kalib hugged everybody, whether they were traveling or not.

Then he got to ride an escalator going down.

He rode a series of escalators.

At the entrance to the parking garage, we discussed the matter of dinner. Melanie suggested Pho Lena, a Vietnamese - Thai restaurant that was more or less on the way out.

At Pho Lena, the waitress brought a toy over for Kalib's amusement.

But Kalib was more amused by the paper and coloring marker that she also brought him.

After I arrived home in the late evening, I sat down right here, at my computer and found a bulletin from the Anchorage Daily News in my inbox. Robert Marvin, 76, had apparently experienced some kind of car trouble on the Glenn and had pulled over to the side of the road - but not all the way out of traffic. He was standing in front of a Volkswagon van when it was rear-ended and pushed 50 - 60 feet down the road with him under it.

Rescuers managed to get him out without help from the helicopter, but he was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Traffic had been stopped for three hours.

Now, as I write these words, Margie is in Seattle, where she has a seven-and-a-half hour layover before catching her 7:25 AM flight to Phoenix.

How miserable she must be!

I am afraid to call her, though - she might be napping.

A memorial to a mother, fetus and teenage girl killed by a drunk driver is destroyed*

Today I found this little angel reaching out with a flower from the tumble of stones that remain of what very recently was a memorial to a mother and a baby who died in a car crash at this place.

I did not touch the angel, I did not move it. This is exactly how I found it.

This is what the memorial looked like on May 6, 2005. Until I pedaled my bike up to it today, I had never before stopped here. I had taken a few pictures as I zipped by in the car and from my bike as well, but I never stopped. 

Other than that two lives were lost, I have no knowledge of what happened here. I do not recall reading about it in the paper, seeing the story on TV or hearing it on the radio. Perhaps someone who reads this will know and will fill me in. (Three lives, it turns out. Update at bottom.)

All I know is that one day, well before I took this picture, the white cross appeared. I wondered why. A lady who is now dead and who I would often see in her yard and who seemed to know about everything that ever happened anywhere near this neighborhood told me that a young mother and her baby had been killed when she crashed her car here. She thought it was a single-car crash, that she had just gone off the end of Church Road, across Shrock and into the embankment.

This might be correct, it might not be. I did some googling today, but I could not find the answer.

Later, the brown cross, decorated with the engraved bear, appeared.

Throughout the years, the memorial always seemed to be well-cared for.

It was the work of an ever-loving and forever-pained heart.

Only a very different kind of heart could vandalize it.

I chose this photo because it was the only one that my search engine found when I typed in the word, "cross."

One day very recently, as I passed by, I noticed that the white cross had been split and knocked down. It looked to me to be the work of vandals. I do not know for certain. It is possible that another car lost control here and drove over the cross and damaged it.

Perhaps someone driving a four-wheeler off the side of the road too fast after dark did not see it and ran over it.

I do not know.

But it looked like the work of vandals.

I had intended to take a photograph of the damaged cross, but I never did.

And now both crosses are gone.

If you look closely at the upper-left hand corner of the rock pile, you can see the little angel, lying at the junction of three rocks and a leaf.

And if you look to the right, you can barely make out some wilted flowers, and some plastic flowers.

These are the plastic flowers.

Not far from the destroyed memorial, I rode my bike through a blanket of downed leaves as fast as I could without losing control while reaching as far forward with my pocket camera as my arm would extend so that I could photograph the action.

It was hard, but I did it. How about that, Charlie? (Explanation in Wednesday's comments).

Later in the afternoon, as I was returning home from my coffee break, I saw this lady checking the mail. As you can see, the leaves are just about all down now.

Last year, by this day, the snow had set in for the season.

I am still in cocoon mode, but I have gone maybe 15 minutes over my time limit.

I wanted to keep my title short, anyway.

*Update, 8:42 AM: I originally posted this under the title:

A memorial to a deceased mother and baby is destroyed

Mark Dent, editor of the Alaska Newsreader at the Anchorage Daily News, read the post and sent me this ADN clipping from October 9, 1999 - ten years ago today - with an account of the fatal accident:

By S.J. Komarnitsky

Daily News Mat-Su Bureau 

Day:   Saturday 

Page:   E1 

Print Run Date:   10/9/1999 

Dateline:   Palmer -- 

Text:   A Wasilla man with a history of alcohol abuse and driving

illegally was charged with two counts of murder Friday in connection

with an August accident in which a teenager and pregnant woman were

killed.

John F. Magee, 37, was arraigned in Superior Court in Palmer on two

counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and

driving while intoxicated. He may also face additional charges in

connection with the death of the fetus, prosecutors said. The woman was

eight months pregnant.

According to court documents, Magee was drunk and apparently driving

with broken windshield wipers in the rain in the early morning hours of

Aug. 15 when he ran a stop sign and crashed into a Subaru driven by

Laura Boles, 20, of Wasilla, at the intersection of Shrock and Church

roads. Boles was headed west on Shrock when she was hit by Magee, who

was headed north on Church, troopers said.

TX: The impact shoved both cars more than 60 feet off the road.

Killed were Boles, the fetus she was carrying, and a passenger, Mary A.

Williquette, 16, of Wasilla. A third passenger in Boles' car - Jacob

Buswell, 18, also of Wasilla - suffered severe injuries. Magee was also

injured.

According to court documents, Magee told troopers he had been drinking

at the Wasilla Bar, and the last thing he remembered was seeing a

stoplight near the Safeway grocery store in Wasilla, several miles from

the accident scene.

He registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.138 three hours after the

crash, according to court documents.

Ira See, an acquaintance who told troopers he was at the bar with Magee,

said the car Magee was driving did not have working windshield wipers

because the wiring had burned out, according to the court papers.

And while troopers said Magee had a valid driver's license when the

collision occurred, that has rarely been the case in recent years.

Over the past decade, Magee has been convicted at least six times for

driving without a license or driving while his license was revoked or

suspended. He also has been convicted of assault, criminal mischief, and

misconduct involving a controlled substance.

In 1980, he was convicted of driving while intoxicated and in 1988, he

was convicted of reckless driving.

Thank you, Mark.

Family Restaurant: the Little girl, her umbrella, the Vietnam vet and his Harley; Wasilla graveyard and thoughts of death; Red Escape at Midnight

I can hear the criticism already. "Bill, you are damn near broke, yet you waste entirely too much money eating out, driving to Taco Bell and going to Family Restaurant for your damned eggs! You should have stayed home and cooked yourself some oatmeal with raspberries."

You who thus criticize are entirely correct, yet, this is how I look at it: Margie, Kalib, and Lavina have been gone to Arizona for nearly ten days now. By the time they get back, I will be gone myself, not to return until late July. Basically, since they left, I now spend my entire day hanging out with cats but no people. Combined, I see Caleb and Jacob for 8 minutes and 47 seconds per day. 

I am a person who does good alone. I always have something to do, I never get bored and if am not working on photographs or words or such, which I almost always am, then there are many interesting conversations taking place in my head.

Yet, sometimes, I feel this ache, this unbearable feeling. I tend to feel it very strongly right after I get up. I do not want to cook, not even oatmeal. I just want to let my head and mind relax, not worry about anything. I want to sit down somewhere and have someone take care of everything for me - cook my food, pour my coffee, bring me toast, lie to me and tell me how handsome I am. Some waitresses will do that.

So I get in the car and head to Family Restaurant.

The girl above is Nya Lee, "I just turned four," and she also headed to Family Restaurant this morning. It was not raining, but she brought her umbrella, anyway. "When it rains, I am ready."

She dressed herself this morning. She was very proud of that.

This is Dan, Vietnam veteran, who also ate at Family this morning. He is from Fairbanks and drove his big Harley down, but now that he had eaten breakfast, he was going to drive back. Given the overcast, I do not think that he would have gotten the chance to see Denali today - but, oh, how magnificent that would be, to motor by Denali on a big Harley!

And the lady with Dan is Sue. She has her own big Harley, but moved to Dan's to get in the picture. Sue has lived in Fairbanks all her life, which is 50 some years - I can't remember precisely. She likes Fairbanks, but she is tired of winter. She can hardly stand the thought of another winter. She wants to get out for the winter.

I do not know how Dan feels about the Fairbanks winter. We did not talk about it. We talked just the tiniest amount and that was about Vietnam. He could not remember for certain when he went there, but thought it was in 1969, and 1971 when he left. He served in the Navy, both on a surface ship and a submarine, which he said was the last World War II sub still in commission.

I wanted to know more, of course, but he was anxious to hit the road. "I'm going to start to sweat if I don't get moving soon," he said. So I thanked him, both for posing for my blog, and for giving himself to my nation. Maybe I would have wound up in Vietnam, too, but when the draft lottery was instituted, I drew number 21. So I would never be drafted.

I thought about enlisting, but did other things instead. 

Someday, I will write about some of those other things.

Many of you will be surprised, if not shocked.

I took this picture as I pedaled my bicycle past the Wasilla cemetery. This is the upper, newer part of the cemetery. The lower part looks more traditional, with larger crosses and tombstones. I never want to lie here. I want to be cremated, and spread about.

Not that I will give a damn.

Shortly before I took this picture, I was pedaling along the bike trail that follows Lucille. There is one point where that trail rises up a hill, maybe 30 feet above the road. As I pedaled up that slope, my mind dwelt upon the topic of death, because I know a great many people who are dead and one cannot help but contemplate who might be next and when that next person might be he.

Just as I reached the top of the hill, I raised my eyes from the trail and looked down at Lucille Street. There, coming from the opposite direction, almost directly below me, was a van with these words emblazoned upon it: "Rock of Ages." It surprised me, and I momentarily lost control of my bike. As I had been pedaling uphill, my momentum was erratic. The bike turned sharply to the left, towards the drop off down to the road, towards a telephone pole.

I recovered at the last possible moment, just before I would have went over.

That would have been an interesting way to die. Trouble is, no one would have known about the series of events that led me to that death, except for me. And I wouldn't have known either.

I'll bet "Rock of Ages" would have just driven on, because by the time I went over I would have been out of the driver's vision. So he would have driven on, not even knowing he had just helped send someone to the promised land, whatever that might be.

Three nights ago, I stopped writing in this blog just a few minutes before midnight, as I had not taken a single picture that day and needed to get some kind of image before the day ended. I stated that you would probably never see that image, but I changed my mind.

This is it. I headed straight for the front porch and took this picture off of it.

So this is the red Escape at midnight. Midnight in Wasilla, Alaska, as the summer solstice draws near.

This is nothing compared to the Arctic Slope - as you will soon see.