Post-accident car shopping excursion, part II: We give Anchorage a try

At first, we thought we would do all our car shopping here in the valley, but Margie and Kalib both had doctor appointments in Anchorage. Plus, while I was leaning toward Ford, in no small part because they are an American company but did not participate in the bailout, I also wanted to check out Toyota and Subaru. 

First, we had to pick up the rental car that Joey Seibert, Progressive Insurance Adjuster, had reserved for us. So we had Kalib drop us off at Enterprise car rentals. The only vehicle they had available was a big, red, Dodge Caravan. They had us do the usual walk-around to check for dings, cracked windshields and such, and then we drove away, towards Anchorage.

We had barely gotten back on the highway when suddenly I noticed a tiny chip in the windshield, a bit higher than my head. I pointed it out to Margie. "Looks like we're in trouble now!" I said. "They will blame us and make us pay for it."

"I saw it when we got in, but I thought it was a small piece of ice," Margie answered. And then I noticed still another tiny chip, on the lower right hand side. 

There was no point in turning around and going back, because they hold you responsible for any damage not on their sheet from the moment you turn on the ignition and start to drive.

So we pressed on to Anchorage. Always, when one nears Anchorage, the plume of steam on the left can be seen rising into the air. Usually, the plume on the right is invisible, except that as you draw near you see the distortions caused by the refractions of light passing through it.

When the temperature is far enough below zero (F. of course) both plumes show. Once we reached town, we headed toward Tudor, where the Alaska Native Medical Center is located. Not far away was a marque that said 11:43 AM, -20 degrees.

Not bad for Anchorage which, by Alaska standards, is thought of as a warm town. Of course, East Anchorage is much colder than the airport, which sits right by the inlet and where the official temperatures are taken.

Margie had two doctor appointments, and after I dropped her off for the second one, I saw two friends from the village of Wainwright exit the hospital and head towards the waiting taxi-cabs.

No point in that. So I gave Rossman and Helen Peetook a ride to the Day's Inn on Fifth Avenue. Helen had taken a fall in November and had suffered a badly-broken leg. They had been in Anchorage since mid-November, but now they were going to go home.

Rossman is a whaling captain. Many times, he and Helen have fed their community with the rich flesh of the bowhead whale, as he is an extremely skilled whaling captain. He knows the ways of the Arctic seas, and the animals that live within and upon. I never traveled with his crew, but I have been on the ice with him for extended periods of time.

After I dropped Rossman and Helen off, I headed toward the nearest Wells Fargo bank and drove into the drive-through to deposit the $2833 check Joey Seibert had made out to me. I wanted it to be available for the down payment, should we close a deal this day. As I waited for my receipt, this fellow made a transaction of his own in the lane adjacent to the teller's window.

Kalib had suffered through his one-year old shots - five of them, so Lavina took the afternoon off to be with him. Here they are, getting into the rented Caravan. This meant that they were going to go car shopping with Margie and me.

When Margie, Lavina and Kalib had traveled to Arizona together last year, they had rented a Subaru Forester and they had liked it. This is Raymond Leddon, the Subaru salesman who helped us out. He led me past the 2009 Foresters to some "slightly used - by rental car agencies and such" 2008's that the dealer wanted to clear off the lot. I then did a test drive on some icy roads. I gunned it, I slammed on the brakes, I turned the steering wheel too sudden, sharp and fast.

And the Forester performed beautifully. I never even came close to losing control. "That's why its the most popular car in Alaska," Leddon boasted. He said it was the very car he had bought for his wife, who had some health problems and so needed a car that was both easy to operate, yet safe on ice and snow.

I was sold - but not necessarily on the 2008. Subaru made some significant changes between the '08 and '09 models and you could tell just by looking that the '09 was a much more substantial vehicle. Plus, I did not like the idea of buying a used rental car. People can be hell on rental cars.

Sold though I was, I had intended to check out Toyota in Anchorage and Ford in Wasilla. And we had promised Melanie that we would meet her at 3:30 at the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop by Title Wave Books.

As we prepared to drive away, Mr. Leddon gave us the thumbs up. He didn't work Sunday but, by gum, if we wanted to come back to town on Sunday he'd come to work that day, anyway, just for us.

"I can't promise," I said, "but right now, your Forester is in first place!"

Perhaps, if I had driven the 2009 model, we would have returned immediately after our visit with Melanie at Kaladi's. I liked the Forester.

Melanie took great interest in our shopping expedition. She wanted to do all that she could to help us find a car that was both economical and green, and I do not mean in color. She brought her iPhone to Kaladi's, hopped onto the web, and gave us some good advice on what was good and what was not.

Here she is showing us a Taurus wagon, or SUV. "It is not good," she said. "Don't get it."

About 4:00 PM, we headed toward the Toyota dealer. This is us, passing through Anchorage on our way there.

Now we have arrived at Kendall Toyota. We have yet to step into the showroom.

Now we have just entered the show room, where we were met by an enthusiastic salesman by the name of Jason. He gave Kalib a "high five." Kalib does not yet know what a high five is, but he enjoyed it, anyway.

I took an immediate interest in the RAV 4. The one on display was pretty damned expensive, nearly $30,000 and the payments were mighty high. Jason said he could get us into a "certified, pre-owned" version at a price we could afford and it would be just as good as if it were brand new.

It would be warranted and everything; certified by Kendall to be in perfect running order. He got out a flip chart that listed all the different parts, features and so on that Kendall certified, to prove to us that a used car would be as good as a new one.

There were several pages to the flip chart and Jason flipped through them all. Not only did I absorb every sentence, but each single word.

I wanted a red one, so he had the workers warm one up and pull it up to the door. This took about half-an-hour, because it was quite chilly.

I didn't get to test drive it, though. Jason test drove it - down some exceedingly icy and slick back roads and he drove like a lunatic - made my performance in the Forester look tame. He was gunning it, slamming on brakes, turning it sharp to the side in the very slickest of places, and always in complete control.

"This is an Alaska car!" he said. "You can't get a better car for Alaska than the Toyota Rav!"

I now felt very bad for Mr. Ledden, because I was completely sold on the RAV. I saw no point in driving home without it - and yet, I felt that we should still look at Ford. Compare the RAV to the Escape.

In the above picture, Kalib is not waving to me. He is waving to salesman Jason. Kalib really liked Jason. I did, too. I wanted to buy the Rav 4, from Jason. It now seemed kind of pointless to even go look at a Ford. Maybe if Jason had let me do the test drive, I would have bought the RAV on the spot. 

It was late now and we needed sustenance before hitting the highway home. We had not eaten steak in a long time, but Margie had a craving for one and after what she had been through, I figured she better have one. So Lavina called Jake. The best steak houses were all behind us, and I did not want to go backwards. So we agreed to meet at Applebee's on Muldon, which was more or less on the way home.

As we neared the restaurant, I saw an emergency vehicle leave the scene of an accident ahead of us. When we reached it, wreckage debris was scattered about the road, but it didn't look that bad. Still, you never know.

Not long after we were seated, a waitress came by and took our drink orders. Shortly thereafter, she took our dinner orders. After that, there was no more "short" involved. It became a long ordeal. Lavina and I had both ordered tall lemonades and we took our time drinking them.

Then the waitress brought us more, and we took our time with these.

After a very long time, the dishes that we had ordered were finally brought to us. I had ordered a baked potato, but got mashed potatoes instead. The waitress saw that this was a mistake, took my plate and said she would be right back with the baked potato.

After she left, Jacob, Lavina and Margie discovered that they had no eating utensils, and neither did I. Oh, well. We would just tell the waitress when she brought my plate back with the baked potato on it.

As we waited... and waited... and waited... we drank another round of lemonade. Then the lemonade was gone. We waited. We waited. We waited. Lavina got up and went to the waiter's station, found it unmanned, but did find one set of silverware. She snatched it up, then gave it to Margie.

If you click on this picture and blow it up a bit, you will see that many people seem to be looking around, waiting.

Then we waited... oh, did we wait! If even one waitress had come near to us, I would have grabbed her attention, but none did. No! Not one!

After about three weeks (maybe I exaggerate, slightly) the waitress finally came with my plate. I noted that the other diners at our table were still sitting there, waiting for silverware so they could begin to eat their food. The waitress's face went pale. She ran off to get some silverware.

This involved more waiting, but the shrimp that I had ordered along with my steak came skewered on long, thin, sticks, shish-kabob style. I picked up a stick with six shrimp on it and took a bite. It was cold. It was not warm. It was cold.

Eventually, we got our silverware. Now I could cut my steak and put a fork in it. It, too, was cold. Well, at least the potato should be hot. No, it was cold!

At this moment, the manager came by with a pleasant smile upon her face and asked how we were enjoying our evening at Applebee's.

She picked up the entire tab and promised us that this would not happen again, that next time we came to Applebee's we would have an excellent dining experience. She insisted that it was not the fault of the dedicated server, but that they were experiencing problems in the kitchen. The mortified waitress was extemely apologetic. She must make a living, so we took the manager at her word and left a tip for the waitress.

I appreciate what the manager did, and we did get a free meal out of the experience, but I would have preferred a hot one.

IHOP Sunday: A toddler never escapes the gaze of another toddler; Who did you vote for, Wasilla pitbull? Car search begins: The Insurance Adjuster

Kalib and Cade spot each other at IHOP. I wonder if they might be buddies one day? Not if Lavina has her way - she wants the whole family, including us, to move back to Arizona as soon as possible. Margie does, too - at least for the winter months. Me, Alaska is my home and was my home before I ever even came here. I am an Alaskan, born into exile in the state of Utah. I am an Alaskan now and I was Alaskan then. Just the thought of living anywhere else damn near kills me. 

A little bit of time in Arizona each winter will be fine - if we can figure out how to afford it. 

And then what about Margie? She has given me nearly 28 year of her life in this place, where she freezes every winter and pines for her Native southwest. Don't I owe her something for that?

But to give up Alaska?

She likes it here in the summer and says that it is fine with her if we spend our summers here. She didn't much care for this past summer, though. It was a cold summer, and it rained and rained and rained and the rain was cold.

When a Mat-Su summer turns out nice, however, it is the sweetest summer in the world. No other place that I have been can produce such a sweet summer as does this valley. Even my Arizona girl agrees on this.

We stepped out of IHOP to find two dogs in a truck. I wonder who this pitbull voted for? And how did the dog get away with it? It's against the law for dogs to vote in Alaska. And why did the pitbull vote today? The election was not today. It was November 4.

Does this pitbull sometimes wear lipstick? I don't see any on it right now.

The pitbull wanted to kill me, but I bravely stood there and photographed it with my trusty G10 pocket camera. 

The Insurance Adjuster - Joey Seibet. Okay, I must back up to last week, just before New Year's, when the insurance adjuster for Progressive came over. We are insured with State Farm, but the cops cited the poor kid who rear-ended our Taurus with his GMC truck and they didn't cite me, so Progressive had to pick up the damages.

I was wary at first, expecting a battle. I guess in part because it is my health insurance that I have been dealing the most lately, due primarily to my accident in June and that company is a horrible organization. It makes promises when you sign on and then when the time comes, gives your case to a person who gets paid very well to sit in an office to find ways to allow his company to break those promises and to make you pay, even when you can't pay.

So I was expecting a battle, but Mr. Seibert proved easy to work with and he seemed to care.

Sadly for us, our nine year-old Taurus had almost 200,000 miles of Alaska driving on it and so its market value was many thousands of dollars less than what it would have cost to repair the damages. When that happens, they total a car out at its market value and give you a check for that amount, then they take the car and sell it to the junk man.

So we got $2,833 for our old Taurus. Enough for a down payment on a new car.

Now we are engaged in the miserable process of shopping for a replacement. I hate it. And when we are done, we will be saddled with monthly car payments, something that we have not had to face for several years. And, even with 200,000 miles on it, Alaskan miles, we had babied the Taurus engine and it was running smooth and sounded fine.

So, you see, even when the insurance adjuster is a fair person, you can still come out in a much worse spot than you were in before his client smacked you in the rear.

As for Mr. Seibert, he says that being an insurance adjuster around here right now is like "trying to take a drink of water from a fire-hydrant." That's because people are continually crashing on our icy roads. Alaskans like to deride Lower 48 drivers whenever they see them sliding around on the news after a snowstorm, but the fact is, Alaskans are forever sliding off the road and crashing into things.

Mr. Seibert says that he feels good when he is able to help a family out, but sad when he can see that the insurance company's liability falls short of their needs, especially when there are small children involved and people who have been hurt.

He does not deal with fatalities or injuries that involve broken bones. These go to someone else.

While he did not mind being photographed, Mr. Siebert expressed a worry that I would freeze, given that the temperature was close to 20 below, F. Ha! Me - a genuine Arctic photographer - and look at him, how he is dressed!

And he's taking pictures, too!

By-passed scenes from closing days of 2008: After being misrepresented and dissed on the Daily Show, her life moves on; a frightening face; light, shadows and footprints - both human and dog

I am a fan of The Daily Show. Even as this satirical romp makes me laugh, it also brings out larger truths that the real news media - especially cable news media - just flat out falls short on. If the Daily Show must sometimes take artistic liberty and even lie to get at that truth, I can understand, as their purpose is to create satire and comedy, not to report news. Yet, it still seems to me that what they did to Patti Stoll after they sent Jason Jones to Wasilla was unfair. She is not at all the person that one might think after watching the Daily clip on Wasilla.

A day or two before 2008 came to an end, I took a walk and soon found Patti, her hair highlighted by a nice fringe of frost created when her breath brushed her golden locks as it passed through the -24 degree (F) air. She was doing the same thing I was - walking. I have been running into Patti for decades. Before the developers took over the woods now known as Serendipity, tore down down the trees, cut out roads and built houses, I would be going one way on my cross-country skis and she would appear coming the other way on her's.

In the summertime, we would sometimes cross paths on foot as we walked opposite ways on wooded trails originally stamped out by moose. Other times, we would meet as we pedaled our mountain bikes up and down the roller-coaster hills. Always, we would stop and chat awhile. We still do, but now we meet along the road, or on the paved bike trail that runs alongside the extension of Seldon that was so recently punched through the woods to better serve the good people of Serendipity and anyone else who wanted to get to Church Road a little faster. 

I often affectionately refer to Patti as "the fit lady," because she always keeps herself in the best of shape and is not deterred by a little chilly weather. She does some amazing things - recently, she sailed the length of the east coast from the Carribean to Canada.

I asked about her Daily Show experience. She told me she had done a two-hour interview with Jason Jones, who had been very nice and had treated her with respect throughout. He had asked her what seemed to be serious and thoughtful questions and she had answered in kind. After two hours, he suddenly brought up the subject of drug abuse in Wasilla with one the healthiest-minded people in the community. 

The Daily Show editors then ignored the entire two-hour interview and zeroed in only on the drug-use portion, and even that was selectively edited and organized to make both her and Wasilla look as ridiculous, pitiful and foolish as possible. Also, she told me, the incredulous reaction of Jason Jones as he supposedly reacted to her words was taped later, then spliced in to appear as if that was how he had actually responded when it was not. It appears that he really put her on the spot.

And there were other liberties taken. In one scene, Jason Jones is shown walking down the divider between the north and south bound lanes of the Parks Highway while pretending to be walking down Wasilla's Main Street - kind of like placing a reporter in the middle of Highway 95 where it passes through Manhattan while talking about Broadway at Times Square.

Still, the underlying fact is that, to suit her political purposes, Wasilla's former mayor, Alaska's current governor and recent Republican Vice-Presidential candidate also depicted Wasilla to be an entirely different kind of place than it is.

As for Patti, she has shrugged the experience off as just something odd that caught her in the midst. No big deal. Although she may have to travel a little further from her house than she used to to get to it, there is snow to be skiied over and trails to mountain bike. There are oceans to sail.

After I took Patti's picture, I wondered what I looked like. So I turned the camera back on myself. Now I know why little kids scream, cry and flee when they see me coming. 

Also as I walked, just before New Year's, I came upon shaft of light that had traveled down the road known as Tamar. The time was about 1:00 PM, which is just about solar noon here. At its zenith, the sun was high enough to find its way down the road, but not high enough to reach over the tree tops on either side of the road.

I walked a ways up that shaft of sunlight, then turned around to see what it looked like behind me. I saw that the legs in my shadow had become very long, yet my shadow body was very short.

Someone walked through the marsh with a little dog, which perhaps turned around and ran in the direction from whence they came.

I had one more picture from late last year. It is of the insurance adjuster who works for Progressive, the company that insured the vehicle driven by the kid who rear-ended me the night before Christmas eve.

For the past two days, I have been suffering the the misery of shopping for a car to replace our faithful but now totaled Taurus. I have at least one more day of such misery to suffer through. Every now and then, as I suffer this ordeal, I lift my G10 pocket camera and take a snap. So I will photo-blog the experience. I will begin tomorrow, with the picture of the Progressive insurance adjuster.

Dear Cousin Prakash: I wish that I could have known you better

The gentleman sitting with the boy on his lap is Prakash and the boy is his son, Karthik. Next to them sits Akila, the wife of Prakash. Sadly, she is now a widow and Karthik without a father, as Prakash lost his life just before the New Year began when he was struck by a bus in India. Prakash was 42.

I call him "cousin" in the title to this entry not because of any relationship of blood between us, because there is none, but to honor him and the family connection that first drew us together on the evening of August 22, 2007. That connection was the pre-wedding reception of my niece, Khena, to his nephew, Vivek, held in Bangalore in the south India state of Karnataka. 

Now Vivek is my nephew, too, and, by my way of thinking, that makes his Uncle Prakash my cousin.

I have a project in my head that I long to carry out, and that is to journey back into the places of origin and current habitation of all of my extended family, from the Apache and Navajo Indian Reservations of Arizona, the Mormon heartland of Utah and Southern Idaho, elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains, the coast of California,  the Midwest, Deep South, the East Coast and now India.

My purpose would be to photograph as wide a swath of my family as I can, and to tell what I can of the stories of this large, diverse, family that could not have been imagined by any member of it a little more than one generation ago.

This is from the next day, August 23, 2007, at the wedding. The very beautiful young lady that Prakash holds is niece Vaishnavi, also known as Sonal.

By itself, my ancient, new, family in India is large and diverse and though I met many of them at the wedding, in most cases, these were fleeting encounters. I have been privileged to get to know a few of them a little better. Vivek, of course; his parents, Murthy and Vashanti, who not only put me up for my final days in India, but visited us here in Alaska this past May, after which we all went down to Alta, Utah, to celebrate the second wedding of Vivek and Khena; Nephew Vijay - Vivek's brother - and his wife, Vidya, a friend to all animals and the mother of beautiful baby girl Vaidehi, born this past spring even as her grandparents were visiting us.

Through Cyberspace, we communicate regularly and send pictures back and forth.

Vivek's cousin Ganesh took me on a tour of Bangalore and is also special to my heart. Ganesh has two sisters, Soundarya (Sandy) and Sujitha (Barbie), both of whom will wed next month - Soundarya on Valentine's Day, which is also Margie and my wedding anniversary, and Sujitha the very next day, February 15.

It had long been the plan of both Soundarya and me that I would return to India to photograph her wedding, as we have shared an exceptionally special relationship since we met. I call her "Muse" and many of my days have been brightened by the mere appearance of a "sandyz" mail in my inbox.

I thought that on this second trip to India, I would begin to track down my new family members of south Asia; I would photograph them, both in portrait and candid form, visit with them, and begin to learn their stories.

But there was a communication mixup, and Sandy's wedding wound up being scheduled during the one event taking place here in Alaska this winter that I absolutely cannot miss.

Prakash, his beautiful wife and energetic son were among those I had hoped to photograph and visit.

Now, I do not know when I will return to India. To be honest, given the kind of year 2008 was for me, I lack the financial resources - although for Soundarya and Anil's wedding - and Sujitha's, too - a lack of resources would not have stopped me.

But I will return, because my family in India is exceptionally important to me. When I do, Prakash will not be there. His ashes were set free at his funeral in Chennai, but I will still learn what I can of him, and of Akila and Karthik, who I do hope to photograph.

For now, all I can do is to send my condolences. 

January 1, 2008: Backyard moose, tots in the house, Iraq-bound Marine at KFC

In the morning (which, as I define it here, began about 11:00 AM and ended about 1:00 PM) a moose appeared in the backyard, as moose often do.

Inside, the fire in the woodstove burned hot. Babies - no, I can hardly call them babies anymore - toddlers Lafe and Kalib were happy and content.

Lafe's mother offered him a sip of soda pop from Burger King, where she and his dad had stopped on their way over to pick up their son after his overnighter here. Lafe gladly accepted.

We always cook a ham, along with potatoes, veggies, pies and such for New Year's, but, with all that has been going on lately, both Margie and I completely forgot about today's dinner. So, about 3:00 PM, we headed to KFC to get dinner there.

As we were leaving, I saw a marine, talking to a KFC employee who was taking a break. As I walked past, they suddenly hugged, to say goodbye. "I love you," the worker said. "I love you, too!" the Marine responded. I knew the moment was going to be brief, so, as quickly as I could, not realizing that my shutter speed had accidently been dialed back to 1/10th of a second, I pulled my G10 pocket camera from my jacket pocket and got off one blurry frame.

My impression was that the KFC worker had served in the military himself, for it seemed to be that kind of love - one soldier to another, one Marine to another - that had been expressed.

The Marine headed out the door toward his vehicle, where others waited for him. I stopped him before he could get there, and he was happy to pose for a snap.

Private First Class Bonty is stationed in North Carolina, is not from Alaska but has family in Wasilla and had come up on leave to visit. He departs for Iraq in two weeks.

There was much more that I wanted to ask him, of course, but Margie had taken a seat in the car and was waiting for me. He had people waiting for him.

I also wanted to go back into KFC, to talk to the worker who had hugged him, but his break was over and he had gone back to work. Plus, Margie was holding a box of hot wings that Jacob and Lavina had ordered, and we had to get it home while the food was still hot.

And this how the first day of year 2009 began for me, right here in Wasilla, Alaska.