I bike to Church, go on to Sunrise, see a four-wheeler through a pipe and am told a search is under way; Fat Boy's is gone, Sicily's is here

My modem went on the blink and ceased to blink, so, if I wanted to keep blogging, I had to take it back to GCI and trade it in for a new one. As I pulled out of the driveway to go and do so, I saw Kalib in the back of Caleb's truck. Caleb was nearby, keeping an eye on him.

After I swapped out the modem, I returned toward home along the edge of Wasilla Lake and shot a few blind frames. By "blind frames" I mean that I pointed my camera through the window and without looking in that direction myself, fired off a few frames, letting fate and serendipity choose the subjects and the composition.

Just a few weeks ago, Wasilla Lake was still coated in ice.

Now look at it. It has once again become:

"Wasilla Malibu."

I should do a series of studies of Wasilla Malibu throughout the summer - even though I don't expect to be here that much this summer. Still, I will shoot what studies I can, beginning with this one, which I shall title:

Wasilla Malibu Study #204: The red fire hydrant and the sunburnt boy.

Next I went to the Post Office. After I came out, I got into the car and started to drive away, but I saw the broader-faced of these two dogs. I braked to a stop, backed up, parked poorly, jumped out, scurried over and told the lady and the man kept by the canines that I would like to photograph the dog and then the other dog appeared and so I amended that to, "I would like to photograph your dogs."

So I did. I didn't learn much about the dogs, because, as I have already stated, I was parked poorly and needed to move my car before the wrong person came along, took offense, and shot me. I did learn that both dogs had just been groomed. They had been wearing heavy winter coats but now they were ready for summer.

I also learned their names, one was Sammy and the other was... the other was... the dog's name was...

Oh, good grief! I have forgotten!

This is terrible.

Not only that, I can't even remember which dog is Sammy and which is the other dog. 

But one of them is Sammy and whichever one he is, he is a mighty beautiful and fine looking dog and his temperament is pleasant.

Next I took a bike ride, my longest one so far this season. Here I am, headed down Church Road.

Here I am, about three or four miles further along, on Sunrise. A man and a boy pass by me on a fourwheeler and wave. I want to wave back, but worry that I might crash if I do because I am already pedaling and photographing and talking on my iPhone while surfing the web and to add one more element might just be too much.

So instead I nod my head and shout "hi!" hoping they can hear over the engine and wind noise.

Actually, I was not talking on my cell phone - or surfing the web. My iPhone was in my pocket. I just made that up to add a little bit of drama to the moment.

Our paths intersected again a little further down Sunrise, by the Mahoney Ranch, where the road has been torn up so that some new drainage pipes can be dropped in beneath it.

Turns out it was Dustin and his son. Dustin grew up just up the road. We talked a bit and he spoke about how wonderful it was to grow up here and I commented that he must have seen a lot of change and development and it must frustrate him a bit and he said, oh yeah, he had witnessed incredible growth and change and it was frustrating.

I was nodding away in awe at all the change he must have witnessed growing up here his whole life, especially considering all the change I had seen even though I grew up elsewhere and have only lived here a short time when suddenly it struck me that my short time living in Wasilla is getting close to 30 years and Dustin looks pretty young so I have probably been here longer than he has and have seen even more change.

As we were talking, a car stopped and a young Mahoney got out and then prepared to ride away on a bike. He said the people who had just dropped him off had told him that a two year-old child had wandered off and got lost at the s-curve, maybe a bit over a mile up the road. A search was underway and he was going to go help.

One never wants to hear or believe such news, but these things happen. It puzzled me a bit, though, because I had already pedaled through the s-curve and had seen no one. I knew that if a search had been going on there, there would have been people and emergency vehicles at that curve.

Maybe I had pedaled through before the search began. I did not think so, though. I thought perhaps he had received some inaccurate information. I hoped so.

The young man pedaled away.

I then took a picture of Dustin and his son through the new culvert pipe.

Then they turned around and headed off. I resituated myself on my bike and pedaled off in the same direction. I soon realized that they were going pretty slow and it would be an easy thing to catch them and then shoot a few frames as I pedaled alongside them.

So that is what I did. The Mahoney horses were in the field on the other side and I had planned to shoot a few pictures of them on the way back, but by the time I had shot my final frame of Dustin and son, I had passed the horses.

At that point, all I could think about was the story about the two-year old. I did not want it to be true. I did not think it was true. But I had to find out. If it was true, then I would have to do my part to help.

I could not leave with a two-year old child wandering in the woods, or being downstream in the frigid waters of the Little Su.

I pedaled on, toward the s-curve. Soon the Mahoney kid came into view, returning home. He said there was no one at the s-curve, no sign of any kind of search at all. The information he received must have been bad, he said.

Relieved, I pedaled on. As I reached the s-curve, an airplane passed overhead.

In time, I reached Seldon, which not so long ago became the Mat-Su Veterans Highway. It is hard to think of Seldon Street being considered a highway, but if it is a highway, then it is appropriate to name it for the veterans.

I took this picture right by Fat Boy's pizza. Unfortunately, Fat Boy's has gone out of business. It was said that he would reopen in a busier part of town in May, but he did not. I hope he yet does.

Now, there was a sign in the window that said, "Abby's Home Cooking, opening soon."

I wonder if Abby will serve breakfast? What will her hash browns be like?

Will she steal me away from the Family Restuarants? It would be an easy and good thing to leave the car behind and get on my bike in the morning and peddle the mile-and-a-half to Cora's.

When I got home, the house was chaotic. Jobe and Kalib were having a blast. It was after 7:00 PM. All the dishes were dirty, no one wanted to cook and dirty more dishes and anyway I now had pizza locked into my brain. So I ordered pizza from Sicily's, the place on the Parks Highway just past Church Road that I only discovered while driving home from Fairbanks May 15, following the honoring of Katie John.

They deliver, but the lady on the phone said it would take 45 to 55 minutes but the pizza would be ready in 15, if I were to pick it up.

So I picked it up. On the way home, I saw this dog.

I am very sad to have lost Fat Boy's, but glad to have discovered Sicily's.

It was very good pizza.

I ate too much, though, and then, to compensate, I had watermelon and cantaloupe afterwards.

After the gorge, I found Kalib and Caleb playing in the guest room. "Uncle!" Kalib would say. "Nephew!" Caleb would answer. Then they would reach out their hands and touch.

Jobe finished the day with some milk and then went to bed. Just as he is no longer sleeping in his cradle board, he no longer dines on mother's milk. 

Lavina had two goals in mind when she breast fed Jobe for over a year - the first was to provide him the healthiest diet possible, the second to give Jake and her a natural form of birth control.

It will soon be evident just how successful that part of the plan proved to be.

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It warms up and snows, Carmen and Shoshana, Heaven-bound Christian goes nuckin' futs, dog challenges me to game of chicken; I go bananas

I don't mind cold - in fact, I like cold (although I hate to be cold). But I was getting fed up with this weather: temperatures consistently below zero F - lately most often double digits below, but no real snow on the ground - only ice, crust and frozen earth. I was just getting tired of it.

I wanted some fresh, new, snow to cover it all up but no snow had fallen for weeks. Maybe a month or more. It's been a long time. Down south, I see lots of reports of heavy snow, but up here in the north we have a dearth of it.

And we wouldn't get any more until the temperature warmed up a bit. It never snows when it is cold.

And then... the temperature warmed up to ten degrees above zero - plenty warm enough to snow. And so it began to snow. It wasn't much of a snow, really. Just a dusting.

The ravens enjoyed it, though. Ravens always enjoy the weather, no matter what it is. Or so it seems. I've really never asked a raven about it, but whenever I see ravens, they always look like they are having fun.

I see them in all kinds of weather.

Always having fun.

Ravens enjoy life.

That's why I enjoy ravens so much.

Eagles may be more grand and spectacular, but ravens - they're the smart, clever, mischievous, happy ones.

And the Mahoney horses - they were enjoying the dusting of snow.

And then it turned into slightly more than a dusting. By morning, a few inches had accumulated. Margie took the car, and left me on foot to walk. That other car? That belongs to Caleb. It hasn't really run or gone anywhere in a couple of years or so.

Every now and then, he starts it up just to see if he can still start it up, but it has some problems. Some day, he says, he will sell it.

At 4:00 PM, I stopped at Metro Cafe. The temperature had now warmed up to 18 degrees F. Carmen and Shoshana were marveling over the warm weather and talking about how, when such temperatures first strike right after summer, they come to the window, open it and freeze, then shut it as quickly as they can. Now, 18 degrees feels warm to them. They don't even bother to close the window.

Then Carmen began to tease Shoshana about her new boyfriend. That's what she's doing here. She's teasing Shoshana. When I get a chance to blog the party they invited me to last weekend, I will introduce her boyfriend.

He is very lucky and at the party I told him so.

As Carmen teased Shoshana, I looked in my mirror and saw two of the girls who live just a short distance up the road coming for their afternoon smoothies.

As the girls drew near, Carmen continued to tease Shoshana.

Then the girls were in Metro Cafe. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but, just like that, the oldest and Carmen began to compare their finger nails.

At first, I tried to focus on Carmen's, which were bright red. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus a bit.

Still, you get the idea.

Then I tried to focus on the girl's nails, which were sort of a fluorescent lemon-lime. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus by quite a bit. Still, you get the idea.

I would have stayed longer, tried a few more shots and made sure I got the focus, but I was in the drive-through line and I did not want to make anyone coming in line behind me wait until I had my focus perfect, so I drove away with blurry images.

Some photographers aim for perfection. Me, I just want to get the idea down and to tell a story, even if imperfectly.

I hadn't gone far before I found myself stopped at a red light, right behind this car. This should all be quite legible in slide show view, but just in case anyone is having trouble reading everything at this small size, I will interpret the three signs as I understand them, beginning with the fish at lower left. The name, "Jesus" is written in the fish. This tells me that the owner of the car is a Christian.

The license tells me that the owner is "heaven bound."

And the little bumper sticker in the window tells me that the owner is going "nuckin' futs."

This one puzzles me a bit. I have never heard of either of these words, "nuckin'" or "futs."

What does this mean?

Please, someone, tell me!

I start to wander how the Mahoney horses are doing today, so I point the car in their direction. Along the way, I see many exciting and wonderful sights. Here is one of those wonderful and exciting sights.

"How you doing, Mahoney horses?" I shout out the window.

"We're doing good, Bill. How about you?" they neigh in return.

"Could be doing better," I shout back. "But I'm surviving. Don't know how or why, but I am."

"Good," the horses neigh back. "It's better to survive than not to survive."

These horses are wise.

And yet, the time always comes when each one of us, horse and human alike, does no longer survive.

Make of this contradiction what you will.

Next, I come upon a little dog, standing in the road, facing me as I drive towards it. I wonder what the dog intends to do? I slow to a modest speed.

As if I was going fast to begin with.

Why!? The dog comes charging straight at me! The dog wants to play chicken! Foolish canine! Can it not see that I am driving a hunk of steel and it is just a fragile little skin packet of bones, flesh, blood and fur?

I will win this game of chicken, easy.

But I don't win. I chicken out and brake to a complete stop.

The dog stops, too. I would call this a tie.

The dog disagrees. The dog calls this a clear win for the dog.

I'm going nuckin' futs!

Whatever that means. I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure that it describes me right now.

And this one from India:

See the hands on this side of the bananas? They belong to my nephew, Vijay Dixit, brother of Vivek who is husband to my sister's daughter Khena and first cousin to Soundarya, which in India makes him kind of like her brother.

One afternoon, Vijay treated Melanie and I to a feast of bananas - including bananas of varieties that we never see here in the US, let alone in Alaska.

For over a year-and-a-half now, Vijay has been waiting for me to post a picture sequence on that feast.

At the beginning of this week, I told him that I would post it for certain this week.

Each day, I thought that I would do it the next day, but then the next day there would be too many images in my regular, current, series for me to post the banana series, as to do so properly I must use several images.

Today, once again, my regular post came in with too many images. I don't know why. It just happens that way. Tomorrow is the last day of the week, so I decided I would post the bananas then. Then, this morning, it occurred to me that tomorrow is a doubly significant day and I must post something else.

So I decided I would wait until Sunday - but Sunday is next week.

So, in order to somewhat keep my promise to Vijay and get at least some banana material up this week, I now post this picture of Vijay in a Chennai fruit store, looking for just the right bananas to stuff into Melanie and me. 

I promise, Vijay - I will keep Sunday's Alaska material light - maybe just one image, perhaps two, no more than three, and I will post the full banana experience that you treated us to.

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Finally, I get to see Shoshana again - the Chugach Mountains and the beauty that surrounds us here in Wasilla; kid on four-wheeler in the same place

There is a certain bond between Shoshana and me, and I had not seen her for a full week. I think the bond exists in part because she is a young writer with natural talent who stands right at the threshold of the possibilities before her and I am one with the larger part of my career behind me, but still going, still driving, with many things to do yet.

So, even though our entire contact in life takes place entirely through this window, or, occasionally, across the counter inside, on the average of three or four times a week, if I am not traveling, for total of maybe ten minutes a week, if that much, that is enough time for us to give each other encouragement and we do.

Plus, there are people whom you meet that you just connect with and for me, Shoshana is such a person.

BUT - Shoshana is on a new schedule. On the days that she does not go to school, she comes in early in the morning and she leaves somewhere around 1:30 or 2:00 PM - well before I come in to get my cup at 4:00 PM.

So I had not seen her all week, and I had missed her. "Shoshana misses seeing you!" Carmen* told me Friday. "Saturday she works until 2:45. Promise me that you will come before that, so she can see you."

It would throw my schedule off a bit, but schedules are one thing - friendships are another. And I wanted to see her. On Saturday, I pulled up to the Metro window at about 2:30. When she spotted me, Shoshana began to jump up and down, waving, shouting out in a glad voice and Carmen did, too. The customer in the background seemed very amused by it all.

We were happy to see each other. It felt good to be greeted like that.

See you next Saturday, Shoshana. Same time, same place.

And keep writing, talented young friend.

So I headed home, sipping the Americano that Shoshana had prepared for me, listening to Garrison Keillor, since it was too early for the news.

On the last leg of the drive, I came down Seldon, toward where the Chugach Mountains tumble off to the east.

My normal practice would just be to shoot a few frames through the window as I drove on, listening to the news. But the news was not on. So I stopped, got out of the car, put the 100-400 zoom on my camera and shot a few frames.

Over the past couple of years, I have often heard or read disparaging things about the little community in which I live. I have traveled Outside and have had many people cast judgment upon me, just because I live in Wasilla.

But... my friends... this is what living in Wasilla means to me.

Whatever absurdities may sometimes happen down in this valley, however mocking of the land much of the development might be, we are still surrounded by beauty here - 100 percent of the time. It is always there. Day and night. Beauty! It never goes away. We know it, we feel it.

And when you go beyond the beauty that your eye can see from here, guess what you find?

Alaska. More and more of Alaska, reaching out, stretching ever further beyond in all its wild magnificence. More often than not, it is very difficult to get to and get into, but every inch of it is beautiful to the most exquisite degree.

Even when we can't see it, we feel it.

So take that, Maureen Dowd!

I have been to your New York City and I love it, cherish it, find wonder and amazement in it and the pretzels there were once the best in the world, but you will never find anything like this in New York City.

No, no, no! Nothing at all!

It does not exist there.

But it exists here.

In Wasilla, Alaska.

I still needed to listen to the 4:00 o'clock news - All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, but I had already drunk my coffee.

"Well," Margie said, "we could go get some lunch and sit in the car and eat it and listen to the news."

So we did, I heard the news. For the most part, it was not good. I still enjoyed it.

On the way home, as we came down Seldon, right at the very place where I had taken the pictures of the Chugach, I saw this kid on this small-wheeled four-wheeler.

*As should be clear to all regular readers, I also share a bond with Carmen and when I do not find her at Metro, I miss seeing her, too.

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they will appear larger and look better

A pocket camera glimpse back at the gathering before I get going for real; roadside scenes while on coffee break in Wasilla: Baby Jobe in green

That's Harold Frost of Old Crow, Yukon Territory, playing fiddle on the left and Chester Fields of Fort Yukon on base. Yesterday, I stated that today I would begin posting my Gwich'in Gathering images in earnest, but I am not yet ready to do that.

I was very lazy yesterday and it was the only day this week that I would have Margie home with me. I did not even begin to transfer the 360 gigabytes or so of high resolution, RAW images from my big pro cameras from the portable hard drive I took to Fort Yukon into what for the moment is my big working harddrive attached to my desktop computer, until about 8:00 PM.

Those images were still transferring when I went to bed about 12:30 AM. Now I must put them in my photo editing program and start the task of editing and processing and I feel completely overwhelmed. It feels like a task that would take a month to do right.

The very thought makes me feel like I just want to go back to bed and sleep for a year or two.

That's another thing that I really like about my tiny pocket camera - the Canon s90. Not only is it tiny and light, but there is no way to shoot pictures fast with it, so you don't get that many. The ones that you do get have nowhere near the resolution of those taken with my pro cameras, so they do not bog the editing program down and they are quick and easy to work with.

I didn't use the pocket camera much in Fort Yukon, but I did keep it in my pocket at all times and every now and then I did pull it out and shoot a frame or two - such as in this case.

There was a table in front of the fiddle player. I wanted to get a shot from under the table but there were speakers and other gear beneath it, so it was a whole lot easier just to reach under there with my pocket camera, frame it in the LCD and take a snap than it would have been to have crawled under with all that stuff with my big gear and then let rip with bunch of frames.

So for today, I am just going to use  the few scenes associated with the gathering that I did with the pocket camera. Once I get some editing done, you will see Harold and Chester again, along with a whole lot of other folks.

Harold did not come to the home of Ben and Carrie Stevens, my hosts, with his fiddle, but when we all gathered there we could still hear the fiddle music in our heads.

Little two-and-a-half-year old Alex, "Sunshine," must have heard the music very clearly and he remembered well how people had jigged to that music. So the sound and the memory went down to his feet, took hold of them and suddenly he began to jig in the kitchen. Soon, Sunshine had three women dancing with him.

I wish I could dance like that.

This is Jessica Black, who served as Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 2000. Jessica also spent part of the gathering camped out in the Stevens home in the room across the hall from mine. We became friends, just like that.

She received the scarf tied as a band around her head at a give-away held in honor of a deceased baby boy. After she put it on, she did a short dance, Gwich'in style.

My host, Ben Stevens, preparing moose-rib soup to feed to those gathered at the gathering. Mighty tasty. Excellent ribs. I wish I could have some now. I can't, so maybe I will go to Taco Bell instead.

Ben had to leave early to return to his fish camp far down river, near Stevens Village, his original home.

Just to remind you that I am now back home:

Yes, I am in Wasilla and yesterday after stopping in at Metro to say "hi" to Scott, Carmen and Sashanna, I drove away with an Americano and then took a short drive to drink it. Along the way, I saw this car, parked with its lights on at a corner.

And I saw that someone had rebuilt the memorial for the young woman and her unborn child who had been killed in a collision at Church Road and Schrock. Two crosses used to rise from this memorial, but vandals broke them and messed up the scene.

Now it had been put back together, but without the crosses.

On my last day home before I left for Fort Yukon, I took Margie to Metro and as we waited in the drive-through, a succession of police cars and emergency vehicles screamed by, red lights flashing. A bit later, on our drive, we had just turned off Schrock Road onto Lucille Street when we saw that the road was blocked ahead and red lights were flashing.

We detoured elsewhere through the neighborhood to avoid the scene and then I forgot about it. I did not know what had happened. I never thought about it again until yesterday, when I drove past it for the first time since my return. This is what I saw.

Given the location, my immediate thought was that it had probably been a four-wheeler accident and that the person who had died had been young.

I looked it up online after I got home. Indeed, 17 year-old Cheyanne Jorge had died after rolling her four-wheeler. Her passenger, also 17, was treated at the hospital and released.

Horrible.

Early this morning, I drove Margie into Anchorage so that she can spend the rest of the week babysitting Jobe. Here he is, dressed to match the bathroom colors.

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Even though I had to worry about chips and dings, I witnessed some pretty marvelous sights from the Kendall Ford loaner car

Last week, I brought up the fact that the "check engine" light had come on in our Escape and that I had taken it to the shop at Kendall Ford, got the problem diagnosed, made an appointment and had then dropped it off very early in the morning for what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half to three hour repair. Yet, come the end of that day, I learned that it had proven much more complicated than that and I could not pick up the car. They would have to keep it for another day.

I had planned to follow the story through, but I got sidetracked by matters such as Jobe's baby shower and my Mother's Day tribute.

So today I got up thinking that, concerning this story, I had blown it. The time had passed. It was too late to post it now and that I might just as well forget about it, pretend that it never happened and let the pictures that I took to illustrate it slip quietly away into that vast, unseen, archive that holds the big majority of images that I have ever shot.

Then I decided, what the hell - this is not a daily newspaper, this is my blog, I can do with it whatever I want. I don't always need to be perfectly timely. Ultimately, my goal is to continually wrap the past and the present together here, anyway, so what's wrong with wrapping in the recent past?

Anyway, no matter how current the images and the memories, by the time I post them here they are the past. So, here goes:

Come the next day, I waited and waited for the call that would tell me the car was done. My plan then was to ride my bike the five or six miles to Kendall and pickup the car. Or, if Caleb was awake, I might have him take me. Instead, near the end of the day, I got a call from Mark, my intermediary at Kendall, and he informed me that in the process of making the repair, the mechanics had accidently ruptured the fuel line and it was leaking gasoline.

They had ordered a part from Anchorage, but would have to hold the car for at least one more day, possibly two.

Mark said they could provide me with a loaner car and they could send someone to my house to pick me up and drive me over. "Okay," I said.

This is Ginger, the driver who came to get me. Ginger spoke with a strong southern accent.

Ginger has two jobs at Kendall - driving customers like me back and forth and doing custodial work. 

"It's either cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a costumer," she expounded. "Which one do you think I'd rather be doing?"

Yet, driving customers was not so pleasant that morning when two women were killed in a head-on collision just a few hundred yards up the Park's Highway from Kendall Ford. It was a busy morning, but she found herself repeatedly stuck in slow traffic as she crept by the accident scene.

Her theory was that the woman who had crossed over the suicide-left turn lane and into the oncoming traffic must have been struck by a medical problem. Otherwise, how could anyone possibly make such an error?

One of the customers she gave a ride to later that same day believed otherwise. He thought it was most likely driver distraction. His job, perhaps as an EMT, had put him as a first responder at many accident scenes and in such cases it almost always proved to be driver distraction, he told her - something like eating a hamburger, drinking coffee, putting on makeup or, most often these days, talking on the phone.

While she respected his expertise, she was not convinced. "If you start to cross four lanes of traffic because you get distracted from drinking a cup of coffee, you're going to figure it out and you can through that cup of coffee aside and save yourself. I still think it was probably a medical problem."

Before she could expound further, her cell phone rang. It was the office, calling to tell her she had a visitor waiting for her. She speculated as to who it could be - a higher up from the work place, perhaps, or, "it might be my boyfriend."

After we turned off the Park's and drove past the Kendall dealership toward the big shop at the back, she studied the cars in the parking lot. "Yep, it's my boyfriend," she said. "There's his car." Then she stopped to let me out. "You have a right good day, sir," she said with that southern accent.

"Where are you originally from?" I asked.

"Viriginia," she said.

Before I went into the office to do the paper work to pick up the loaner car, I saw Mark looking at our Escape. The way he held the blanket kind of reminded me a bit of someone about to drape a shroud over a dead body. I walked over to investigate.

Mark points toward the original problem, before the fuel line was ruptured, and explains how all that stuff that in front of his finger had to get removed before they could replace the bent camshaft in the solenoid. 

This is Sharon, who took care of the paperwork for the loaner car. It was regular rental-car paperwork, it's just that instead of me, Kendall and Ford would pick up the tab. If I heard it, I forgot the name of the lady in pink. She did say that she was glad that it was Sharon who was working with me and who would be in my blog, because she does not think she photographs well and so does not like to appear in pictures.

We had to do a walk around to look for dings, dents, nicks, chips, scrapes, cracks and scratches before I could sign off and take the car. Sharon was very thorough in noting all the little mars, including ones that I would never spotted if she had not pointed them out to me.

On the one hand, this leaves one feeling grateful because now you know that these almost invisible mars are not going to get charged to you, should someone find them on your return. On the other, it makes one nervous, a bit afraid to drive the car much at all because there's no telling what she might discover when you do return it.

While it was a loaner car, the driver is still responsible for any damage it sustains while in his custody. My insurance would be there for big things, but there is always a deductible and I did not want to have to pay any deductible.

I signed for it, then took the car and drove away - feeling very nervous. Remember Larry, the Harley rider who came here from Florida and then gave up motorcyle riding, in part because the air above highways here tends to have an abundance of little rocks and gravel flying through it?

I am certain that you have noticed the cracks that lace our windshield along with the chips that pock it.

Yet, it was not long until I found myself in a parking lot as a train came rumbling past. This is that train, as seen through the windshield of the loaner Escape. I must admit, it is worth the risk, to be able to sit in a loaner Escape and witness such a wonderful, dramatic and exciting sight such as this.

That afternoon, I drove the loaner Escape up to the drive-through window at Metro Cafe. Branson, Carmen's four-year old son, rode this bicycle right up to the front of the loaner car, looked at me, smiled, and wiped his nose.

As I drove off with my coffee, I saw these two, through the window of the loaner Escape.

Then I saw this girl walking...

...and this guy riding his bike.

All these things I saw from the loaner Escape. 

When I took it back two nights later, it was given another thorough inspection. Not a single new ding was found in it.

Here I am, back in my own red Ford Escape. I have just driven away from the Ford Kendall shop and am waiting at the intersection so that I can turn onto the Park's Highway. It will be a long wait, as there will be no breaks in the traffic for many minutes.

Given the view, I do not really mind. In fact, if I could show you this picture at its original size, you would see that the words above "MOTEL" on the sign say, "Alaskan View."

Except for the motel, it was a grand Alaskan view indeed.

Oddly enough, every single view that we have around here is an Alaskan view.

Then, of course, someone had to turn in and cut off that view. Fortunately, he would not cut it off for too long.

Unfortunately, the next guy cut the view off even worse. Yet, look at the pleased smile upon his face - it looks like he is returning to Kendall from a test drive in a new car.

I wonder if he bought it?