How I took my R&R - part 1, the car ride: two walkers; the angry good humor man four-wheeler and mountain; the motorcyclist

Today will be a three-post day. In post one, I mentioned my great need to take a little break, to do something physical under the open sky. I lamented that whatever it was, Margie would not be able to do it with me, as physical activities remain beyond her as a result of the two falls she took in 2009.

I decided that before I did whatever it was I was going to do, I should take Margie out, on a drive, so we could do at least one little thing together. Remember that, until last night, we had been apart for the five full days that she had stayed in town to babysit Jobe.

We started by going to lunch at Taco Del Mar, where we bought one burrito and one quesadilla and split them both in half. They make huge burritos at Taco Del Mar and half with half a quesadilla is plenty.

As we drove there, we passed these two walkers, who themselves had just passed Metro Cafe.

When we reached the stop-light at Lucille and the Parks Highway, this was the scene. No big deal, the good humor man had just exited a parking lot right on the corner and had no choice but to wait in this configuration until the light changed.

I was attracted to the ice cream illustrations on the side of his truck and hoped that I would get a chance to get a better photo of them.

Soon, the light changed and we were on our way to Taco Del Mar. This guy on a four-wheeler was traveling in the opposite direction.

As you can see, the man in the good humor van was directly in front of me. The left lane was full of cars. My only hope was if, at the next stoplight it worked out that the cars on the left all stopped ahead of him so that I could pull up alongside.

It looked like it might.

In fact, it did. He came to a stop, a gap opened up to his left, I pulled into it and then shot this snap as I rolled slowly past him. As you can see, he was talking on the phone. I then heard him shout angry and loud just after we passed, but I could not make out his words.

Apparently, it would seem, he was angry that I had taken the picture of his truck. But, hey! If you are going to drive around with pictures of ice cream, sundaes, shakes, malts and banana splits painted on the side of your truck, then you just have to understand that people are going to want to take pictures.

Here I was, giving him free advertising, and here he was, shouting at me.

Oh, well. One should not expect too much appreciation in this world for good deeds done.

After that, I steadfastly decided that I was not going to take anymore pictures - not because the good humor man had intimidated me - no, not at all - but because I have a big backlog of pictures from the last couple of days that I have yet to deal with and I just did not want to deal with anymore.

So I shoved my camera deep into my pocket, where I could not easily get at it.

I left it there while Margie I and ate. It remained there afterward, as we drove toward Palmer. I saw many potential pictures, but, what the hell. I had enough.

I can't photograph every damn thing I see.

Then, just before we reached Palmer, we saw a young man on a skateboard being pulled pulled by a sled dog.

And there was no way I could safely extract my camera in time to take the picture.

When we turned around to go back, I took my camera out of my pocket and got it ready, just in case we should again see the young man on the skateboard being pulled by the husky.

We didn't. But I did see this man in my rearview mirror.

Now he will be remembered for all time and eternity.

"That's the guy who pulled his motorcycle right up behind Bill Hess on that day that he failed to photograph the skateboarder back in 2010," a fellow by the name of Galp will say to his wife, sometime in the year of 201,424,899,212."

"Yes," Galphina will agree. "Too bad that he missed that sled dog and skateboard, but what a fortunate man this is, to have traveled behind him afterward."

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.

A free cup of coffee; 65 degrees, four-wheelers, the Little Su, black cat outside, a golf course far away

Just as All Things Considered began on the radio, I pulled up to the window at Metro Cafe yesterday afternoon only to discover that someone had bought me a cup of coffee and a cranberry muffin. She did not leave her name, but remained anonymous. And the day before, I found a gift card waiting for me from Funny Face.

My goodness!

Thank you all!

As Sashana prepared to hand me the cup, she and Carmen posed for:

Through the Window Metro Study, #3.3333333... and so on to infinity

As I drove away, sipping, I saw these two - father and son, perhaps; uncle and nephew, maybe; perhaps just friend and friend, out enjoying the 65 degree weather on a four-wheeler.

Yes. You read me correctly.

SIXTY-FIVE DEGREES!

I thought for a moment that I had moved to The Bahamas.

But it was still Wasilla. I could tell by the four-wheeler dust. Can you believe it? Just a few days ago, the ground surface varied between frozen solid and muck, and now a kid on a four-wheeler can have a blast, kicking up dust.

As I crossed the bridge over the Little Susistna, I saw this man and this young girl walking along the bank.

It turned out that he is Mike and the young girl is his 26-month old daughter, Dagne. They live five miles from the river and this is the first time that they have visited it since before the snow came down in October.

Jimmy also ventured outside for the first time. He kept pawing at the window until finally I relented, but only under the condition that he would remain always in my eyesight.

Chicago observed, but did not follow. In the ten or 11 or 12 years that she has been with us, Chicago has ventured outside exactly once. As I have mentioned before and will someday tell in detail, here or in a book or both, it took us seven weeks and two days to get her back and then she was damn near dead - nothing but a dehydrated bag of bones.

She is fat now.

As eager as he had been to go out, once he got out, Jimmy was spooked. Something out there was frightening him. He refused to leave the porch.

As for Royce, there in the background, I would have been happy to let him out but he never wanted to venture past the window - which is odd for Royce.

I am happy to report that, at long last, he is gaining some weight. Yet, he is still skinny. He eats a ton of food - more than the other three combined, I would say, and it just seems to go right through him.

But he is gaining some weight, so he must be retaining some of it.

It was Caleb that had spooked Jimmy so. Caleb had knocked some balls way back into the trees, at the bottom of the little hill and had gone down to search for them.

Jimmy could not see him, but he could hear him. He did not know what he was.

A bear, maybe.

If Jimmy even know about bears.

I doubt that he does. How would he?

He probably imagined that Caleb was something even bigger and more frightening than the biggest, baddest, bear out there.

From behind my office window, Pistol-Yero calmly observed it all.

This is Caleb this morning. Where do you think he is and what is he looking at?

He is at IHOP. Caleb had to drop his car off at the shop at 8:00 AM. He asked me to pick him up and then he took me to breakfast, his treat. Caleb loves IHOP pancakes, so that's where we went.

Well, he's still looking. At what?

Passing cars, is all I can think of.

Or maybe golf courses, far away, like Pebble Beach, Tucson, or Scottsman's Head.

I return to Wasilla and then kick about around town

It's about time this blog just kicked around Wasilla for bit. I begin in the parking lot outside Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, where this little American flag fluttered in the breeze from the back window of someone's car.

And this was one of many scenes inside, where the ham, eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee were all very tasty. Margie won't return from being snowed in down in Arizona for another full week yet. I will probably wind up here again a time or two between now and then.

In the afternoon, I took a walk with a half moon above.

I had not walked far before this dog came trotting down the street, eager to meet me. I was afraid that it would want to follow me, but it only wanted to say, "hello." Then it turned around and returned from whence it came.

This dog's name is Sampson. He was walking with a woman named Summer, and a black and white dog named Cher.

A little further along, I came upon a young man sitting on a four-wheeler going nowhere. "You're not broke down, are you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I ran out of gas and then my battery died." Someone had gone to pick up what he needed to get going again.

"Bill is my name," I said.

"Good to meet you, I'm Eric," he said, as he extended his hand.

We shook hands.

"Good luck," I said.

Then I walked away, leaving him to sit on his machine to wait for gas and a battery.

An airplane flew overhead.

On my coffee break, I took the car to the gas station. As I was filling the tank, I heard the whistle and the clacking rumble of the train coming down the tracks.

"Damnit!" I said, because my camera was buried deep in my pocket and I did not know if I could get it out and turned on before the engines passed by.

It was a big challenge, but I did it and here is proof.

As always, when the train rumbled by, it gave me a thrill.

Then I was back in the car, and as I approached Kendall Ford, I began to pass a long truck, with a flatbed at the back. On the flatbed were two vans, both of which claimed to have fire extinguishers inside.

This is the trailer of the same truck. As you can see, it is an Alaska truck.

And this is the cab, now falling behind me.

And here I am in the parking lot outside of Pet Zoo, where I have stopped to buy Royce some good, healthy, soft, cat food. I did a self-portrait of myself, with this dog.

He must have been scraping ice. It's been so long since Wasilla has had anything but a token snowfall. Early December, maybe.

I passed these kids on their snowmachines.

I saw these people walking down Spruce Street.

Late at night, just before they closed, I drove to Dairy Queen, where a young woman named Ashleigh sold me a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. The temperature was right about 0 degrees (-18 F); much warmer than when I made my first trip to the new Dairy Queen last January.

Then, the temperature was about -30 (-35 C). Last winter was much colder than this winter, all over Alaska. This has been a warm winter for us, even as it has been a cold winter for people down south.

Poor Margie. Snowbound and freezing in Arizona.

I thought they were from Russia, but I was wrong; Muzzy pees on a mail box; Kalib gets into the news

I took my walk a little after noon. It was a warm and beautiful day, as you can tell by the fact that it was snowing. Snow only falls on warm days, never on cold. 

As I walked, I saw this couple walking the other way.

I have seen them before and I thought that maybe they were two of the many Russian immigrants that moved into this area after the "Ice curtain" that separated Alaska from the old Soviet Union melted.

But I wasn't certain.

So we stopped to visit. "Where did you originally come from?" I asked.

"A place very different than here," she answered.

"Russia?" I asked.

"No! No!" she answered. "Not Russia!"

She, Naziliya, or "Naza" originated in Azerbaijan; he, Leo, in Belarus - but they met in Moscow.

Eight years ago, a relative invited them to come visit in Wasilla.

"We never left," Naza said. "This is the best place - much better than Moscow."

Perhaps I would have learned more, but suddenly our conversation was disrupted when a bounding mass of fur plowed into the scene.

It was Muzzy! And he wanted all the attention. He got it. I then had to devote my full attention to getting him out of there before he loved anyone to death.

But Leo and Naza invited me to stop at their house anytime. So, sooner or later, I will do just that.

I don't mind walking with Muzzy when Jacob is along, because then Jacob does the hard stuff, but Muzzy can sometimes be too much for me to handle. Ninety-some percent of the time, he is a good dog. Although he does not want to, he will do what you tell him to do.

But sometimes... when he sees another dog... he goes nuts... he won't obey at all. He charges after that dog and there is no stopping him.

Once, before I fell off the chair and shattered my shoulder, I was walking him on a leash when a dog popped up. I shouted at him to stop, but I knew that he wasn't going to, so I gripped the handle of the leash as hard as I could and dug in my heels.

Muzzy hit the end of that leash full force and literally yanked me off my feet. I went sailing through the air and came down on my chest and tummy, still gripping the leash.

Now that I have a titanium shoulder, I can't do that again.

So I try never to take him on a walk by myself.

But Jacob is in Washington, DC. Caleb is sick. 

If I didn't walk him, no one was going to.

And he needed to walk.

He needed to pee on things.

So I took him - but I did not put him on the leash. He could yank my artificial shoulder right off - I am certain of it.

So I broke the leash law and took him unleashed - although I did carry the leash with me.

But, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, dogs run loose around here all the time.

Still, I felt terribly irresponsible.  On the good side, Muzzy once got smacked by a car in Anchorage and that taught him an indelible lesson about cars and traffic.

And, although you might not know from looking at these pictures, when traffic appeared, I always took note of Muzzy's position in relation to it, so that I could take action, if need be. Fortunately, he was always a safe distance away - usually out in the trees.

But I hope Caleb feels better tomorrow so he can take Muzzy walking  - and I will be very glad when Jacob gets home.

Along the way, we stopped to visit this gentleman, a friendly fellow who I sometimes come across. He was feeling very bad about his son. His son is in prison now but expects to soon be out on parole. The son and his lady - or maybe his mother, I got a little confused on this part - are trying to arrange it so that he can do his parole time in Georgia, where the lady, who may or may not be his mother, lives.

The rationale is that if the son goes to Georgia, he can get away from whatever influence it is up here that keeps getting him into trouble with the law.

The dad was not convinced. He figured he could find just as much to get into trouble over down there as up here.

"And they do harder time in Georgia," he said.

But he also mused about the possibility that maybe his son would not get out on parole, that, maybe, just before he was to be released, he would go wallop a guard or something. Then he would have to stay in prison.

"That would give him three squares, a roof, and a job," his dad explained.

Then Muzzy began to sniff in this spot.

"He smells the moose that just went through here," he said. "A cow and two calves."

Soon I saw this four-wheeler coming.

They waved, then stopped and backed up.

"You should have got a picture of us yesterday," the driver said. "We were pulling a couch with three people on it."

I am really sorry that I missed that picture, but, damnit, I just didn't know.

After the walk, I came back to my computer and stayed put until 4:00 PM, when I went out for the usual coffee break, accompanied by NPR's All Things Considered.

When I pulled up to the drive-through window, I saw these folks placing an order from inside the Metro-Cafe. The window was still closed. That's why you see those smudges on the left.

After Carmen opened the window, I conversed with them just a little bit. The man's name is Scott and one of the girls is named Maggie. I am not sure which one. And there were two more that didn't make it into the picture. Maggie could even have been one of them.

Scott named all five, but I only remember one.

When I was younger, I would have remembered all five - plus a dozen or two more, as well.

Now, I only remember Maggie.

I spent the day alone again, with the cats and Muzzy. Margie did go into town to help out, even though she did not feel that great. 

Anway, the new rug has been placed and all the painting has been done upstairs. So Lavina and Kalib came back here and they will spend every night here until Friday, to let their place air out.

Being a curious fellow who wants to know all about the world, Kalib got into his PJ's and then went straight for the newspaper - and promptly began to rip it to pieces.

Then Megan Baldino came on to anchor the evening news. He ignored her...

...and went to his mom, who gave him something good to eat.