Hit with the ball, the big wheelbarrow race, the sign lies, Mahoney horse, looking back at Barrow through the water glass

Kalib and I played catch. His objective was to dash in close enough and throw the ball hard enough so that instead of me catching it, it would bounce off my head.

Quite often, it did bounce off my head. Today, my artificial shoulder is very sore from throwing and catching the ball. I suppose that is not correct. The artificial shoulder has no nerves. There is no feeling in it. It cannot possibly be sore. It is the muscles and connections around it that are very sore.

Twice, Kalib knocked the lens shade off my lens when he struck it instead of my head.

Jobe and his grandma engaged in a series of wheelbarrow races. Jobe won every time. "Damnit!" Margie exclaimed after the last one. "I can't understand it. I run as hard and fast as I can and the damn little kid doesn't even run, he doesn't even walk he just cutes away in the wheelbarrow and yet, every time, he crosses the finish line before I do!

"Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!"

I was shocked.

Margie doesn't usually swear like that.

And it got worse after he beat her in the next race - the race that followed the final race.

I would quote her, but I don't use that kind of language in this blog.

The road ahead is not really closed at all. There is merely a detour around a construction area. Here we are, paying taxes to our Borough government and they use that money to lie to us.

The weather, by the way, is about 20 degrees cooler than it was on that glorious Memorial Day weekend just one week ago. It is good, though. As much as I enjoyed feeling those temps in the upper 70's, I feared the country would soon catch on fire and burn up.

So the cooler weather and the moisture is good.

And there is a Mahoney horse, not caring whether the road is open, closed, or detoured. 

Yesterday, I stated that I was going to use the day to completely work my way through my recent Arctic take. I only partially succeeded. As you can see in the above pictures, I allowed myself to be distracted often and frequently. I did very loosely edit all of my Point Hope pictures and I got into the Barrow pictures, but not very far.

At one point as I edited the Barrow pictures, I drank a glass of water. Just before I put the glass down, I noticed the screen looked kind of neat through the glass, so I took this picture through the water glass.

Here is an assignment for astute readers:

Once I get to Barrow in this blog, try to remember this picture and then see if you can match it up to the scene from which it comes. I might use this very picture or I might use a different frame of the same scene.

Anyway, see if you can match the two up.

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Exceedingly brief conservations with two moose, three horses and maybe another horse, maybe not; Bus, and Mary in the Grotto

After warming up the car for a bit, I jumped in and headed for coffee. I had barely gone a 100 yards or so down the road when I spotted a moose standing by the McDaniel's house. Like us, the McDaniels were among the first residents of this subdivision when it was new, nearly 30 years ago. 

Back then, perhaps because we all moved in at about the same time just after Charlie Bumpus had cut the new subdivision from semi-wilderness, we in the neighborhood all knew each other and we knew each other's kids. Pretty much everybody got along and looked after each other and their kids and it was a good place to grow kids.

It is not that way today. We who are still here from back then still know each other but for the most part this has become a neighborhood much like you might expect to find in California, where few neighbors know each other by name and everybody tends to live in their own world and at least a few live in paranoia.

I do know this moose, however. I have come upon this moose thousands of times over the past 30 years. It is a moose that always misinterprets things and each time I see it, it attempts to engage me in futile conversations that go nowhere.

So I hoped the moose would not see me, that I could drive by unnoticed.

"Hey, Bill!" the moose dashed my hope with a shout, "do you know whose kid this is?"

"What kid?" I answered, flummoxed, for I could see no kid.

"You blind?" the moose fired back. "This kid right here. The only kid in sight. For half-an-hour now, I've been asking the kid who his parents are, so I can take him home. Damn kid won't say a word."

"That's not a kid," I answered. "It's a lawn ornament."

"You think I'm stupid?" the moose retorted. "I know a kid when I see a kid. Now, whose kid is this?"

I had to get going and I could see that the conversation would be useless.

"Oh... yes...  I can see that you are right and I do recognize that kid. That's Alphonso, son of Rudy Guiliani, would-be President and the former Mayor of New York City."

"Okay, thanks! That's all I wanted to know," the moose said. It then turned its attention to the lawn ornament.

"Hey kid - pack a lunch bag of twigs and bark. We're going to New York City! I'm taking you home!"

I took advantage of the distraction and drove away as quickly as I could.

I stopped at Metro, bought a coffee and a cinnamon roll from Elizabeth and drove away. Remember how, just so short a time ago, it was completely dark during coffee break time? Well, look at it now.

I had not been by Grotto Iona for awhile or seen the Mahoney horses, so I thought I would swing by.

As I neared, I saw this school bus passing by the Grotto - A Place of Prayer. The driver did not stop to pray, but I'll bet he wanted to.

"Hey Bill!" the first Mahoney horse that I spotted shouted out at me. "Look at me! I know how to sleep walk! I'm walking in my sleep right now!"

"Pleasant dreams!" I shouted back.

"Hey Bill," the second horse shouted. "I know how to poop in the snow! Look, I just did."

I did not know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

"Hey Bill," this creature shouted out at me. "I've got ten bucks for you if you can tell me what I am, right now! No hestitation! Ten bucks!"

To be quite honest, I have not totally figured this creature out. Sometimes, I think its a mule. Look at the head - there is kind of a donkey shape to that head and mules are half donkey.

But I have known a few mules and they did not look quite like this.

Sometimes I have wondered if it might be some kind of horse bred special for cold climes. Before I made this post, I dropped by Facebook to see if Ron Mancil was there. Ron knows all the Mahoney stock well and I figured he could tell me.

But Ron was not on Facebook.

So I remain unsure.

"C'mon now, Bill!" the creature shouted back. "What am I?"

I had to come up with something, right or wrong.

"You're a creature of God!"

"Yes!" he shouted. "Come and get your ten bucks!"

So I got out of the car and went over. "Climb on my back and we'll go get it!"

So I climbed onto the back of this creature of God. The creature bucked ten times and on the tenth sent me flying nose first into the snow.

"Ha! A Creature of God!" the creature shouted. "Fooled you! I'm Satan's spawn!"

I staggered back to my feet. The final horse turned away from me. "What a dupe!" the horse muttered. "What a dupe! I have nothing to say to you. Nothing at all."

Humiliated, I climbed back into the car and pointed it toward home. Then I decided to stop for a few minutes at the Grotto, to see if I could regain my composure, to see if I could find some peace there.

Even though I am not Catholic and hardly know what to believe at all, everytime that I have ever stopped at the Grotto, even when beset by bitter grief, I have felt a bit of peace there.

This day was no exception.

Coming down Wards, I heard another voice shout out, "Hey Bill!" It was this bull moose, who has lost his antlers and must grow a new set.

"What?" I answered.

"Bethca can't see me!"

"I can too see you!" I countered.

"No you can't."

"Yes I can!"

"No you can't!"

"Yes I can!"

"No you can't."

I gave up, went home and ate some Kracker Jacks. 

I am getting tired of Kracker Jacks.

For four months now, I have been eating nothing but Kracker Jacks; Kracker Jacks everyday. Kracker Jacks for breakfast, Kracker Jacks for lunch, Kracker Jacks for dinner, Kracker Jacks for snacks.

I am tired of Kracker Jacks. And the prizes are nothing like they were when I was a kid.

I thought about getting my rifle and putting some moose on the table, but it was the wrong season for that.

So I tore open another box of Kracker Jacks.

Sure enough, there was a two-deminsional paper moose inside.

When I was a kid, it would have been a plastic moose - in three dimensions.

I tell you - America is going downhill!

I live on Sarah's Way in Wasilla, Alaska - so I know. No joke. I live on Sarah's Way. I am proud to say, though, that my street was named for a very good Sarah - Sarah Bumpus, daughter of the late Charlie Bumpus, a former mayor of Wasilla and builder of this subdivision.

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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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Icy roads, horse, another coffee gift; I find Margie watching a speech

A little after noon, as the cat, Chicago and I sat on the couch chill'n, Margie worked on the fire. Look at the intensity of the light coming through the back door window! We have not seen light this intense in quite awhile.

I was late getting to my walk. Not until about 3:00. As I began my way up this icy stretch of road, I saw a car coming towards me. I wonder who was in it? Where were they going? What did they wonder about me?

Immediately after my walk, I headed to Metro, fully prepared and expecting to pay for my own coffee today. But Elizabeth wouldn't let me. Someone in North Carolina had bought, not one, but two, coffee cards for me.

Boy, if this keeps up, I may never have to pay for a cup of Metro coffee again - and all thanks to anonymous blog readers.

Thank you, North Carolina reader.

Carmen was too busy visiting others to come to the window, but she did post for a through the Metro window study with this lady, whose name I forget, but I do remember that she teaches a sewing class.

Through the Metro Window Study, # 11,213: Carmen and the Sewing Class Teacher, Elisabeth busy in the foreground

As I prepared to drive out of the Metro parking lot, I saw the moon, over the trees.

On I drove, sipping my coffee, eating my cinnamon roll. When I came to this stretch of road, I thought to myself, "hmmmmm... this looks like a place where there might be horses up ahead."

What do you think, reader? Could I possibly have been correct? Could there be horses ahead?

Sure enough, there was. If you don't believe me, here's proof. How could I have known such a thing? The horses must have whispered it to me on the wind, which continues to blow.

On my way home. I had thought that I would listen to the President's speech at the Memorial Service for the shooting victims in Tucson, but it was not on the radio.

When I stepped back into the house, I found Margie watching the speech on TV. I sat down beside her. Right after I did, President Obama announced that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes. The TV camera zoomed in on First Lady Michelle Obama and Gifford's husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.

And this one from India:

Yesterday, I posted a picture of a young man and a girl standing amidst the ruins of Hampi, in front of a temple with a roof supported by elegant stone columns.

Today, I will take just a little more time so that I can tell you that the structure is called Vittala Temple, was built in the 15th century in honor to Lord Vishnu, and there is something special about those stone columns - music comes from them.

If one taps on the columns, they ring at different pitches. Our timing was not right to hear them, but there are groups of musicians who sometimes gather here and perform musical works on the columns. They do not use their hands as this couple is doing, but wooden mallets that better bring out the sound.

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Lisa Kelly, Ice Road Trucker and driver of India's most dangerous road, pulls up to Metro Cafe on horseback - followed by CNN

In answer to Saturday's quiz, I was hanging out at Metro Cafe on Friday when I heard someone shout, "horses are coming!"

I stepped out the door and this is what I saw - five women on horseback, coming down the bike trail. One of them, the second one from the left, looked like a truck driver. In fact, she looked like a truck driver who I had seen but a few nights before, on TV, facing terror on a narrow, windy, highway twisting through the Himalaya Mountains in India.

I seldom watch much TV, but this show caught my eye, because I have experienced the deadly madness of the Indian highway - although never in the Himalayas - and also because the truck driver was a beautiful, petite, young woman by the name of Lisa Kelly who lives right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

In fact, what I did not know at the time is that she lives right here, in my own neighborhood.

She gained her fame as one of Alaska's Ice Road Truckers, which has evolved to encompass the Deadliest Roads of all the world.

Now here Lisa was, riding her horse down the bike trail that passes by Metro Cafe.

Would she turn in?

Would she pull her horse right up to the drive through window and order hot chocolate for herself and a biscuit for her horse?

Lisa Kelly did pull in! And here she is, waiting in line at the drive-through with her friends and horses while Nola delivers an order to the customer ahead of her.

Sure enough, the horse ordered a biscuit. "Do we have any horse biscuits?" Nola shouted, "There's a horse at my window who has just ordered a biscuit!"*

Nola found a biscuit and served it to Sky, the horse.

"Damn good!" the horse neighed, after devouring the biscuit. "Now give me that one, too!"** Nola did. The horses behind would also all get their biscuits.

Camera and production people working on contract for CNN were following Lisa. I don't know when, but CNN plan to do a little story in which they follow Lisa as she takes them to her favorite places in Wasilla.

One of those favorite places is Metro Cafe. Another is Fat Boy's Pizza, which sits in the opposite direction from my house.

I bought a pizza there on the day Fat Boy's opened. If Fat Boy's is now one of the favorite places of the famous ice road trucker, Lisa Kelly, they must have figured out how to do it.

Sometime after I get back from my next trip to the Arctic Slope, I will go back and give them another try.

"Wasilla is MY city," she tells the camera people here, "and Metro Cafe is one of my favorite places!"

If one is going to sip on hot chocolate at Metro Cafe, it is more pleasant to sit and sip inside, rather than outside, in the saddle, on horse back.

Lisa... I will not tell you to stay safe out on those roads you drive. That is impossible and would defeat the whole purpose of your adventures. But please, always, do come safely home.

Outside, I had chatted briefly with photographer David A. Van Amber of Mankato, Minnesota. When I asked him who he was working for, he answered, "I'm hers," and nodded toward Linda Kelly.

I inquired a little further, and learned that this meant he was her photographer only, and that she is married.

Inside Metro, in what appeared to be an inside joke, he touched her on the shoulder and then they broke laughing.

Lisa autographs a baseball cap for David.

The cameraman depicts hard-working barista and writer in the making, Shoshana, making a smoothie.

When not out on the ice roads or the Himalayan highways, Lisa says she drops into Metro Cafe about three times a week. Hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls are her favorite.

She likes to come to Metro, she says, because, "sometimes you just want to go to a place where everybody knows your name."

When she said that, for some reason, I began to hear the theme song from Cheers in my head.

And it was a fact - every single person in Metro Cafe knew Lisa Kelly by name.

Lisa and Carmen.

Scott's dad is a truck driver and he drives Kenworth - the same kind of rig that Lisa drives. When he learned that she was a regular at Metro, he asked Scott to be sure to get a photo of Lisa with Carmen and him and send to him.

So, Scott's dad, this is for you.

My printer is broken and I am about to leave to the Far North for a couple of weeks or so, so it will be awhile before I can make a print.

Then I went back outside and to create one of my famous "Through the Metro window" studies with Lisa, Carmen, Scott, Nola and the crew that recorded her visit for CNN. I am afraid I did not get everybody's name, but the fellow at right is Russell J. Weston, of Weston Productions out of Anchorage, who contracted with CNN.

It had been decades since I had last seen him, but I first met him nearly 30 years ago when he was working as a photographer for the Anchorage Times and my family and I were living in two small tents, which we pitched here and there, trying to find a way to survive in Alaska.

There were three newspapers in Anchorage then and so whenever we would run out of money to buy gas for the Volkswagen Rabbit that had transported us from Arizona to Alaska, or food, I would stop in at the different papers.

If they had any extra assignments that staff had been unable to fill, I would take them and then they would pay me $25.00 per published shot.

That's how I met Russell, who is now an independent "An Emmy Award Winner" producer.

He gave his card and it says so right on it.

So here you have it:

Through the Metro Window Study, #3,444,899.23: With Lisa Kelly and CNN

And here is Scott.

Regular readers will recall the post when, after learning that he had cancer, Scott told me that in building Metro Cafe, he had created a stage for Carmen, that it was she who worked the magic that brought the stage and the plays that unfold therein to life.

On this day, another such play had unfolded on the stage that Scott had built for his beautiful and vivacious wife, Carmen.

So here is Scott, alongside the stage that he built.

As for Carmen, when I returned to the drive-through window at 4:00 PM for my regular, we talked a bit about the flurry of activity from earlier in the day.

"It will be very good for Metro Cafe," I assured her.

She remembered when Scott and she had opened the cafe, how much fun it had been and that now, what she wants, more than anything, more than publicity and success in business, is for Scott to get well.

That's it. She wants Scott to be well.

*Sometimes, when a quote cannot be precisely remembered, it must be made up. I am not saying that this is the case here, only that sometimes it happens.

**This is a definite, definite, quote, not made up at all. These are the very words that Sky the horse spoke.

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