Passing airplane still generates magic; a man, a horse, and Catahoula; two girls on a riverbank; four-wheeler in the river; ice cream on the face

Despite all the work facing me, I remained lazy throughout the remainder of the day. One should not work on magical days such as yesterday, especially when his grandsons are present.

I was out in the back yard with Margie and the boys when an airplane passed overhead. I remembered when I was a child how wonderful, mystical, and magical it was to see an airplane pass overhead. What with their constant viewing of videos, the trips to the 3D movies and all that, could Kalib and Jobe ever possibly get that same feeling from watching an airplane pass overhead?

Ha! Kalib got the feeling!

And so did Jobe!

In the afternoon, I took off on a 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't long enough. It was too short. I wanted to go and go, but I figured I would be gone too long. Down on Sunrise Drive, I saw a man, a horse, and a dog coming toward me.

It was these three - the man is Jim, the horse is Warrior and the dog is Chain. Chain is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a breed that I had never heard of.

"I never thought I would wind up with a Catahoula," Jim said. "But I did."

I looked Catahoula up on Google and found they originated in Louisana. Here is part of what I learned about them:

The Catahoula Leopard Dog is independent, protective, and territorial. Loving with its family and all people they know well and reserved with strangers (this would include strange children)...

These dogs need attention. This is not a dog that can be tied to a doghouse, fed, and ignored. Chaining and or ignoring a Catahoula Leopard Dog will either make them shy or aggressive. They need human companionship. This breed needs direction, training, something to do, people, attention...

A Catahoula Leopard Dog enjoys the company of a good horse...

Maybe I made up one of the above lines.

I pedaled until it looked like the road was about to end in someone's yard.

On the way back, I decided to stop, climb up the rise over the road and see what I could see. This is what I saw - the Little Susitna River, with two girls sitting on the bank. Hence, this series of studies, beginning with:

Two girls on a riverbank, study #4,328: They stick their feet in the water.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #2: The sky overhead.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #282,881: they are joined by a dog.

I shot this four-wheeler image as I pedaled across the bridge that crosses the Little Su.*

*In comments, reader AkPonyGirl has pointed out that it is illegal to drive a four-wheeler in the Little Su, due to the damage they cause to salmon spawn.  Thank you, AkPonyGirl.

About 10:00 PM, I mentioned the words, "ice cream cone" and Kalib got excited. So I loaded up the boys, left Margie home for some moments of solitude and headed off to Dairy Queen. On the way, we saw a rainbow and began to chase it.

We did not catch it, but we did overshoot Dairy Queen, so we turned around at the next stoplight and headed back in the direction of ice cream.

At Dairy Queen, we got our cones, then parked for awhile. In the outside driver's rearview mirror, I saw two Dairy Queen workers, taking a break.

The boys and their cones. After I took this picture, I started the car back up and drove home.Jobe was a sticky mess when we got home, but the cone made it all the way without being dumped on the floor, in his lap or on Kalib and that was a first.

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Ice cream is spilled, lips are kissed; a cop helps out; Jobe rests on the couch

Readers who were here yesterday will notice that I have slightly retreated from my summer retreat in which I have resolved to post only one, two, or three pictures per day and have instead posted four. It is because of these two. I did not expect them to appear in my life yesterday, but they did.

It is hard to limit my posts when they are here.

I could easily make this a 15-picture post, all pictures devoted exclusively to these two, but, given the fact that I am in summer retreat and worse yet that I am dealing with such a computer nightmare, I restrain and hold the total number of images to four.

Somewhere around 8:00 PM last night, Lavina called to say that, due to a mishap in the improvements they are putting into their house, they had lost their flow of water and could we take Kalib and Jobe for the weekend?

We agreed to meet her and the boys in Eagle River,  a little more than half-way between Wasilla and Anchorage. I had too much work to do to go and was going to let Margie go by herself, but then I thought about ice cream. I thought about how, if I went, we could stop and get four ice-cream cones before we returned to Wasilla.

What great fun that would be! The boys, Margie and me, all eating ice cream as we drove home, taking in the scenery.

So I put my work aside and I went.

But when we found them, the boys were already eating ice cream. Lavina had bought it for them at McDonald's in Eagle River. Or at least one of the boys was eating ice cream. The other had been, but had apparently had his fill of it and so had discarded it.

We transferred them from their mother's car to our car. Then their mother kissed them goodbye. We drove off, then stopped at McDonald's where Margie and I bought two ice cream cones, one for her and one for me.

The life of a freelancer being what it is, that ice cream about flattened our bank account and we are now fending off angry calls from creditors. But I expect to receive a good check Monday and everything should be good for awhile after that - I think I have enough work lined up that we will be fine for the remainder of the summer.

Fall will be another question. By fall, I must have the foundation laid to begin to make a living from an online base, for I expect my old ways of making a living in paper publishing to be completely dead by then.

That's what this retreat is about - not about relaxing and getting rest. This retreat is a retreat to work hard, to do what needs to be done now and to figure out what needs to be done in the future and how to do it.

On the way home, we passed by this scene. Someone had experienced difficulties and by all appearances the cop was helping them out. The LCD dash screen is a little hard to read at this size (easy at slide show size) but it states that is 9:10 PM and the temperature is 72 degrees.

Yes - after my note yesterday that we had not seen anymore 70 + degree days following the memorial weekend, yesterday really heated up. The sun blazed down upon us. It was damned hot and we sweated like crazy. I don't know how hot it got, but by 9:10 it would have cooled off a bit so I think we might have made it to the upper 70's.

Today, it is raining. My iPhone says it is 62 degrees in Wasilla.

I feel bad for all the people of Minot, North Dakota. How unbelievable are the pictures coming out of Minot?

And here is Jobe, at the house.

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Fall of the ice cream cone; rise of the rainbow; some slept through the night and some didn't

There was one bag of corn chips. Both of them wanted it.

So Margie cooked some broccoli. I was a little skeptical, but Jobe loved it.

So did Kalib. I was just amazed. I hated all such vegetables when I was small. I liked peas, though. And green beans.

After they did such good job at eating their broccoli and potatoes, I figured the boys deserved a treat. So I loaded them and Margie into the car and off we went to Dairy Queen. I ordered small cones dipped in chocolate for Margie and I.

"Baby cone, baby cone," Kalib said as I did.

So I ordered baby cones for Kalib and Jobe.

They were greatly enjoying them but then, as we drove up Church Road towards home, Jobe began to shriek. Yep, he had dropped his cone. We could not see it anywhere. When we got home, I found it lying beneath my seat. Amazingly enough, it was in pretty good shape. Only about a teaspoon of ice cream had leaked onto the floor and there were just a few flecks of dirt and grime on the ice cream and cone.

I gave it to Caleb, he cleaned off the flecks and ate what was left of it.

Jobe, standing at the door.

A bit later, I found them all in the back of Caleb's truck. Kalib and Caleb were grabbing at mosquitoes. Jobe was feeding them. 

Yep. The mosquitoes are back.

Kalib, Jobe, and the pickup truck. Mosquitoes are flying.

I left Caleb and Kalib to fend for themselves and brought Jobe into the house to get away from the mosquitoes. His grandma snatched him right up.

The news was on, and at the very moment that I took this picture, a story came on about a four-year old boy who had been run over by a car in Anchorage. A reporter was at the hospital and right after the story began, she reported that she had just gotten word that the boy had died.

In this way, it was a very hard day for Anchorage. A man crashed his Cessna 180 on the railroad tracks and it exploded and incinerated. He died, his mother died, and three of his children died. His wife and one child had been left behind to mourn. 

He was reputed to be a skilled and safe pilot and a good Christian. He had gone to Russia many times to preach the gospel as he believed it and, according to the news, everybody who knew him and his family thought highly of him and all of them.

Also, in recent days, five climbers have been killed on Denali and two more on a smaller mountain that stands near it.

It is a frightening world that we bring our children into, yet we always keep doing it and they always go forth into the risk and danger - which is exactly what we want them to do.

To climb Denali was once a goal of mine, but May is the month to do that and May always had other conflicts and then a time came when I decided that window was behind me and that I would set my sights on lower mountains, mountains to hike in, and be content with that.

Oddly enough, hearing about these people dying on Denali has rekindled my desire to climb the mountain. If I do, I've got to do it soon, like next May, before I get much older.

I'm not saying I will, but the urge just seems to be growing stronger and stronger.

Uncle Caleb and Nephew Caleb were rewarded for their battle by a magnificent rainbow. I discovered this later when I found them in the house and Caleb showed me a pic he had taken of Kalib on his iPhone. I immediately rushed them back outside, but the rainbow had greatly faded now, and because he knew that I wanted him to be, Kalib pretended to have no further interest in the rainbow at all.

For those who are Facebook friends with Caleb, you will be able to find his much more magical and magnificent iPhone picture of the rainbow and his nephew there.

The last time Jobe overnighted with us, he was still sleeping in his Apache cradleboard. Now that he has outgrown it, we were not quite sure where he should sleep. Margie decided that she would sleep with him in the guest bedroom. She propped a mattress against the wall, pushed the bed against it and there the two slept - he protected on one side by her body and on the other by the mattress.

This is how I found them this morning.

One single "click" from my camera and Jobe woke up. He instantly rose up and extended his arms over his grandma outward toward me. I had no choice but to let my camera down and to pick him up and hold him.

I carried him into the living room, we took a seat on the couch and with my left hand I activated my camera. This is just how it is between Jobe and I.

It has been this way since he became conscious of the world about him.

I use the lens cap on a Canon lens, but I lose lens caps all over Alaska and elsewhere, so I often must make do with whatever brand of cap I can find.

Kalib slept quite a bit longer yet. This is where he spent the night - next to me on the master bed in the master bedroom. Jimmy and Pistol-Yero also slept with us. Chicago usually sleeps here on this bed, too, but she has an irrational fear of little people and so would not come him with Kalib on the bed.

She stood in the hallway, complaining, for maybe two or three hours right during that part of the night when a person lying in bed really wants to be bothered by nothing, when he wants to sleep soundly.

Kalib slept right through all the cat-er-wailing, but not me.

Margie says Chicago woke her up, too, but Jobe slept peacefully through the night.

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Airplanes, ice cream and the need to escape; the final picture of the living Royce

I just want to escape for a bit now - not forever, not for years, not for months, perhaps not even for weeks. Days would be good, but I don't have days to spare. Hours, perhaps?

Just for a bit - and then while I am in escape to imagine that this little bit is forever. I want to climb into my airplane as I once used to do and go up there, into the clouds, into the sky, as I witnessed someone else do here, above me, late yesterday afternoon or early evening as I pedaled my bicycle.

But I want to be more free than the folks in this plane were. They were in the air, but they were completely controlled by people down on the ground, people who gave them orders as to just what altitude, heading direction and speed they could fly.

I want to be in the air, my hand on the stick and my brain free to choose what direction to push that stick and if I should push it that way and then change my mind and decide I want to go the other way and climb or descend to a different altitude than that is what I want to be able to do.

I want to fly into the updraft and then just let go of the damn stick altogether and let the wind carry me; see how high it will lift me into the sky before it turns me loose, and then to see what the view looks like from that perspective. There will be many mountains to look at, I assure you, and fields of ice and snow. 

I know, because it has happened just this way before.

And if I should come upon an eagle, bald or otherwise, I want to push the stick so that the airplane goes into a hard bank, to fly a tight circle with the eagle at center, it's pivot point, close enough to my cockpit window so that I can see the eye that it locks upon my eye.

When this happens with an eagle, even though one is flying a 360 degree circle around it and it is matching the turn degree for degree, the eagle appears not to move at all. The only hint that the eagle is rotating is that the areas of light and shadow upon the eagle change. Only the rays of the sun mark its turn, for its eye stays connected with yours, it's eye looks right into your's, and does not blink. It's wings do not flap, it's body appears to remain stationary.

But my airplane is broken and I cannot do such things now.

Yet I must break away for a bit.

What will I do?

Will I ride my bike, on and on, never stopping?

No, I am not fit enough right now to do that.

Will I walk, hike, up in the mountains?

I don't know.

But I've got to break free for a bit, somehow.

Of course, there is always ice cream. We have a Dairy Queen in Wasilla and I love their soft ice cream. This is from one week ago. Jacob, Kalib and Jobe were visiting us while Lavina went to Homer with Sandy for Sandy's early bachelorette party. She is getting married September 4 at Lake Lucille, here in Wasilla.

So us boys went and got ice cream. The chocolate coated cone Jacob is grabbing is for him. The other one is for Kalib. The milkshake, strawberry, is for me. Poor Jobe! He got none.

He didn't feel bad, though.

It didn't bother him at all.

Kalib, with his ice-cream cone.

Remember the patch of dandelions in the black and white series that Royce defended from Happy the dog and then floated above? This is the very patch, 15 years later. And that's Kalib in it, the little boy that has emerged from the baby that Royce loved so greatly.

If Margie were not spending her week days in town, babysitting Jobe, there would not be so many dandelions here. She loves to spend the days of late spring pulling dandelions out by the roots. There have been years where it has appeared that she has gotten them all, but, of course, with dandelions, you never get them all.

The dandelions are always there, surviving, even when not seen, even when the ground is frozen solid and the snow piled atop it. The dandelions are there, preparing to proliferate again. To a young boy, this is not a bad thing.

To a young boy, it is a magical thing, one that supplies him with many tiny parachutes to launch into the breeze.

Oh, dear! I have gotten things completely out of order! Chronologically, this picture should have preceded the ice cream shots. In it, we have just begun the trip to Dairy Queen. Muzzy needs a little exercise, so he runs alongside the Tahoe as Jacob drives down Sarah's Way toward Seldon. When we reach Seldon, Jacob will stop the car and Muzzy will get in.

Then we will continue on to buy the ice cream.

Now I am in the car. I have just stopped by Metro Cafe where Carmen and Sashana presented me with smiles and a cup, plus a muffin and I did not pay for either one. Someone out there, one of you my readers who refused to identify yourself, felt badly when s/he read about Royce and so bought this cup and muffin for me.

It was a very nice thought and I thank you.

So I proceeded on, to escape as best I could while drinking from the cup and eating the muffin. I passed by Grotto Iona, the Place of Prayer, and there were horses there.

On my way towards Grotto Iona, I came upon a place where a vehicle had gone off the road and was down in the bushes. A tow truck had just arrived and there were a few guys there. Before I could safely turn on my camera and get it ready, the picture was behind me.

On the way back, I knew they were there. As I passed, I lifted the camera as high as I could, hoping that it would catch the vehicle down in the bushes, but it didn't.

Out of chronologically order again - here is Carmen, before the Grotto and the horses, before the vehicle off the road, even before I got my cup and muffin. I have not even reached the drive-through window yet.

Metro Cafe, headed to drive-through window study, #32.9: Carmen and Branson

Financially, though I have managed to go far and do many things, these past few months have been hell. But finally my latest contract has been activated and yesterday I got my first check. I took Margie to the movie in Eagle River - Jonah Hex. 

In many ways, it was an absurd movie and the bad guys came to predictable ends, but it was fun. It was escape and I enjoyed it. Afterwards, Margie and I dined at nearby Chepos.

The food was good and the atmosphere pleasant. 

And then, last night, as I was going backwards through my largely neglected take of the past week, I came upon this, the very last picture of Royce, alive and aware, that I ever took or ever will take.

Since his passing, Chicago has been a very needy cat. She wants to be with me constantly. As much as is practical, I let her.

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."