The week so far in catch up: girl sled boats in meltwater; school bus adventures; Oscar's bike ride; Jobe is ill; Studies of dogs eating biscuits
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 1:46PM 
Thanks to my three part series covering Jobe's first steps stepping out party Sunday evening, I have neglected to post anything about the week since as it has unfolded so far. Truth is, while it has been a week of furious and relentless activity inside my head and flowing through my fingers into the keyboard and then my computer, visually it has not been a week that has given me many images to post.
I have basically spent it right here, at my computer, day and night, typing and mousing, picking cats up off my keyboard and putting them on the floor only to have to them ump right back up so we can do it all over again.
Still, I have a few images to post. I will start with today, a day that has begun very lazily for me for the simple fact that this morning at 3:00 AM I finally finished up the task that I had hoped to complete by last Saturday night, but which proved much more time-consuming than I had reckoned.
As all my tasks seem to do.
I then went to bed exhausted, yet wired up and so lay awake for about two hours, after which I slept sporadically and then got up about 9:00 AM, determined to take this day off and relax.
I found that it was snowing, and the wind was blowing.
Pretty normal for this time of year.
It is also not unusual this time of year to have the image of spring appear before you, to have people say, "this is really it, this is spring," even though everybody knows that this a very foolish thing to say because, even though for Alaska our climate is fairly temperate here, spring still means something different in Wasilla than it does in most of the more populated world.
So late Monday afternoon, when I pedaled my bike back home from Metro Cafe and saw this girl, using ski poles to propel herself through a huge puddle of melt water, it certainly looked like winter had given up altogether.
Yesterday afternoon, I pedaled by there again. The puddle had refrozen. The yard behind was again blanketed in snow. I thought about taking a picture to prove it, but I did not want to stop and so I just pedaled on.
When Margie stays in town to babysit, I tend to eat breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. So that is what I did Tuesday morning. As I drove home, I saw these students, waiting for their school bus.
A bit further down the road, I witnessed what might have been their bus, turning onto Church Road. It was a damned exciting sight to see.
Then up ahead on Church, I saw another bus, stopped, stopping the pickup behind it, stopping me, so that these three students could board and head for class.
And in the afternoon, post-Metrol Cafe, I came upon this four-wheeler.
Wasilla forever teems with exciting activities.
In the evening, I went to Anchorage to pick Margie up and bring her home, but first I stopped at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art to take in an ASMP slide show titled Nomadic Photographer presented by Oscar Avellanda.
Oscar's roots are in Columbia, so in January of 2010, he got on his bike and with his sister and a friend pedaled his bike from Anchorage to Whittier. There, they boarded the ferry and traveled to Bellingham, Washington and then he and his sister continued on and pedaled all the way down through the West Coast, through Mexico, El Salvadore and into Columbia.
As you would expect, he took pictures all along the way, although not nearly as many as he had anticipated, as the work of pedaling a bike often took precedence over photography. The picture that stands out strongest in my mind is a black and white of his little tiny bike parked near the oceanside in southern Mexico, with a gigantic cruise ship looming large above it in the background.
This what the online ASMP announcement had to say about Oscar:
"Along the way, Oscar was attacked by a dog, underwent treatment for rabies, became engaged, discovered his roots, and redefined his conceptions of material necessities. Mr. Avellaneda’s artistic photographic images and stories have redefined his role as a photographer while challenging the social norms of his industry."
It is a much more complex story than that, of course, but I think for now, I will that suffice. In time, I suspect, Oscar will produce something that tells the story in depth.
I then went over to Jake and Lavina's to pick Margie up, but Jobe had taken a turn for the worse. He had vomited. He was running a fever. Margie decided to stay, probably until Sunday, when Jacob, Lavina and family depart for a workshop in New Mexico and then a vacation in Arizona. She will help them out until they go.
Yesterday, for my one break in a very long day, I again pedaled my bike to Metro Cafe at coffee time. There, I shot this series of three Metro studies:
Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #410: Carmen offers a dog biscuit to Loki. Loki sniffs the biscuit, but does not take it.
Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #63: Jim, the dog's pet human, takes the biscuit. Loki then takes the biscuit from his pet.
Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #7,895: Jim takes a second biscuit from Carmen and the dog, Coda, takes it from Jim.
And so goes the world.
