Transition: Wasilla to New York

I am two days behind on this blog and furthermore, I am very tired. So I will keep my words brief. Here I am, on the plane, just leaving Anchorage, sitting next to a very smart guy who is reading the Wall Street Journal. The news is grim.

These don't care if the news is bad or good. Either way, they just keep standing there. These are the Chugach, a bit north of Prince William Sound.

This is Bob, from Colorado, the guy who was reading the Wall Street journal. Now, he is overtaken by the view out the window. Bob works on road slide repair.

Now we are coming in to land at SeaTac, buzzing Seattle as a ferry pulls toward the dock.

The flight out of Seattle had been delayed by five minutes and was now scheduled to leave at 3:10. This was plenty of time for me to wander down to the main food court and order a rockfish sandwich, which I did. It was excellent. 

I then went back the gate but now saw, in big numbers, 4:00 o'clock. "What time do I need to be back by?" I asked the gentleman behind the Alaska Airlines Counter at the gate.

"Not until 4:00 o'clock," he answered in a derisive, sarcastic, tone of voice.

It was then that I looked more closely at the smaller letters posted with the number. "Next update," they read.

"Oh, I see," I said, "I had misinterpreted it to mean 4:00 o'clock."

"No," he sarcastically replied. "It says next update. Check back at 4:00 o'clock." 

So I went back to the dining area and watched airplanes take off for awhile.

About 3:40, I decided I had better go back to the gate anyway.

I returned to the "C" corridor and I had not walked far down it before I heard a voice on the intercom read the names of a number of passengers on my same flight - including my name. "Last and final boarding call," the voice said.

I still had several gates to go, so I started to run as fast as I could with my camera gear and computer.

I saw a couple of other people running as well.

As I approached the gate, the arrogant fellow saw me and turned away.

"You told me to come back at 4:00," I told him as I puffed past. "You almost made me miss my plane."

"I also said to stay in the area," he spoke in the same arrogant tone as before.

"No, you did not say that," I answered.

He didn't either. He was just trying to cover himself.

Had I have lingered in the dining area for one more minute, I would have missed my flight to Newark.

But I didn't. It all turned out good - that's Newark, down below, as our jet comes down on final.

Now I am on the shuttle going from the airport to the hotel I had booked for one night near the airport, becauuse it would be cheaper - MUCH cheaper - than a New York City hotel.

This is John and Maureen. They stayed in the same hotel and were outside when I went out to catch the shuttle back to the airport so that I could catch the train into New York City. They hired a cab to take them to the train station in Newark and invited me to join them.

They insisted upon paying for the whole thing. They are orginally from Burma, but now live in San Francisco, where she works at Macy's and he drives a cab. Burma, they said, is a beautiful place with warm, friendly people - but a horrible government, one of the most repressive on the planet.

They had come so she could attend a Macy's convention. The convention was over and they were going to do some sightseeing.

So we rode the train together into New York.

When I walked out of the train station and onto the sidewalk, I saw that New York is a city where people and balloons freely mingle on the same street.

This gave me new hope for the future.

To find, to lose, to find and lose again - my India take vanishes into digital ether; I search, I plead

I shot only one frame all day yesterday and this is it - two ravens through my car window as seen through the drive-through line at Taco Bell and this is how I wound up there:

I had it my mind that when I could, I would sort through my India pictures and put together some sort of package on Soundarya to share with the family. I did not know where those pictures were and I dreaded the search to try to find them.

Behind and to the sides of my computer monitor, my desk was a clutter of hard drives, cables and wires - a couple of dozen hard drives, in fact - some of them plugged in, some of them not. I had once known where everything was on those hard drives, but over time, in the constant juggle and shuffle of digital information - moving images from this drive to that, then erasing from here, etc. etc. etc., it had become a tangle of confusion.

I came up with a system in my head to finally get on top of it, but to do so would require that I remove the harddrives from the enclosures they came in so that instead I could just insert and take them out of hard drive docks at will.

I checked with an expert and he said, yes, this would work - I could just remove all those drives from their enclosures and this would free them up for use in the docks.

So I did, and it took me a long time, because once I would figure out how to take one sort of enclosure apart, the next would be completely different and I did not have the right tools.

To simplify a complicated story, by the time I finished, I discovered that six of my harddrives were of an earlier design and would not seat into the docks, so I could no longer read them. Plus, two harddrives would seat and spin, but would not sign on to the computer. So I made four trips back and fourth to Machous were Bruce helped me reconstruct those that needed reconstructing and tried to help me bring the two that would not read back, but they had gone bad and could not be brought back.

During one of those trips back and forth to Machaus, I stopped at Taco Bell and picked up an order for myself and another for Margie, who was not feeling good.

In my office, I carefully searched every drive that could be read - and was horrified to discover that my India take, #2, when Melanie and I went to the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, could not be found.

Although I blogged the wedding, to this date I had not found the time to go through the big majority of the thousands of photos that I took afterward. I know there are some good pictures of Sandy in there, along with many other things from those times that Sandy and Anil were off by themselves and Melanie and I were traveling elsewhere with Vasanthi, Murthy, Buddy and Vijay.

All this now appeared to be lost, vanished into digital ether. If I could not somehow find them, then all I woud have from that trip would be the few low-res images, mostly from the wedding, that actually appeared on this blog.

I searched and searched and searched, venturing into the shadow areas. At one point, I thought that I had found a set, for I did find folders for those dates - but the folders were empty.

They are only photographs and their loss is a tiny and insignificant thing in comparison to her loss - but still, photographs are all that is left. I sank into despair. My body shook and my hands trembled.

I realize that what I am about to state is going to sound really corny to some, but it is how it happened, so I am going to state it. Not knowing what else to do, after a day-and-a-half of searching but not finding, I said aloud, "Sandy! I need your help! You've got to help me."

After I spoke the words, I suddenly noticed one of those tiny, portable, black plastic hard drives that you can buy at Wal-Mart, sitting beneath the computer tower on my desk. I always take two or three of these into the field with me, so that I can make duplicate copies of everything that I shoot as I move along. After I get home, I dump the images into my big harddrives and then erase these little ones, so that I can take them back out into the field the next time I go.

I picked up the little drive and plugged it into the computer.

The India take was all there.

Coincidence, my brain tells me. My heart wants to believe otherwise.

The truth is, I do not know. 

I now have the pictures, but Sandy is still gone.

Even as I type this, I am loading those pictures into my Lightroom editor. This is the very first image from that take - it is Melanie as we wait at Ted Stevens International Airport to board the first of the four planes that will fly us to Bangalore.

And here we are, Melanie and I together, reflected in the window of the underground train that shuttles passengers between various terminals at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Now we have left Chicago, enroute to Mumbai.

And here we are, in Mumbai.

In Mumbai, we saw a sleepy little girl.

Now we ride the shuttle that will take us from one Mumbai terminal to another.

Through the shuttle window. What you don't see is the heat. Despite the late hour, it was stifling hot. We are about to board the flight to Bangalore.

Now we are at Murthy and Vasanthi's in Bangalore, where I fell asleep. It was Sandy who woke me up - Soundarya Ravichandran. After I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I took a picture of her and this is it. The next day, she would wed and would become Soundarya Anil Kumar.

I now have many pictures to sort through and edit. This barely begins it. It is going to take some time and I do not know where I am going to find that time.

I know that I promised that I would not let this blog dwell where it seems to be dwelling, but one does not just turn away from an experience such as this and suddenly find that it is over.

Still, it is my commitment to now get back on track and to blog about other things. After I have a picture package ready to share with the family, perhaps I will put up a few more up here.

I suspect that this will take me about one year.

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