On the day of his dad's first Chemo, Branson brandishes a hockey stick; Metro Cafe is one year old; moose, dog - truck for sale on trail

When I turned off Lucille Street into the drive-through lane of Metro Cafe, I saw a tiny, heavily- bundled and padded figure run across the parking lot on the blade protectors of his hockey skates. It was five-year old Branson, who then posed for Through the Metro Window Study, #2081. True, he was outside the window, but I could still see through it to the customers behind.

Branson's father Scott had just undergone his first chemo treatment as part of his fight against the colon cancer that he is determined to beat. Today, Branson will attend his first day of kindergarten. While he is trying to prepare himself early, his first official hockey practice will not happen until late September.

I had not seen Carmen since before I left for Barrow, but she was here when I pulled in and so she came to join in with Branson. She let me know that today also marks the first anniversary of Metro Cafe's opening. She pondered all that has happened in that short year, from the family efforts to create a new kind of place in Wasilla to Scott coming down with cancer to Branson now entering kindergarten.

It has been quite a year for Carmen, Scott, Branson and Metro Cafe.

And on top of all this, Alaska buried Senator Ted Stevens yesterday.

As I drove home the long way, sipping my Metro order, this moose crossed the road in front of me. See how summer's colors have begun to give way to fall's?

Very soon, the colors will all be fall. And then, once again, it will be white... I hope. The weather just keeps getting stranger and stranger and that which we could once take for granted can no longer be counted on.

I had not walked down this way in a long time, but now I did. Tequila greeted me just as she always did in the past - barking, growling, acting tough, but I knew better. She didn't scare me.

This is one of those situations that my daughters would derisively describe with the phrase, "That's so Wasilla!" As you can see, this truck is parked across the trail that borders Seldon Street, with a "For Sale" sign on it. Another sign faces the road, so that those driving by can see it. 

This is a busy trail, used by many. Pedestrians use it, adults and children pedaling bicycles, mothers and fathers pushing baby strollers, people on four-wheelers.

It is a very busy trail, but what the hell. Someone wants to sell a truck.

So, if perchance you are looking for a truck and you are interested in this one, here is the price and phone number. Give a call, make the deal, take the truck. You will be doing many trail users a favor.

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The man who owns a '56 Chevy; a school bus goes off the road; dusk horse raises its tail

This is Bill, who lives two houses down Sarah's Way in the opposite direction from the one I took yesterday. Bill owns, rebuilt and maintains a very sharp looking, smooth-running, classic 1956 Chevy that he bought for $100. He painted it black and red/orange and when you see it coming down the road, it catches your eye right away and you wish that you were riding in it, Buddy Holly on the radio, that you were young and had a pretty girl clinging to you, nibbling at your ear, giggling each time she almost makes you crash.

Perhaps next summer, I will build a blog post around that Chevy. I know there is a good story in it.

Almost nine years has now passed since my first black cat, Little Guy, the one who passed straight from his mother's womb into my waiting hands, stepped out the back door on a day with three times as much snow as this one and disappeared.

I was devastated to lose that cat and I went up and down the street, knocking on every door to see if anyone had seen Little Guy.

For weeks afterward, whenever he would see me walking past, Bill would ask me if I had found my cat. He always looked very concerned. I know he was keeping an eye out for that cat.

I still appreciate that.

Bill blows the snow off his driveway.

A cottonwood tree, bent down toward Tamar.

Muzzy and a snowplow.

As I walked one way, this school bus came driving the other. Shortly after it passed, I turned just in time to see its right wheels slip off the shoulder of the road and then slide right into the culvert. 

Anyone who lives up here long enough will do this kind of thing sooner or later, probably a few times.

It can be embarrassing, but it must be worse when you have a busload of students.

One of the students looks out at me.

As St. Bernards do when people get into trouble in the snow, Muzzy comes to help out. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring his little barrel of brandy.

It's a good thing, because the driver shouldn't be touching brandy and the kids were all too young.

If someone had brought a dog harness, we could have hitched him to that bus and he would have pulled it right out.

But nobody had a harness.

I walked on, leaving the bus and kids in it to be rescued by the school district.

Margie is in town with Lavina and Kalib and will be staying with them overnight in their new house. She left some bills on the counter for me to pay. Along the way, I saw this guy on a green snowmachine waiting for a green light so he could cross the road.

When the light changed, the left turn arrow turned green for me, which meant this guy's light was still red. As I began my turn, he gunned his throttle and shot straight across the road directly across my path. Maybe he was not waiting for a green light at all, but only for a gap in the traffic passing in front of him so that he could run a red one.

I believe this falls into the category that Melanie AND Lisa* calls, "soooooo Wasilla!"

This is what it looked like in front of Wasilla Lake. 

This person got stuck on the divider.

A school bus passed by without mishap.

I took my coffee break at the usual time. After I stopped at Metro Cafe, I took the long way home and passed by this horse as darkness drew down. The horse raised its tail and then dropped something.

*updated to include both coiners of the phrase: see Lisa's comment

Cocoon mode,* day 25: I lost my G10 pocket camera for nearly a week but now I have found it: the once-missing images

On Monday, September 28, I tried out a hot dog from Ididadog for the first time and documented the moment with my Canon G10 pocket camera. Later, that same day, I lost the camera - that is why you have not seen this week-old image until now.

Margie and I first became aware of the Ididadog hot dog kiosk about the beginning of September. Despite her pain, suffering and the resultant lethargy, I was actually able to use this news to excite her enough to hobble out of the house on her crutches and into the red Escape. Eager to try the dogs, we hurried over to the well-camouflaged kiosk on the Palmer-Wasilla highway, right across from the bowling alley, but we found a sign posted on the drive-through window: Closed. On Jury Duty.

Some damned alleged criminal had robbed us of the opportunity to try the hot dogs.

I checked back a few times afterward, but always found Ididadog closed until this day. So I bought myself a quarter pounder Polish Dog with mustard, onions, dill pickle relish and saurkruat, with potato chips grown and made right here in this valley, plus Pepsi.

Oh, it was exquisite! Superb! It reminded me of being in Chicago, hanging out outside of Wrigley Field.

If fortune should smile upon me, I will buy many hot dogs here in the future.

This is what Wasilla has long needed - a really good hot dog stand.

Later that day, after my coffee break, I stepped into the house, came out here into my office, but then had to go back in to help Margie with something, I forget what. After that, I could not find my G10 pocket camera. I looked and looked, but I could not find it.

"Oh, well," I thought, "it will show up in an hour or two." I typically lose the camera three or four times a week and within an hour or so it always pops up, right were I left it.

Not this time. The whole day passed by. Night came.

No camera.

I grew very worried.

This is among the images that was lost within it. Melanie and Charlie, the day before, when they had come out to visit us.

After I ate the hot dog, I stopped at the post office, hoping that someone might have sent me an unexpected check for $250,578.12. I figured that would solve my problems and allow me to write my books and go at this blog full time, as I want to, undisturbed by anything else.

Instead, I found some bills in my box, plus this car intentionally parked so as to take up one designated parking space, plus half of the walk way.

This happens frequently around here, although its usually one car intentionally parked to take up two parking spaces. It is what Melanie would call, "So Wasilla."

Some people think it is a really cool thing to do.

Others think it really cool to carry loaded pistols in their pockets.

Potentially deadly combination.

Furthermore, from the way she is parked, you can tell that the driver drove the wrong way through the one-way traffic lot to get the spot. Yes, it was a "she," because I saw her and she was not a teenager, either, but a mature adult - mature in terms of age, anyway.

At some point before I lost the camera, I saw Caleb in the backyard, washing his bicycle. Afterward, Margie had him undo the hose and drain the water out of it, because most mornings now we wake up to frost.

Not as much as would be normal by this time. It has been an unusually warm fall, just as it was an unusually warm summer. We are about ten days to two weeks away from when the lakes usually freeze over, but I think it will take longer this year.

Even so, it was time to undo the hose.

This is the last picture that I took with G10 pocket camera before I lost it. Many people began to doubt me, to believe that I had never brought the camera home but had left it somewhere. Yet, I had this recollection of taking this picture as I drove home from my coffee break in the late afternoon, so I was certain I had not left it somewhere.

In time, I myself began to doubt, to believe perhaps that I had never taken this picture at all, that I remembered something that had never happened and that I really had left the camera somewhere else and would never see it again.

This would be worse than forgetting something that had happened.

But I found the camera today. In a place that I looked at least 20 times. My work table. Under some papers. I had lifted all those papers up and looked under them before. 

And just in case you wonder about the pictures that have appeared here in the meantime, I took them mostly with the other pocket camera, the G9, the one my kids gave me after I got hurt. The series of Kalib falling was done with my Canon 1Ds MIII, as was the one of Jimmy sitting on the scanner and maybe one or two more.

There is more that I want to say about this, but I have already exceeded my Cocoon mode time.

I must better discipline myself.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.