I feel very lazy on this Wasilla spring day, so I will tell the truth, shun all lies and write about Sarah Palin's buick

It is springtime here in Wasilla and it is Saturday. I feel extremely lazy. I want to do nothing but lie around and be lazy - although I tried that last Sunday and it didn't work. Still, I am going to move slow here for awhile. I do have what to me is a very important task that I must complete today, but if I lollygag about and hit it as I feel like, I think I will complete that task by the time I go to bed tonight and it just might result in a book someday.

A book to make the reader fall in love and then break her heart. Or his heart. Male or female, it doesn't matter. If one has a heart, this book will make that heart love and then it will break that heart.

Anyway, yesterday, I took a morning walk. When I crossed the road in front of this school bus, the driver suddenly gunned it to about 90. He or she was determined to run me down. I sprinted for the edge of the road and barely dove out of the way.

I made it, all right, but the back fender of the bus caught the edge of my right shoe and ripped it off.

Now I am going to sue the school district for a new pair of shoes.

In fact, I think I'll go for cowboy boots.

I haven't worn cowboy boots in a long time.

I used to wear them all the time.

And a cowboy hat, too.

A Remington .357 six-shooter on my hip.

I was pretty dangerous.

I was tall, too.

Tall, dark, and handsome.

That's why Margie fell in love with me.

Then I ate a bad taco and wound up short and pale.

She still loves me, though.

So it's okay.

I will never stop eating tacos.

Just imagine this shadow wearing a cowboy hat and six shooter, and you will see what I mean.

In the afternoon, I drove to Carr's to pick up a muffin. Along the way I saw this kid enjoying spring in a melt puddle. Yeah - I know - the image is blurry. I don't care. You get the idea. Sometimes, for me, just the idea is good enough. Life is a blur, anyway.

I parked at Carr's and prepared to go in and get the muffin. I saw this man standing on the roof. When you see a man standing on the roof of Carr's, you know it's spring.

See how he has his hands in his pockets? That's because he's hiding bananas in those pockets. He will throw one of them at me, thinking that he will strike me in the head and knock me to ground, where I will get run over by Sarah Palin's Buick, which just happens to be rolling through the parking lot at this very moment.

That's another sure sign of spring in Wasilla - when you see Sarah Palin's Buick rolling through the parking lot. For decades now, it has been that way. "Look!" someone will say, "there's Sarah Palin's Buick, rolling through the parking lot. Must be spring."

This man did, in fact, hurl the banana at me, but I was quick. I caught it. I ate it. It went very well with the muffin.

View images as slides

As I enjoy a good breakfast at Family, two women die just down the road; I meet a friend of Cheech and Chong who witnessed the aftermath

Once again, I had to do it. I got up, the house was empty, the dishes were dirty, and I did not want to sit in the cold air that still permeated the house, there to eat oatmeal alone, so I got into the car and drove to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. Connie was again my waitress, so I showed her the Moment in Time picture on my iPhone as it appears in this blog, then she brought my ham and eggs-over-easy and I began to eat.

It was superb - from the hashbrowns cooked just right to the ham dipped in the runny egg yolk. A bit after 9:00 AM, I looked up from my food, saw this scene, thought it worth a click and shot it.

What I did not know, what none of us gathered there at Family Restaurant yet knew, was that just up the road, a silver Chrysler Pacifica had crossed the suicide turn lane all the way into oncoming traffic and had struck a Tahoe head-on. The woman who had been driving the Pacifica was already dead and the one driving the Tahoe soon would be.

Just as she and the other Family waitresses always do, Connie waited until I finished the main course and then she brought me my two slices of 12-grain toast, each cut in half. One at a time, I spread strawberry jam over the halves and then ate very slowly, stopping frequently to take a sip of coffee. I wanted to savor every bite, every sip, every moment of it.

Then, feeling pleasant and satisfied, I got up, paid my bill, climbed into my car, turned right on the Parks Highway and then came home via Church Road. I arrived with much to do, but feeling good.

I would have felt completely differently, had I turned left on the Parks Highway instead of right.

I had a rush of work to do and stayed with it solid and non-stop, taking no time for lunch, because, really, one does not need lunch after eating breakfast at Family until 4:00 PM, when I took a break and drove to Metro for my All Things Considered cup.

As I drove along, sipping, I passed this fellow driving his four-wheeler. Do you notice anything happening in those trees behind him? Something we haven't seen for awhile?

Shortly after that, as she does every afternoon, the KSKA announcer jumped in during a break in All Things Considered to drop in a kicker for the Alaska Public Radio Network's Alaska statewide news. Barrow hunters had landed the first two bowhead whales of the season, she said.

I shouted, and clapped my hands for joy!

Later in the evening, Maak in Wainwright dropped a comment into yesterday's post to tell me that her village had also landed its first whale.

It was a joyous day in the two northern-most communities of the United States of America.

I came upon a little dog, walking down the road. I passed by at about one-mile per hour, because I did not want to run over it.

I then returned to my computer, but by 7:30, my muscles were screaming for exercise. I got up and invited Shadow to go bike riding with me.

We had not gone far when we spotted a little fourwheeler putting down the road in front of us.

"Do you think we can pass her?" I asked Shadow.

Shadow didn't answer, because Shadow never speaks.

I passed her! I soon reached the end of Sarah's Way and turned left toward Seldon. Then I heard a small engine, whining loudly, gaining on me. "Well," I said to Shadow, "it sounds like she didn't like us smoking her and now she is going to show us."

The pitch was so high, I wondered if her engine might blow apart.

Then the vehicle passed me, but it was not the girl on the fourwheeler. It was a little tiny blue car. I don't know what make.

Shadow and I continued on. Half-an-hour later, I photographed Shadow as the two of us pedaled down Church Road. Then I spotted another man on a bike, coming in our direction. "When we draw near, I will photograph this guy," I told Shadow.

I readied my pocket camera, but, unfortunately, I forgot the lesson that I had learned at the Wasilla park on that day tht I flipped my bike and leaped over the handle bars in front of the shocked little kid. I held my camera in my right hand. This meant that I had only my left hand available to brake, should I need to. As we know, left-hand brake stops front wheel only - sudden stop means bike flips.

But this guy could see me coming and I could see him. No cars or trucks could be seen anywhere. It would be okay. I would not need to brake.

As the biker drew near, the camera zoom was its widest-angle setting. As I began to lift my lens toward him, the oncoming rider looked straight at me and with a mischievous chin and a somewhat maniacal glint in his eyes, issued a challenge: "Wanna play chicken?"

He stood up and pedaled hard, straight toward me.

For an instant, I was determined to get a shot that captured that grin on his face and the force in his body as he pedaled at me. If I had been in the same exact situation prior to June 12, 2008, I am quite certain that I would have succeeded.

But, as regular readers know, the risk that I took that day to get a truly insignificant photo that no one will ever care about put me inside a Lear Jet ambulance on a $37,000 + ride from Barrow to Providence Hospital in Anchorage, a ride that my insurance company, contrary to the promise they had verbally given me when I bought the policy 15 years earlier in anticipation that, given the way I lived, the day would inevitably come when I would one day need an air ambulance, refused to pay.

That's why I have this titanium shoulder and that's just one of the reasons why I hate the insurance industry.

That coupled with the fact that I had flipped my bike in front of the little boy when I had braked with my left hand, added to the fact that I suddenly believed that this guy coming at me truly might not chicken out nor veer away in the slightest degree, added to my painful knowledge that my titanium shoulder is a fragile thing, and my memory of spending the summer of 2008 mostly in bed and the long convalescence that continued for a good year-and-half caused me to chicken out.

I knew I had to brake with my left hand but I reckoned that I had just enough space to do it gently, and not flip the bike. Even as I applied the brake, I shot this image.

As you can see, the oncoming rider was, in fact, chickening out, veering to his right. He, too, was applying his brakes.

We came to a stop side by side. My rear wheel did lift up about six inches and, fearing that I might yet go down, he reached out to grab me - but I had it under control and was not going to go down.

Some of you may recall how, way back in March, I had become shaggy, in both hair and beard. I was scheduled to do my slide shows in Nantucket and New York and so had committed myself to good cut and trim before I left.

I ran out of time and decided to get the cut and trim in Nantucket. When that didn't happen, I decided that I would get it in New York.

I absolutely will get it done before I leave for Arizona in just ten days.

This is Dave, by the way.

We pedaled side-by-side for just a short distance.

Then we stopped to visit. Dave was animated in his conversation, smiling continually. He said that he had just pedaled his bike up a road that climbs up the Talkeetnas and it had sure been hard, but it was easy coming down.

He asked if I biked often and I said, "yeah."

I asked if he did and he said he pretty much had to, if he wanted to go anywhere. I asked if he enjoyed it. As he thought about his answer, a big, white, Chevy pickup that looked to be almost brand new came driving by. He looked at. "Well," he said. "I'd rather be driving that. You can imagine how I feel when I'm on my bike and something like that comes by. But, hey! I can go all the way downtown and back and I don't burn any gasoline, I don't put any pollution into the air."

I wanted to catch his smile, and the glint in his turquoise-green eyes and told him so. He struck this pose. The smile disappeared.

OK - look at these trees. Now do you notice something happening?

I had him try another pose, but I quickly realized that, as long as he knew a camera was pointing at him, his smile was not going to be there.

I then showed him the pictures. "I look terrible," he said. "You can see all my scars!" He pointed to the one that starts between his left eye and the upper part of his nose. "I got that one when someone kicked me in the head." He then began to point out other scars, and tell me the histories behind them.

"Man! I should have shaved. My hair looks so dark. My eyes look blue - but they're green!"

He then mentioned that earlier in the day, he had been pedaling alongside the Parks Highway on the other side of the police station when he came upon the aftermath of a horrible accident.

"That little silver car had shot across the dead man's lane right into the SUV!" he said. "I could see that the air bag on the passenger side had worked."

The victims had already been removed. He did not know that two people had died in that crash until I told him. He seemed a little shook.

"Men or women?" he asked.

I did not know. The news bulletin I had read online had identified the dead only as the drivers of each vehicle.

"I'll read about it in tomorrow's paper," he shook his head.

The conversation fell to more pleasant topics. His smile returned. He had just painted his bike silver, earlier in the day. He was proud of it. He asked if I smoked and if I had a light. I said no, and I didn't. He pulled out a paper and a bag and began to roll.

I wanted to catch his smile, so I took this shot without raising my camera. Afterwards I showed it to him. "Hey," he said. "I want to tell you about when I went to Mexico with Cheech and Chong. We tried to come back across the border in our van, but the border guards wouldn't let us cross." He said he and Cheech and Chong then backed up, traded the psychedelically-painted van for a more conservative vehicle, returned to the border and were allowed to cross back in. They drove on to El Cerrito, where he checked into a bed and slept hard and long.

"You know Cheech and Chong?" I gushed.

"Oh, yeah!" he answered.

"Famous guy!"

"I'm not famous," he said. "They're famous."

"But you hang out with famous people."

"That was a long time ago."

As to the contents of that plastic baggie, I know what you are thinking - but it actually looked and smelled like tabacco.

As they say, "that's my story and I'm sticking to it!"

Dave and I said, "see you around." I pedaled on home.

That was last evening. This is from this morning. Now, surely, you notice what is happening in those trees... they are turning green! The leaves are coming out!

The first year that we lived here, the leaves came out May 14, as they did for the next 15 years or so. Then they started to come out earlier and earlier and earlier.

This year, they came out May 3.

And here is the place where the two women were killed, as I saw it this morning. God be with them, and even more so with those loved ones they left behind.

A free cup of coffee; 65 degrees, four-wheelers, the Little Su, black cat outside, a golf course far away

Just as All Things Considered began on the radio, I pulled up to the window at Metro Cafe yesterday afternoon only to discover that someone had bought me a cup of coffee and a cranberry muffin. She did not leave her name, but remained anonymous. And the day before, I found a gift card waiting for me from Funny Face.

My goodness!

Thank you all!

As Sashana prepared to hand me the cup, she and Carmen posed for:

Through the Window Metro Study, #3.3333333... and so on to infinity

As I drove away, sipping, I saw these two - father and son, perhaps; uncle and nephew, maybe; perhaps just friend and friend, out enjoying the 65 degree weather on a four-wheeler.

Yes. You read me correctly.

SIXTY-FIVE DEGREES!

I thought for a moment that I had moved to The Bahamas.

But it was still Wasilla. I could tell by the four-wheeler dust. Can you believe it? Just a few days ago, the ground surface varied between frozen solid and muck, and now a kid on a four-wheeler can have a blast, kicking up dust.

As I crossed the bridge over the Little Susistna, I saw this man and this young girl walking along the bank.

It turned out that he is Mike and the young girl is his 26-month old daughter, Dagne. They live five miles from the river and this is the first time that they have visited it since before the snow came down in October.

Jimmy also ventured outside for the first time. He kept pawing at the window until finally I relented, but only under the condition that he would remain always in my eyesight.

Chicago observed, but did not follow. In the ten or 11 or 12 years that she has been with us, Chicago has ventured outside exactly once. As I have mentioned before and will someday tell in detail, here or in a book or both, it took us seven weeks and two days to get her back and then she was damn near dead - nothing but a dehydrated bag of bones.

She is fat now.

As eager as he had been to go out, once he got out, Jimmy was spooked. Something out there was frightening him. He refused to leave the porch.

As for Royce, there in the background, I would have been happy to let him out but he never wanted to venture past the window - which is odd for Royce.

I am happy to report that, at long last, he is gaining some weight. Yet, he is still skinny. He eats a ton of food - more than the other three combined, I would say, and it just seems to go right through him.

But he is gaining some weight, so he must be retaining some of it.

It was Caleb that had spooked Jimmy so. Caleb had knocked some balls way back into the trees, at the bottom of the little hill and had gone down to search for them.

Jimmy could not see him, but he could hear him. He did not know what he was.

A bear, maybe.

If Jimmy even know about bears.

I doubt that he does. How would he?

He probably imagined that Caleb was something even bigger and more frightening than the biggest, baddest, bear out there.

From behind my office window, Pistol-Yero calmly observed it all.

This is Caleb this morning. Where do you think he is and what is he looking at?

He is at IHOP. Caleb had to drop his car off at the shop at 8:00 AM. He asked me to pick him up and then he took me to breakfast, his treat. Caleb loves IHOP pancakes, so that's where we went.

Well, he's still looking. At what?

Passing cars, is all I can think of.

Or maybe golf courses, far away, like Pebble Beach, Tucson, or Scottsman's Head.

Sarah's Way turns sloppy and mucky but I face up to it; memories of the Lone Ranger; a DC-3 flies above me; yesterday's crime scene marked a shooting incident

This is what I faced this morning when I stepped out of my house and onto Sarah's Way to begin my walk. As sloppy and messy as it looked, I did not let it stop me. I walked right through it.

Seldon was dry when I reached it. I had not walked far before a pink truck came from behind. In all my decades here, this is the first pink truck that I have ever seen on Seldon.

On the other hand, I have seen this orange truck many times. I've never seen it move, though.

As you can see, we here in Wasilla are in constant touch with all the world. Some people think that we are all hillbillies, but they are wrong. Not that there is anything wrong with being a hillbilly. I think I could enjoy being a hillbilly, if I did not love Alaska so much.

As I have explained before, there are no hillbillies in Alaska, but rather, Mountain Billies.

I was pleased to see a Douglas DC 3 fly by overhead. I just wished that I were in it, in the left-hand seat, doing barrel rolls and figure eights. Maybe this very airplane helped us win World War II.

At three in the afternoon, Margie and I ventured over to Well's Fargo Financial Services to talk finance with this man, Chris. Alongside the desk where he sits is a huge photograph of a stagecoach and I liked it, even though it was canned. 

It reminded me of my own stint with the Lone Ranger. I wanted to take a photo, there in Chris's office, with the stagecoach mural in the background. But photography inside the bank is prohibited, since someone who is both exceptionally bright and in a position to lay down mandates and rules believes that a bad guy might look at such a photograph of a man sitting at a desk in front of a photo of a stagecoach and suddenly figure out how to rob that bank.

So I had to photograph Chris outside with the calendar as a stand-in for the mural.

As any American of my generation knows (and even Chris, who is of a different generation, knew), the Lone Ranger, with help from Tonto, did, in fact, break up many stagecoach robberies.

As for my stint with the masked man, it happened when I was very small and lived in Pendleton, Oregon. At that time, the Pendleton Roundup billed itself as the biggest rodeo in the world and when I was four or five, we learned that the Lone Ranger was coming to town to participate and that he would ride a stagecoach in the parade.

Then came the disturbing news, relayed to me by my big brothers, who could read the newspaper. According to news accounts, my brothers told me, when the Lone Ranger got off the plane, no one was there to greet him. Later, someone found him crying at the airport, because his feelings had been hurt.

I refused to believe this, because the Lone Ranger I admired would never cry. No. You could shoot him in the shoulder, and still he would not cry. He would get up, punch and fight and shoot the gun that you had shot him with right out of your hand.

Yet, even my Dad claimed to have read such an article.

It pained me to think that Dad would lie like that. I wished that I could read the paper for myself. I would prove them all wrong.

Come parade day, the Lone Ranger did ride through town on a stagecoach.

Guess who got to climb up on that stage coach, sit beside him, and ride a tiny ways with him, before being replaced by another little kid?

Yes. Me.

It was thrilling. And it was terrifying. To a tiny boy, it was a long way down from that stagecoat seat to the road. I feared that I would fall and shatter my shoulder - or at least my skull. So I sat beside the Lone Ranger and bawled. Part of the time. But then I got brave and smiled. Until it was time to get down. Then I bawled again.

"You're just a damn bawl-baby," my brothers told me later.

And later in life, when I was in college, I not only got to meet Tonto, but to photograph him. Jay Silverheels, the actor who played Tonto, came to BYU with Chief Dan George and I met them both, talked to them both and photographed them both.

I wonder where those photos are?

After we finished at the bank, we went across the street and joined these two ravens in the Taco Bell Drive through.

As to yesterday's crime scene, it turns out that was a shooting there. Fortunately, nobody got hit. You would be hard put to find anyone in Alaska who favors gun control, and I certainly do not. Guns are too important to life here; too many people depend on guns to live, and the idea of taking them away is irrational and stupid.

But what do you do about people like the man who shot up Tailgaters yesterday? It could have turned out much worse. Or how about all the mass murders lately, elsewhere in the US? At least two carried out by men who, in part, justified their actions through their irrational - yes, Glenn Beck, IRRATIONAL - fear that President Barack Obama was going to take their guns away.

The question is a vexing one. That man, and those who committed these murders, should not have guns. But don't even think about taking my gun away.

Oh, wait! I sold most of my guns during times when I needed money more than guns, and then lost my last rifle - a very fine lever-action 30-30 - after I crashed my plane and someone stole it from the fuselage before I did my recovery.

But I still have my shotgun. You can't take it.

And I will get another rifle. Maybe this fall. One with a fast bullet - maybe a .270. Or perhaps one to replace that good, old, reliable, powerful, hard-hitting 30-06 that I loved.

Don't even try to stop me. 

A mid-afternoon drive down Shrock tells me winter is over - but then it is always a bit risky to say so

Look! The snow that these horses live on is melting! Fast! It is 37 degrees! At about 4:30 in the afternoon! The sun is shining and it feels hot. Winter is over. I must get out my bicycle. I haven't ridden it since early last June, before I took my fall and shattered my shoulder.

I haven't done much of anything physical since then, except a bit of therapy and my walks. I am in the worst physical condition of my life. But I think I will soon get that bike out and ride it.

I will do it! I sure hope I don't fall on my shoulder.

Unless we get another heavy snow, the temperature plummets and the roads all ice up again. Could happen. I don't think it will, but it could. If it does, I will not ride the bike. Or the air could fill with volcanic ash. Redoubt blew again this morning, but the ash missed us. It went to Homer.

Hey! What are those people doing up there, at the side of the road?

They are making firewood! 

When I arose this morning, the temperature was in the 20's and everything outside was solid. Inside, I was groggy and I did not want to cook, I did not want to eat cold cereal. I just wanted to sit down somewhere and have someone wait on me.

I knew Margie would not want to come with me, because I took her out yesterday and the day before and it was very hard on her and so I knew she would not want to step out of the house, but I asked her anyway.

She did not want to go.

So I went by myself, which is okay because I like to be alone.

But I wasn't alone. There were all kinds of people about, including this guy, talking to the man two tables in front of me.

He demanded that I take his picture. I do not think that he knew that he demanded that I take his picture. Even though he appears to be looking straight at the camera in this frame, I am not certain that he even knew that I took his picture.

Just the same, he demanded that I take it.

He demanded just by being there in front of me, creating a visual image that I found interesting. So I obeyed. I took his picture.

Then, even though I wanted only to be alone with my breakfast, I decided that I should find out something about him - his name, what he did, some sort of intelligent observation that he might make about this world.

I decided that I would wait until his conversation ended, and then ask him.

And then, as the waitress was laying my breakfast out in front of me, he finished his conversation, stepped out the door and disappeared. I could have chased after him, but the ham and eggs beckoned to me. 

From what little I saw of him, he appeared to be a jovial sort of man, but also one that you would not want to mess with. 

I have no idea what they conversed about, but at one point he did raise his voice and I overheard a little snippet. He had read something released by AARP. "Daylight savings time kills more people by heart attacks than any other cause," he said. He then continued on by saying something about golfers who had to get up one hour earlier, but that was all I heard.

Caleb is a golfer. I wonder if he knows about this?