Sub-zero walk at dusk

I read that cats sleep up to 16 hours a day - a little piece here, a big piece there, a chunk here. I fear that in some ways I have become kind of like a cat lately - except that I know for a fact that when cats sleep, they sleep good, even though they are ready to wake up and spring into action in a fraction of a second.

Today, I got up a little after 2:00 PM - just in time for me to cook and eat my oatmeal, catch just a bit of news and web updates, put on some thermal underway, two pairs of socks, three sweatshirts, a light but good jacket, an ear band and a baseball cap and then head out onto my walk, only to discover that the sun had already set.

Judging both by the degree that my nostrils stuck together when I enhaled and the amount of frost that built up in my mustache and beard when I exhaled, I estimated the temperature to be close to -10 F (-23 C).

I was dressed plenty warm enough for such weather, but, as I have noted before, these shingles which I no longer want to write about seem to have greatly cut down my resistance to cold. So I walked and froze, stopping every now and then to snap a frame and when I stopped, I froze even more.

Some might think that under the circumstance, I would be justified in foregoing the walk. No. I must walk. And pretty soon I am going to get some studded tires for my bicycle and then I will start biking again, too.

I wanted to get the studded tires today, but I got up too late.

And pretty soon, I am also going force myself back into a better sleep pattern. As it stands, I have been going to bed about 2:00 AM and then getting up at anywhere from 10 or 11, or, today, after 2:00 PM. 

I do a few things and then pretty soon lie down upon the couch, the woodstove burning hot just beyond my feet and doze in and out of the kind of dream world I have described before. Always, I am joined by at least two cats and sometimes three. They want to snuggle up right on my shingles, but I do not let them, so they wind up on my legs or lower tummy, where they add their own warmth to that of the fire. While the dreams can get bizarre and the pain never goes away, these couch naps are in some ways the and most pleasant part of my day.

In this picture, I have just completed my walk and am back at the house. This is the smoke coming from the woodstove that makes my naps so toasty and nice.

I justify these long hours of sleep and rest by telling myself that I need them and that is why my body is forcing me to do it. But I have lots to do and I must get back to it.

After I finished my walk, I did not want to bring my frozen camera into the house, so I put it in the car, started the car, went inside while the car warmed up then came back out and drove off for coffee. The temperature out here was, indeed, - 10.

Metro Cafe was still closed for the holiday weekend, but some kind of group must have rented it for a party of somekind. I snapped this shot from the car as I drove past. I continued on to Kaladi bros, where the temperature was a warm - 2 F, bought a 12 oz Americano black, then brought it home, gave half of it to Margie and used the other half to wash down a left-over piece of the pumpkin chiffon pie she had made for Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin chiffon must have been invented by the angels. It was a heavenly experience, shingles be damned!

View images as slides

The eye of the New York Times focuses on Barrow; winter draws nigh to Wasilla

This is New York Times reporter William Yardley, as his byline reads in the paper, although he introduced himself to me as Bill Yardley. As I am Bill, too, and we were in Barrow, that would make him my "atik," which, in a way, kind of makes us like relatives of sorts.

I first met him, along with New York Times photographer Jim Wilson and videographer Erik Olsen, in the North Slope Borough office building, where they had just interviewed Mayor Edward Itta. 

Then, the next day, I saw them at the Barrow Whalers' football playoff game when our boys defeated Monroe Catholic and again immediately afterward at the site where the Aiken whale had been landed and butchered.

I took this picture in the rearview mirror as Yardley drove the car they had rented from the landing site back to Barrow, about five miles. We happened to leave at the same time and they were kind enough to give me a ride.

Judging from what they told me, they must have more coverage coming, in addition to what appeared today in two parts online.

The two parts can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/3z6rurw

http://nyti.ms/nP8QSC

Yardley has also spent a lot of time in Wasilla, covering... well, you know who... the same person who pulled media from all over the world to Wasilla... while I, a media person who lives right here... just turned around and walked away from it all, just about. Yardley covered her for the New York Times.

I took a walk today. As you can see, winter has not quite reached Wasilla, the way it has reached Barrow and the Arctic Slope, but it is getting close.

This dog came running, barking, growling, snarling, charging in from behind, pretending that it was going to rip me to pieces. When I turned and pointed my camera at it, it stopped cold. It let its tail fall down.

Most "mean" dogs are like this - but in Barrow, I met a genuinely mean dog.

It was scary. Given the level of its gnashing teeth teeth to my body, I was thinking it was good that I had already fathered all the children I ever need to, but, at the same time, the idea of losing the capability to a mean dog did exactly please me.

Later in the afternoon, during my usual 4:00 PM coffee break, I drove down Shrock Road and discovered that it had snowed there - just a couple of miles from our house. It was late in the afternoon and it had been sunny all day, so the snow must have completely covered the ground in the morning.

Winter is drawing nigh to Wasilla - I hope. The leaves are long gone now. Once the leaves go, I am ready for the snow.

Plus, I got used to it in Barrow and Atqasuk.

View images as slides

The days lengthen; Eight studies of the new moon; Jimmy wastes my time; man climbs bamboo ladder

The days are lengthening. Here I am, at 4:00 PM, driving to Metro Cafe and I can actually see and photograph this guy and his bike. True, I am shooting at ISO 6400 at a slow shutter speed, underexposed by one stop, but still, I can photograph him even though there are no lights nearby.

This would not have been the case a very short time ago.

Shoshana served me my Americano and cinnamon roll, plus I brought a banana with me. I thought about doing more "Young Writer" studies of Shoshana, but I suppose I should not do them everyday but should give her a break between shoots.

Now here I am, driving away from Metro, on Schrock, toward the Talkeetna Mountains. Before I reach them, I will turn left, to the west.

I sip my coffee. I eat my cinnamon roll. I chomp on my banana. I listen to the news on All Things Considered. The NPR lady who fired Juan Williams has now been forced to resign herself.

NPR tries to get a quote from Juan, but he won't talk to them, so they pull a very embittered sounding quote from Juan Williams on Fox News, where he has been paid $3.5 million dollars to turn around on himself and is doing a very good job of it.

As I continue on, I spot the new moon. I understand that the way one is supposed to take such photos is to find just the right spot, stop his car, get out, anchor his camera on a tripod, shoot will as low an ISO as he can get away with and a stopped down aperture.

But I want to drive, to eat my cinnamon roll and listen to the news. So I shot at 6400 ISO, slow shutter speed, wide open aperture, many of the images through a dirty windshield but some, when the angle was right, through an open window.

This pictures look much neater on my big monitor and I hate to have to reduce them to this size, but that's how it is. They will appear a bit larger in slideshow view, but nothing like on my screen.

Oh well:

New Moon, Study #1

New Moon, Study #2

New Moon, Study #3

New Moon, Study #4

New Moon, Study #5

New Moon, Study #6

New Moon, Study #7

New Moon, Study #8

Well, this battle for sleep continues. I got to sleep somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 AM and could not sleep a wink past 5:00. I stayed in bed and tried my best until just before 6:00, when I quit trying, got up and headed to Family Restaurant.

I was almost alone there, but not quite.

It appears that the dreadful heat wave is over. It is still not cold: 6 degrees F (-15 C)  at my house, but it isn't warm, either. Maybe it will get cold, maybe it won't. I wish it would snow a bunch first, because what little we have left is not so much snow as a hard, crust of ice, but if it gets cold it won't snow, because it never snows when it is cold.

Except for mid-winter rain, cold and no snow is the worst kind of winter weather - except for ice skaters, who get to enjoy long skates on snow-free lakes and marshes.

Any, here I am, having just stepped out of Family Restaurant, ready to drive home.

After I got home, I prepared the pictures for this blog post. It was now about 9:00 AM. I suddenly felt a crash coming on. I had no choice but to go lie down for a bit. Jimmy, my good black cat, came with me. I crawled under the covers and lay on my side. He climbed on top of the covers and also lay on my side.

I decided to leave it up to him to decide when I should get up. When he decided it was time to get up off of me, I would get back out of bed. I figured this could be anywhere from from five minutes to one hour. I was kind of hoping for half an hour.

Crazy cat. He didn't move for 3.5 hours and neither did I.

All that time was lost.

Well, I will make up for it tonight, when rational people are asleep.

And this one from India:

Through the window of our taxi-cab, enroute from Bangalore to Mysore: Man climbs bamboo ladder.

View as slideshow

Looking for Lisa on the Rachel Maddow show; iPhoning it with Carmen, Scott and Shoshana at the Metro Cafe

The day before yesterday, I answered my iPhone to hear the very excited voice of my daughter, Lisa, whom I have not seen since before I left for Kaktovik at the beginning of the month. "Dad!" she exclaimed. "Did you know that Rachel Maddow is going to be doing her show in Anchorage tomorrow?"

It was the first that I had heard - although right after the call ended, I saw it plastered all over the Alaska blogosphere.

Only 200 tickets would be given out, first come, first serve, and Lisa had put in her name. If she was successful, she would get two tickets only.

So it was agreed that if she got the two tickets, her mom would drive into town and go with her.

Sadly, Lisa was not successful.

Happily, Charlie's mom was and she invited Lisa to go with her.

Trouble was, Lisa's car is out of commission. She had no transportation. So her mom volunteered to go into town, pick her up and take her to the Taproot Cafe in Anchorage, where Maddow would be doing the show live.

This meant that I would have no car in the afternoon, which was fine by me, because I would have my bike and I needed to do some bike-riding.

Still, I wanted to venture out in the car at least once that day, so Margie and I drove to Arby's for a sandwich.

Here we are, in the car, along the way, at the corner of Lucille and Seldon, where I have stopped at the sign until this vehicle passes by.

At about the same time that I would normally have gotten into the car to drive to Metro, I plugged the headset into my iPhone, tuned the radio to KSKA, put on my helmet, climbed onto my bike and pedaled to Metro.

In some ways, it was a horrifying pedal. I had not ridden my bike since before I left for Kaktovik and I have not even been taking any good walks. I have had no exercise to speak of all month long and I felt it - in my lungs, in my muscles.

Still, I pedaled resolutely on and soon I was in Metro, where I found Shoshana and Carmen in Halloween dress.

I cannot find my pocket camera, which I think might be under the bed somewhere, I did not want to carry my 5d II, so, again, the only camera that I had was my iPhone and the lens was extra smudged.

That's okay, because when you shoot pictures with a cell phone, you do not look for technical perfection. You look to see if you can capture some kind of feeling, even through the smudge and motion blur and if you do, that is good enough.

So here is Shoshana, photographed through my smudged iPhone. I get a good feeling when I look at the picture - just as I always do when I pull up to the Metro drive-through window and see Shoshana smiling, ready to take my order.

She is just the kind of person who gives one a good feeling.

Carmen, with Scott in the background, as seen in the mirror. In this blurry image, I get the feeling of energy, vivaciousness, friendly warmth and slightly devilish mischievousness that Carmen always brings to Metro Cafe. Although he occupies but a small part of the frame, I feel the absolute, determined, doggedness of Scott as he battles to defeat his horrid cancer.

I believe this is one of Scott's brothers, washing the Metro windows. Scott sat down with me and we talked for a long time - not much about cancer, but about other things, about America, Alaska, where we are, how we got here, what the future looks like.

It would all be worth expounding upon one day.

Afterwards, I pedaled home upon pavement coated with a thin layer of splotchy, frost ice. I wondered what would happen if the bike slid out from beneath me and I came down upon my artificial shoulder.

I did not really believe there was much chance of that happening, but soon, if I keep riding my bike, the chance will be fairly high. In the past, when this would happen, it was never a big deal, because you slid on ice, went down on ice and slid across ice - but now...

I had no cover on my ears. They got a little cold.

The Rachel Maddow show was nearing its end when I arrived home. I scanned the crowd, looking for Lisa.

I could not find her. As it turns out, when Margie picked her up at work she forgot her driver's license, left it behind and so was barred from entering the Taproot Cafe. Lisa did not get to be part of the crowd. To help make up for it, she plans to go do some volunteer work for Scott McAdams.

Later in the evening, I watched the repeat of the Maddow show. What I saw was Alaska, bursting with energy across the political spectrum, some of it rational, some of it irrational and a great mystery to me, given what has been made so obvious - all of it passionate and heartfelt. It looked like yesterday would have been a fun day to have been in Anchorage. 

View images as slide show

they will appear larger and look better

A man wearing an orange shirt pedals his bicycle north on Tamar, toward the Talkeetna Mountains

This is the ONLY picture that I have taken since I put up my last post. Although I never let a day go by without taking at least one picture and usually anywhere from a dozen or so to a thousand or more on a big, intense, shoot, I did not want to take very many pictures today. I already had a post planned for this slot and I knew that if I took a bunch of pictures, at some point I would have to take some time to edit them.

I did not want to take the time.

But I have to get up early Wednesday morning to take the Escape into the shop for some warranted work and then I must drive the loaner car to Anchorage to take care of a very important task. Despite thinking that I would just veg all afternoon and evening, that I would walk, ride my bike, drive my car, do whatever, I found myself with a cascade of tasks to attend to and so I did not veg.

I did take one very short walk, late in the evening, and that was when I saw this guy riding his bike ahead of me.

As to the post that I had planned - one that would make a tie between what I did in Arizona and Anaktuvuk Pass - it is just going to have to wait one more day.

It is 10:26 PM and, just like last night, I haven't the energy to continue tonight.

So I will set the blog-timer for this to appear at 11:00 AM and will do the post that I had planned for today tomorrow.

I have one more task I must do before I go to bed. It, at least, will help bring in some genuine revenue.

I apologize for being so exhausted.

I must get a bit rested over the next couple of weeks so that I can go to Greenland and exhaust myself all over again.

That should be fun. I will take you all with me. It will be good - not what most of you probably think - but very good.