The train rolls again

All my regular readers know that I love trains - big trains and little trains, too. When I was boy, my family had an electric Lionel steam locomotive with a coal car, several freight cars and a caboose. Most of the time, it stayed in boxes, but every now and then my dad would let me get it out, splice the tracks together and then I would run that train late into the night, headlight shining, little puffs of smoke belching from the smokestack, until my parents forced me to shut it down and go to bed.

To make it more interesting, I would sometimes put marbles and toy soldiers, tanks, planes, jets, horses, knights in armor and such on the track. That heavy chunk of steel locomotive would blast its way through it all - and if it did sometimes derail, it was a tough thing and the crash would cause it no harm.

For Christmas of 2000, I bought myself a little HO train. I set it up briefly on my office floor and let it run in circles as my original good black cat, Little Guy, watched, chased, and sometimes batted at it.

Less than two months later, Little Guy vanished and I was left devastated. I do not exaggerate. Devastated. Truly, truly, devastated. No less so than if he had been one of the closest humans to me. Among the things I did to cope was to build a railroad in my office, about eight feet up on the wall above the floor.

Either when Kalib was a baby or before he was born, my locamotive derailed and fell into one of my fish tanks and got ruined. Since that time, my railroad has sat inactive.

But I wanted the boys to see the train go, so a few weeks ago I bought a new locamotive, broke it in a crash before they could see it, got it repaired and now the train is running again.

This weekend, the boys saw it roll for the first time.

They were fascinated. Especially Kalib. "Choo! Choo!" he shouted. "Chugga, chugga, chugga, Chugginton!" 

As you can see, especially in a larger view, the tabby cat, Pistol-Yero, was fascinated, too.

I also have pictures of Jim and Jobe being fascinated, but I will let this one do it by itself.

Come mid-afternoon, I found myself hungry for a hot dog, but there were none. So I got into the car to go get one. Along the way, I passed these firemen and this firetruck.

Can anyone tell me what year this Chevy pickup truck is?

If Scot of Metro Cafe sees this, he will know.

Later, I took a long bike ride, down past the shot-up sign alongside the Little Su, and then way beyond that. It started to rain right after I left the house, and then rained on me until I got home. It was a cold rain and it was windy and I had no jacket but only a t-shirt, but I didn't care.

If I had cared, I would have turned around and went home.

If you view this in large view, you can see actual raindrops that have fallen from the sky and are about to strike the ground.

I returned home the long way, so that I could pedal a little further. These two passed me up, but just barely. Not so long ago, I announced that I was taking this blog into retreat mode for the remainder of the summer, as the work burden on me is too great to spend more than a minimal amount of time per day on this blog.

Due to events like the Fourth of July, my birthday, visits of the boys and such, I have somewhat retreated from that retreat, but the time gun is really pointed at my head now, so I am going back into retreat. Again, I will still try to post every day, but not much.

View images as slide show

Standoff with skinny moose; buried truck, the train rumbles past Subway, etc. and so forth

I photographed this truck in early May in Point Hope. I include it in today's post just to assure interested readers that, although the rest of today's post will be devoted to Wasilla, I am continuing on with my series from my recent Arctic travels.

I spent two weeks on that trip and by the time I put yesterday's post up, I had made my way through just a little bit more than a day-and-half of that two weeks. I have been moving very slowly on that edit, because I have a different project that I must have proof ready by June 15, so I would do a little bit of editing on the Arctic trip, then put it aside and get back to work on my project.

But I want to get this blog series done, so I decided that today, Saturday, I will put my project aside and see if I can make my way through the entire take, then hopefully do a bit better job planning for the remainder of the Arctic Spring 2011 posts and get them ready so that they can appear through next week while I do nothing but concentrate on my project - and maybe drop in a picture or two from Wasilla here now and then, just to make it clear where I really am.

Despite appearances, it does not really snow that much in Arctic Alaska, where annual precipitation is about the same as Phoenix, Arizona. But once the snow falls, it does not melt for a long time and the wind blows it all about, so, whenever it finds anything to drift up and pile against, or even bury, it does.

And so it buried this truck. Looks like someone decided it was time to start digging it out.

Now, here I am, solidly back in Wasilla, driving home the long way after stopping at Metro Cafe. I see a kid on a bike out the window, so I quickly lift the camera and take a blind snap to my side through the dirty glass as I look straight ahead at the road. A moose could walk onto the road.

Yesterday morning, Margie and I decided to have breakfast at Subway, where it is pretty cheap but still good. As we were eating, I was thrilled to hear the whistle and rumble of the train, coming down the tracks. So I got my camera ready and.... sure enough, the train rolled into view! And, employing all my skill, talent, and experience as a hard working photojournalist, I caught the exact moment that the train rolled into view.

The exact moment! People will now marvel at this photo from now until the end of the world. Hmmm... according to some, folks won't get to marvel all that long, so look at it now and enjoy it while you can.

I love the train and yet, you know what? I have never ridden on the Alaska Railroad - not one time. I have never even been on a passenger car or in an engine, either. Nor has Margie.

Someday, this must change.

As it turned out, the Alaska Railroad engine was towing passenger cars, operated by Princess Tours. I could only wonder what these people were talking and thinking about as they rolled through my now famous/infamous home town.

I suspect some were basking in perceived glory and glowing in adoration. Others were probably discussing US history, Paul Revere in particular, and wondering if our schools could really be that bad.

They're not. It's an individual thing.

On my walk, I came upon this adolescent moose. As I approached, I was searching for its mom. One never wants to step between a mom moose and her calf. I saw no mom. Maybe the adolescent had been turned out on its own.

Maybe the mom had died.

Who knows?

Then the moose came walking toward me, looking at me. I looked at its bristles and they were up, but not dramatically so. I was not quite sure what to think. My first thought was that maybe somebody had fed this calf and now it was hungry and coming to me in the hope that I might give it an apple or something.

Or maybe it saw me as threat and was warning me to back away or it would stomp on me. Or maybe it was saying I am one mean moose and I am coming to get you and I will jump on you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

It can be very hard to know with a moose.

And, despite all our bear stories, in Alaska, moose afflict more damage upon human flesh than do bears.

"It is okay, moose," I calmly told it. "I mean you no harm. You have nothing to fear from me." I started to walk slowly to the side. I did not back up or retreat in the opposite direction, because I did not want it to think that I was afraid of it, either. I just moved away to the side.

Finally, the moose turned away. See how skinny it is? I felt badly for it. I did not feel optimistic for its future. I doubt that it will make it to hunting season, but I could be wrong. Maybe it will eat, thrive, and grow strong.

In the afternoon, Margie drove to town and brought Jobe and Kalib home with her. Once again, they are spending the weekend with us in order to allow their parents to work on their house.

Jobe wants to be friends with Jim.

Jim is still trying to decide if this is a good idea.

And for all my readers who have become fond of Charlie - who has not been in this blog since before I went traveling - his family dog, Rowdy, who was a genuine smiler, died this past week.

Condolences, Charlie, Jim and Cyndy.

Kalib bounced on the bed.

That plastic is up to give better insulation against the cold of winter.

I suppose we could take it down now.

Margie did open it up at the bottom, to let fresh air in.

View images as slides

Train rumbles by family; the bike ride: air dancer, church chicken offers free eggs, art and soul; the wood gatherers

When I walked into Family Restaurant for breakfast, there was a different lady handling the seating and she tried to seat me in the wrong place. I refused to go there, because if I had sat there and a train came by, I could not even have seen it.

So she relented and gave me a booth by the window that looks out at the railroad tracks.

Sure enough, a train went by.

Sometimes, you just have to stand up for your rights if you want to see the train.

Between breakfast and coffee break, I took a break for lunch and ate it in the backyard with Jim. The temperature was 45 degrees, very pleasant, and I shot a nice little picture story titled, "Lunch in the Backyard With Jim."

But I don't have time to edit, process, place and write about the pictures, so I will just move on to coffee-break time. Here I am, on my coffee break. I have already been to Metro and now I am pedaling on the bike path that parallels the Parks Highway.

This guy or gal is dancing and waving at me, trying to get me to come into a nearby store and buy clothes.

I refuse. 

I pedal on.

At the corner of Parks and Church, I come upon a gigantic chicken with the face of man waving a sign advertising free eggs. The chicken is Ned, and he says the eggs are being given away at the Lamb of God Church, about one more mile up the road.

He says there are a lot of people who can't afford to buy eggs during this Easter Season and the congregation at the Lamb of God wants these people to be able to celebrate Easter with eggs.

But even if you are rich and don't celebrate Easter, you can still stop and get free eggs. They do not do means testing at the Lamb of God.

At least, you could have got eggs yesterday. The egg giveaway is now over.

Ned told me to let everybody know that each Wednesday, the church puts on a noon feed for the poor. But it is not limited to the poor. Anyone can come and eat. So you are all invited. Yes, my Hindu family in India - you too. You come here and we can go together to eat at the Lamb of God - just like we get to eat at your temple if we want.

I gave myself an assignment to go to the Lamb of God one Wednesday and eat.

The problem is, it could easily be another month before I am in Wasilla on a Wednesday again and by then I will probably have forgotten that I gave myself such an assignment.

But if I see another chicken in the road giving away eggs, I will remember.

The lady who was with Ned. I believe she was his wife, but I didn't pry, so I can't be certain.

I could have pedaled on towards the Lamb of God, but I turned on Church and pointed my bike towards home. Soon, I came upon this bike path art.

I remember when Maureen Dowd, columnist of the New York Times was in Wasilla and she described my town as a tiny, bleak soulless place devoid of culture and sidewalks.

Well, as regular readers of this blog have probably figured out, Wasilla is not tiny at all. It sprawls. You could probably drop half or more of Manhattan Island into Wasilla. We don't have no sidewalks, all right, but we got bike paths and plenty of culture - just look at the fine art you can find right on a Wasilla bike path!

There is soul aplenty in that there art work.

A bit up Church, I found these people gathering firewood from a newly cleared lot. They spoke to each other in what sounded to be Russian. They were friendly enough and I was tempted to hang out and learn their life history, but they were busy, I had a huge amount of work waiting for me at home, work to keep me going into the wee hours of the next morning, when I would stop only because I was ready to drop.

So I held my questions for another time, another day, should I ever meet them again. I pedaled home and got back to work.

View images as slides

Even though I had to worry about chips and dings, I witnessed some pretty marvelous sights from the Kendall Ford loaner car

Last week, I brought up the fact that the "check engine" light had come on in our Escape and that I had taken it to the shop at Kendall Ford, got the problem diagnosed, made an appointment and had then dropped it off very early in the morning for what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half to three hour repair. Yet, come the end of that day, I learned that it had proven much more complicated than that and I could not pick up the car. They would have to keep it for another day.

I had planned to follow the story through, but I got sidetracked by matters such as Jobe's baby shower and my Mother's Day tribute.

So today I got up thinking that, concerning this story, I had blown it. The time had passed. It was too late to post it now and that I might just as well forget about it, pretend that it never happened and let the pictures that I took to illustrate it slip quietly away into that vast, unseen, archive that holds the big majority of images that I have ever shot.

Then I decided, what the hell - this is not a daily newspaper, this is my blog, I can do with it whatever I want. I don't always need to be perfectly timely. Ultimately, my goal is to continually wrap the past and the present together here, anyway, so what's wrong with wrapping in the recent past?

Anyway, no matter how current the images and the memories, by the time I post them here they are the past. So, here goes:

Come the next day, I waited and waited for the call that would tell me the car was done. My plan then was to ride my bike the five or six miles to Kendall and pickup the car. Or, if Caleb was awake, I might have him take me. Instead, near the end of the day, I got a call from Mark, my intermediary at Kendall, and he informed me that in the process of making the repair, the mechanics had accidently ruptured the fuel line and it was leaking gasoline.

They had ordered a part from Anchorage, but would have to hold the car for at least one more day, possibly two.

Mark said they could provide me with a loaner car and they could send someone to my house to pick me up and drive me over. "Okay," I said.

This is Ginger, the driver who came to get me. Ginger spoke with a strong southern accent.

Ginger has two jobs at Kendall - driving customers like me back and forth and doing custodial work. 

"It's either cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a customer... cleaning a urinal, or driving a costumer," she expounded. "Which one do you think I'd rather be doing?"

Yet, driving customers was not so pleasant that morning when two women were killed in a head-on collision just a few hundred yards up the Park's Highway from Kendall Ford. It was a busy morning, but she found herself repeatedly stuck in slow traffic as she crept by the accident scene.

Her theory was that the woman who had crossed over the suicide-left turn lane and into the oncoming traffic must have been struck by a medical problem. Otherwise, how could anyone possibly make such an error?

One of the customers she gave a ride to later that same day believed otherwise. He thought it was most likely driver distraction. His job, perhaps as an EMT, had put him as a first responder at many accident scenes and in such cases it almost always proved to be driver distraction, he told her - something like eating a hamburger, drinking coffee, putting on makeup or, most often these days, talking on the phone.

While she respected his expertise, she was not convinced. "If you start to cross four lanes of traffic because you get distracted from drinking a cup of coffee, you're going to figure it out and you can through that cup of coffee aside and save yourself. I still think it was probably a medical problem."

Before she could expound further, her cell phone rang. It was the office, calling to tell her she had a visitor waiting for her. She speculated as to who it could be - a higher up from the work place, perhaps, or, "it might be my boyfriend."

After we turned off the Park's and drove past the Kendall dealership toward the big shop at the back, she studied the cars in the parking lot. "Yep, it's my boyfriend," she said. "There's his car." Then she stopped to let me out. "You have a right good day, sir," she said with that southern accent.

"Where are you originally from?" I asked.

"Viriginia," she said.

Before I went into the office to do the paper work to pick up the loaner car, I saw Mark looking at our Escape. The way he held the blanket kind of reminded me a bit of someone about to drape a shroud over a dead body. I walked over to investigate.

Mark points toward the original problem, before the fuel line was ruptured, and explains how all that stuff that in front of his finger had to get removed before they could replace the bent camshaft in the solenoid. 

This is Sharon, who took care of the paperwork for the loaner car. It was regular rental-car paperwork, it's just that instead of me, Kendall and Ford would pick up the tab. If I heard it, I forgot the name of the lady in pink. She did say that she was glad that it was Sharon who was working with me and who would be in my blog, because she does not think she photographs well and so does not like to appear in pictures.

We had to do a walk around to look for dings, dents, nicks, chips, scrapes, cracks and scratches before I could sign off and take the car. Sharon was very thorough in noting all the little mars, including ones that I would never spotted if she had not pointed them out to me.

On the one hand, this leaves one feeling grateful because now you know that these almost invisible mars are not going to get charged to you, should someone find them on your return. On the other, it makes one nervous, a bit afraid to drive the car much at all because there's no telling what she might discover when you do return it.

While it was a loaner car, the driver is still responsible for any damage it sustains while in his custody. My insurance would be there for big things, but there is always a deductible and I did not want to have to pay any deductible.

I signed for it, then took the car and drove away - feeling very nervous. Remember Larry, the Harley rider who came here from Florida and then gave up motorcyle riding, in part because the air above highways here tends to have an abundance of little rocks and gravel flying through it?

I am certain that you have noticed the cracks that lace our windshield along with the chips that pock it.

Yet, it was not long until I found myself in a parking lot as a train came rumbling past. This is that train, as seen through the windshield of the loaner Escape. I must admit, it is worth the risk, to be able to sit in a loaner Escape and witness such a wonderful, dramatic and exciting sight such as this.

That afternoon, I drove the loaner Escape up to the drive-through window at Metro Cafe. Branson, Carmen's four-year old son, rode this bicycle right up to the front of the loaner car, looked at me, smiled, and wiped his nose.

As I drove off with my coffee, I saw these two, through the window of the loaner Escape.

Then I saw this girl walking...

...and this guy riding his bike.

All these things I saw from the loaner Escape. 

When I took it back two nights later, it was given another thorough inspection. Not a single new ding was found in it.

Here I am, back in my own red Ford Escape. I have just driven away from the Ford Kendall shop and am waiting at the intersection so that I can turn onto the Park's Highway. It will be a long wait, as there will be no breaks in the traffic for many minutes.

Given the view, I do not really mind. In fact, if I could show you this picture at its original size, you would see that the words above "MOTEL" on the sign say, "Alaskan View."

Except for the motel, it was a grand Alaskan view indeed.

Oddly enough, every single view that we have around here is an Alaskan view.

Then, of course, someone had to turn in and cut off that view. Fortunately, he would not cut it off for too long.

Unfortunately, the next guy cut the view off even worse. Yet, look at the pleased smile upon his face - it looks like he is returning to Kendall from a test drive in a new car.

I wonder if he bought it?

Budding artist in school bus; Wasilla's quiet condos on the edge of the Alaska wilderness; four kids walking

This is one of those days when I had a fairly extensive post planned, but I can find no time to post it. So I will hold off on that material and post it tomorrow, by which time I may or may not have my car back from the shop, and do short, quick, simple post.

Who knows when I can get my car back?

For those of you who fear the economic impact I will face by having my car in the shop for major repairs - don't worry. It is all under warranty.

Anyway, yesterday, as I waited in the Kendall Ford temporary replacement car at the left-turn lane at stoplight, this kid rolled past in a school bus and looked right at me.

I am quite certain that this kid is an artist with latent talent of the highest calibre. I am equally certain that, one day in the not terribly distant future, he will be enrolled at the nationally prestigious Girdwood School of the Highest Kind of Hiigh Art and, as instructed, he will open up his electronic textbook to page 32 and there, he will see this photo highlighted as the supreme example and the highest Highest Kind of High Art.

He will look at it and say,

"I find something oddly familiar about this picture - almost like I was there when it was taken."

He will get a large print of it, hang it on his wall and it will inspire him to endure the trials of a long and tormented life in pursuit of art and to go on to create the second-greatest Highest Kind of High Art ever produced.

Wasilla's most exclusive, quiet condos, built on the edge of the Alaska wilderness, directly across the Parks Highway from Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Wasilla Lake.

If only I could afford to join them, I would live here, too!

Four kids walking, as seen in passing from my Kendall Ford temporary replacement car. More on this tomorrow. It is an exciting and earth-shaking story - one you will not want to miss.