If you live in Point Lay, Anchorage is like a mad rush; hoar-frost at 65 mph (maybe just a little bit faster than that); Kalib begins the day at the end

This is Thomas Nukpagigak of Point Lay, and he is musing about the madness and rush of traffic and people swarming about in Anchorage. Thomas is the whaling captain whose crew I followed in 2008 and I might have been with them again this year, if I hadn't injured my shoulder and then gone to India. The day I left the Arctic Slope for India was the same day Point Lay caught its first bowhead in 72 years.

As for today, I picked Thomas up at the Embassy Suites in Anchorage and as we drove through the streets, he commented on the insanity and rush of traffic in the city. "The people never stop," he mused. "They just keep going and going and going. Always in a hurry to get to the next place. Point Lay is nice and quiet. That's how I like it."

Some of you who live in the country down in the Lower 48 might be nodding your heads knowingly, but, unless you have been to place like Point Lay - and there is no such place in the Lower 48 - you still can't grasp it. 

Point Lay has a population of about 300 people, maybe a bit less. If you go Northeast up the coast, the nearest village is Wainwright, population about 700, well over 100 miles away. If you go southwest, the nearest village is Point Hope, also about 700 and about the same distance. No roads link the villages. You travel between them either by airplane, snowmachine, or boat - sometimes, someone still makes the journey by dog team, but not very often.

When I followed his crew whaling, we set camp out on the ice 36 miles to the northeast, as measured by GPS. When you live like that for awhile, even Barrow, with its 4500 or so people, comes to seem like a big, bustling, city and when you first get there, you long for the quiet of the camp and the village.

So Thomas and I headed to Ray's Vietnamese Restaurant. We had a good lunch together and reviewed some material I had put together. He strongly urged me to come back to Point Lay for next spring's whale hunt. I felt a great desire to do just that.

Of course, my day did not begin in Anchorage. It began in Wasilla. And here I am, in my car, leaving Wasilla at about 11:50 AM.

The air has been foggy and still for the past couple of days, so there is hoarfrost on everything.

More hoarfrost.

The Alaska Railroad bridge that spans one braid of the Knik River.

About 30 miles still to go.

A car passes me on the Glenn Highway. It was speeding, but the driver did not get caught.

Shortly after I arrived in Anchorage, just before I picked Thomas up. I wish I had more money in that place. You can count every dollar that I have there now with just three figures.

Afterward, I dropped Thomas off at Wal-Mart by Diamond Center.

From there, I headed over to the Alaska Regional Hospital, to see a friend from Wainwright who was badly injured in a snowmachine accident last month. I found him in his room, alone, asleep. I called his niece and she said, go ahead, wake him up.

So I spoke his name, but he did not wake up. I placed my hand upon his shoulder - how thin and frail it felt, and he, always such a strong and vigorous man. I gave him a gentle shake. Still, he did not wake up. So I stood there at his bedside for awhile and then left. The first time that I went to see him he was still at the Alaska Native Medical Center. I could not see him because, due to fears of swine flu, they were only allowing two members of his immediate family to visit.

The second time, he was also asleep.

I might be in town again tomorrow. If so, I will try a fourth time.

Next, I headed over to the Captain Cook Hotel, to see my Iñupiaq sister, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak, of Wainwright. I was happy to find her daughter, Krystle, there, too. I had something in my computer that I wanted both of them to review, so that's what Krystle is doing here.

And in case you wonder about the little one...

...he is the youngest of her three children - Jonathan.

Krystle, Jesse, and Jonathan. Jesse was raised in Point Hope and that is where they all live, now.

I had meant to get Mary Ellen in a picture, too, but I devoted all my photographic attention to these three and forgot.

Remember how I said I felt a great desire to return to Point Lay next whaling season? When I see or talk to or even just think of any of the Ahmaogak's, I also feel a great desire to return to Wainwright next whaling season and to go back out with Iceberg 14, which Mary Ellen now co-captains with Jason and Robert.

And then speaking of Point Hope - yeah, I feel that same desire to go out there, too.

And then just a couple of weeks ago, a captain in Barrow invited me to get out of the south, come up north and go out with him and crew next spring.

The thought felt wonderful - tough - but wonderful. That's how it is. It is always tough. It is always wonderful.

Life gets very confusing, sometimes.

Who knows what will happen, come next spring?

And here I am, on my way back home to Wasilla, crossing the Palmer Hay Flats. People in vehicles are forever smacking moose on this stretch of highway and that is why they put in these fog lights.

Here is Kalib and Caleb, back at the computer, looking at dinosaurs. This is the very first picture I took today. 

You know what it says in the Bible: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Well, the last wasn't first, but the first is last.

The Bible got it part right.

Kalib golfs, vacuums, gets under the weather, goes to the doctor, reunites with Royce; Various and insundry Wasilla scenes

Ever since Kalib moved out, the house had been a quiet and empty place. After he returned, he resumed his golf game. This made life in the house much better.

And then he vacuumed the floor. It really needed it and we were grateful.

Kalib and his vacuum cleaner.

It was a foggy day. I took only a very short walk - not because of the fog, but because I left at 11:45 AM and I had a phone interview scheduled at noon.

I hated to take such a short walk. I guess I should have left earlier.

After I hung up the phone, I wanted out. Caleb was awake to watch Kalib, so I took Margie to lunch. Along the way, we passed by this guy walking the shore of Wasilla Lake.

Regularly readers will instantly recognize this as the intersection that provides an excellent view of Pioneer Peak above the maddening traffic of Wasilla's main thoroughfare. But you couldn't see the mountains today.

We ate our lunch in the car, as these ravens flirted with each other nearby.

As we ate, this was the view through the windshield. The tower rises out of the Wasilla Police Station. I was a little worried that someone might come running out of there, think we were someone else and try to arrest us, but no one did. 

The radio was on and a restaurant reviewer was talking from Cleveland. He had moved there from the East Coast, where he said he had been a food snob and had not expected to find any good food in the Midwest.

Boy, was he wrong, he said. The dining in Cleveland was the height of gourmet sophistication. Not even New York City could beat it.

I thought maybe I should start doing reviews on all the sophisticated, gourmet, dining to be had right here in Wasilla, Alaska. I could start here, in the parking lot alongside Taco Bell.

So... Taco Bell has a new item on the meno called a cheese roll, or something like that. It is a flour tortilla rolled around a glob of melted cheese. I bought one, tore it in half, gave half to Margie and ate the other myself.

"What do you think?" I asked Margie.

"It's okay," she said.

"I find it quite excellent myself," I told her. "Nice, sophisticated, piquant, gourmet taste."

She said nothing more at all.

I also had two original crunchy tacos. Indeed, they crunched very well and, after I squeezed a packet of mild and another of hot sauce into each one, had just the right touch of spice to add a decent kick to the meal.

I also had a bean burrito with green sauce.

These are superb when done right, but this one was too damn salty.

The Pepsi was just right - not too sweet but pleasantly carbonated, so that I could be assured of a little burp later, the flavor of which would remind me just how excellent the meal was - except for the bean burrito, which could have been better.

Back at the house, Margie sits with Kalib, who was once again feeling under the weather. While we had been out, Caleb had observed something that frightened him terribly, as Kalib seemed to be disoriented and frightened. Kalib had reached for Caleb where Caleb wasn't even standing. Margie called Lavina at work in Anchorage and she made a doctor appointment for Kalib here in Wasilla at 4:30, but we were advised to bring him in a bit early.

We left the house at 4:00, but stopped to go through the drive-through at Metro Cafe to get Americanos. No, I don't buy Latte's and Mochas everyday.

We continued on toward the doctor's office. As you can see, Pioneer Peak was now visible in the twilight sky.

Lavina had driven up from Anchorage and was already there to meet us.

The rest went inside, but, as I had much to do, I headed back here to my office, slightly worried but pretty confident that Kalib was okay. Lavina would bring them all home.

This is what the Talkeetna Mountains looked like as I drove home.

I passed by a fence decorated with large, candy canes wrapped in green and red lights.

Kalib was fine - but better to be safe. Here he is, reunited with his buddy, Royce.

Kalib turns away from his oatmeal; a snowplow roars down Seldon; I exceed my limits

Margie tries to feed Kalib some oatmeal, but he does not seem to be very hungry.

On my walk, a snowplow came grinding and banging past. We got two or three inches of new snow overnight. Further up the Susitna Valley, 30 inches fell. It's still pretty warm, but not as bad as yesterday.

As I walked on, this man zipped past me on a snowmachine. He was going a little faster than me, but I'm pretty sure that if I had put my mind, lungs and legs into it, I could have sprinted right past him.

I just didn't want to, so, as he sped by, I walked casually and nonchalantly on.

I did wave, though.

It's good to wave at strangers driving snowmachines.

You might need their help one day.

As I neared home, this dog charged me, growling and barking under its muzzle. It hit my wrist with its muzzled snout and then charged past, still growling, still barking. I wasn't worried, though. I have known this dog since it was a cute and friendly pup and it has charged me many, many, times - even without a muzzle.

It's just a show he's got to put on.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 9:00 AM.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 2:30 PM.

This is what the Talkeetna Mountains looked like at 10:00 AM.

Kalib drinks his juice.

Well, I see that I have exceeded my self-imposed limit of one picture each of Kalib and the outside world.

Oh well.

I got a significant amount of work done today, anyway.

Kalib makes a toast, leaving me no choice but to cheat a little bit; a brown dog named Blue goes into the post office; Pineapple Express causes the weather to turn miserably warm

Thanks to this guy and what he is about to do, I now have to cheat a little bit. Until I get on top of things (and I am not even close), I pledged to limit my posts to two photos a day - one of Kalib and another from out and about. So when I took this picture of Kalib, I figured that I had my one of him and that would do it.

But then he wanted to make toasts all around - "to the best damned grandparents in the world," he toasted. Oh, those weren't his exact words, most of which are not spoken in adult English, but that was what he meant. The best damned grandma agreed, and so joined in the toast.

So, you see, I felt it necessary to break my pledge, and post three images. I could have posted ten, easy enough, but I only posted three.

The occasion, by the way, was the opening of the new "Alaska Bagel." The three of us were very curious to try it out. Margie ordered a wrap, I ordered a bagel sandwich, we both ordered a cup of chicken gumbo soup, I ordered a root beer and, as you can see, these two ordered glasses of water. Margie and I shared with Kalib.

The soup was excellent. The sandwich was okay - the fresh bagel was excellent as was the mustard, mayo, tomatoes, onions, avacado, etc, but there was only one, very thin, slice of ham on my sandwich.

I could hardly taste the ham!

And the bill came to over $26, which is just too much to spend for a simple lunch with only one thin slice of ham, no matter how good the bagel is.  So I won't be going there as often as I would have hoped.

Jacob and Lavina stopped on their way to work and bought breakfast there. Both reported breakfast to be delicious. So maybe I will give that a try, too, before I give up.

I had to go to the post office and stand in a long line. This guy stood in front of me with his back toward me, so I really didn't notice that there was anything special about him - until he reached the point where he was next in line and turned towards the counters.

Suddenly, I saw that there was something very special about him, poking its head out through his unzipped jacket.

I was only able to do a short interview, maybe five seconds - just long enough to discover that the dog's name is Blue. As there is no blue to be seen in the dog, this raised some obvious questions, but before I could ask any of them, a postal worker looked at the man and the dog, motioned with his hand and said, "come forward please."

That was that.

Maybe one day I will see them again.

As long as I am cheating, I might as well cheat a little more and put in two pictures from out and about. Right now, we are having the second most miserable type of weather that we get around here in the winter time. A Pineapple Express low pressure system has moved up the Pacific from Hawaii and vicinity and brought warm temperatures and strong winds.

It is awful. The temperature is 38 degrees above zero and snow is melting. I hate it.

The only winter weather that we get that is worse is when the Pineapple Express is even stronger, warmer and wetter, when the temperature rises into the 40's and rain pours from the sky.

We live on the edge of one of the great climatic battle zones of this world - the masses of super-deep, cold air that move our way from the north and west, and the warm air flows that slip up from the Pacific.

When the cold wins out, life is good. When the warm wins, it is miserable.

And, as I have noted before, this is an El Niño winter. In El Niño winters, the Pineapple Express wins the battle all too often.

In these warming times (Alaska's average wintertime temperatures are over six degrees warmer than they were just 30 years ago) the misery is only exacerbated.

Okay. Tomorrow, I try to go back to my two image scheme.

Correction: Yesterday, I confused Diane Benson's halibut with another one and erroneously stated that it was over 300 pounds. It was actually about 120 - but that's still pretty big.

Sarah runs out of gas, picks up her hockey stick; Mr. Dodd Shay blows the snow away; Rex and Kalib play with train, eat pie

As I walked today, I saw this girl, sitting still in the road on her four-wheeler, going nowhere, holding her hockey stick. I wondered why. "I ran out of gas," she told me.

I wasn't carrying any gas so I could not help her, but I could take her picture. Her name is Sarah, she is 14 years old and she plans to start playing hockey very soon. "At school?" I asked.

"I think I'm going to join a girl's league team," she answered.

Or did she say, "city league?" I'm pretty sure she said "girl's league." I suppose that I probably shouldn't quote her if I am not absolutely certain what her words were.

But then, it's not all that unusual for a blogger to get a quote a little bit wrong. I don't think that I got it wrong, I think I got it right. But I'm not 100 percent certain.

And don't worry. She had a cell phone. Her gas was coming.

A little further down the road I saw Dodd Shay blowing the snow off his driveway.

When he got to the end of his driveway, he turned around and started going back. His black dog kept coming. In fact, the dog followed me for a short distance. It wanted to keep following me, but it got worried that it was getting too far from from home, so it turned around and went back.

A white poodle awaited it. Yes, I photographed the poodle, too, but today I will make you use imagination, if you want to see it. I won't tell you if it was tall or short, or what color its collar was or if its fur was groomed or how. Use your imagination - see what kind of white poodle you can create to go with this black dog.

Snowmachine tracks cross a well-scraped road.

I needed something besides turkey, so I drove to Taco Bell and passed by Wasilla Lake. Snow blew off the lake, but it wasn't bad.

Rex returned to Anchorage from Homer, where he did lots of thinking. In the evening, he came out and, Taco Bell notwithstanding, we all did a Thanksgiving retake and ate more turkey. Afterward, Margie asked if we were ready for pie.

We weren't. I semi-dozed off on the couch to the sounds of Kalib squealing and Uncle Rex laughing (you can tell how much I got done on this task I told you about last night).

When I got up from the couch, I found the two sitting at the kitchen table, playing with the toy train engine I bought in India for about 50 cents and then brought home to Kalib.

Finally, we were ready for pie.