Election eve, election morning in Wasilla - my search for a single Scott McAdams sign among a plethora of Joe Millers; sadly, the day begins very badly for someone

As election eve electioneering in Wasilla is aimed primarily at motorists driving by in cars, I decided that I would shoot my pictures of Wasilla electioneering entirely from the car. I would do it at dusk, and in the early AM, before dawn, to match the times when commuters would be pouring back into and leaving the valley to get back and forth from jobs in Anchorage.

I actually intended to start a little bit earlier than I did, but just as I was getting ready to go, Jimmy, my good black cat, did something on my desk that caused my computer screen to suddenly go black, then light back up just long enough for me to see error messages flashing all over the place as hard-drive icons mysteriously disappeared. Then the screen went dark again.

I could not get the monitor to come back up, so I had to shut everything down and start over again. It took 15 or 20 minutes, but finally my screen came back up, all my hard drives signed back on and so I got in the car and drove towards downtown Wasilla - if there is any place in Wasilla that can accurately be described as, "downtown."

I don't think there is - but there is an often frenetically busy area, where the Parks Highway runs through the midst of malls, stores, kiosks, fast food joints and various other enterprises, so that is what I refer to when I speak of "downtown Wasilla."

Here I am, on Lucille Street, headed towards downtown Wasilla, at dusk.

Then I was on the highway and it was busy. I had to stop at a red light, alongside this truck. 

I had hoped to get a red light at this corner, because I knew that is where the heaviest action would be, but I didn't. It was green. Up ahead, I saw a preponderance of Joe Miller signs. That's pretty much how it is in Wasilla - lots of Joe Miller signs.

In fact, it looked to me like Joe Miller had this corner all to himself... but wait... there in the shadows... the dark sign that hardly anyone can see or read... Harry Crawford! The Democratic candidate up against Don Young for the House!

This has been both a noisy and a quiet election. There has been so much noise surrounding the Senatorial race that all the other contests have seemed quiet, almost like they weren't happening.

It is an unusual thing to describe any race that Don Young is in as quiet, but, the House race has been pretty quiet.

And so has the race for Governor. These other races have been so quiet that has been a challenge for House, Gubernatorial, and, for hell's sake - local - candidates to capture the people's attention with everyone focused on McAdams........... Murkowski and ........................................................................................................................................................................................ Miller.

(Listed in order of my personal preference)

It's a fact, though, that here in Wasilla, Joe Miller dominates. Don't ask me why. 

As far as I can recall, one person was denied liberty in this election: Tony Hopfinger. 

And yet somehow, we must all live together. As Jon Stewart said, we build and share the same roads, where we all yield to each other in our turn. We do this everyday.

These are my neighbors. I disagree with them profoundly and believe that if they prove to be successful today, we, they and I, will all pay the price together.

Despite all that, we've all got to get along and not shoot each other.

In Alaska, we pretty much all have guns, you know - conservatives and liberals alike.

And, despite all the scare whipped up by those who would cynically use the fears of others for their political advantage, nobody in the Obama administration has made the slightest effort to take our guns away.

And we all fly the same flag. 

This had nothing to do with the electioneering. The officer was pursuing a speeder. I was not speeding. I was sitting at a red light, waiting for it to change so that I could turn left.

Some say that she is a moderate and that we should vote for her to stop Joe Miller. Once, I did see her as a moderate and I liked her. And I still like her. I have met her a few times and talked to her and she is a very likable person.

But I'm voting for Scott McAdams.

For one thing, I invested a great deal of faith and money in a health insurance company that turned out to be opposed to my health care. A couple of years ago, my doctor found some conditions in me that, if not watched closely, could easily turn to cancer and kill me. To insure that this would not happen, I was told that I would need to have certain procedures done every year.

If I could do this, then I should be okay.

And what did my insurance company do? They jacked up my rates and jacked up my rates until I could no longer pay them. Now I have no insurance but I do have preexisting conditions. The only thing that I can do is hope that I soon make a big financial score and can pay for these procedures out of pocket - as I am a year behind right now - or I can just hang on and hope that I make it okay without these procedures for another four years, until the Health Care bill kicks fully in.

Yet, she opposed that bill, and despite the lies that she accurately accuses Joe Miller of telling about her, tried to repeal it. She has promised to try again, should she win. 

She has actively voted against my health care - potentially against my life. In her promise to try again, she has made it clear that she would take even my four-year hope away from me.

I have many friends whom I love and respect who are voting for her - some of them just to stop Joe Miller.

But I am voting for my life - and the lives of others who either can't get health insurance or find that their insurance companies oppose their health care. 

Only Scott McAdams has said he would work with the basic strengths of the bill, tweak out the weaknesses, and strive to improve, not to kill, weaken, or defund, it.

I will vote for Scott McAdams. I will vote for my life.

And for those who protest "higher taxes" - even though the health care bill is primarily a private industry plan, consider this:

Over the course of the time that I carried my insurance, I spent somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 in premiums. I got very little back for that. I was prescribed medications for various things - but my insurance company never bought me a single pill. I spent hundreds of dollars a month, out of pocket. They never covered any routine care, and, besides what I paid them, I paid tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket for the medical care that my insurance always found a way to deny me.

What if, instead of into the pockets of an insurance company that saw my health care only as obstacle to their profits, I had paid that money, even as a tax, into a federal insurance plan that would actually cover my health care, help me, and when problems arise, be there for me, rather than to seek to find a way not to pay and even to force me out?

Right now, our health insurance practices are absurd. Up until you qualify for Medicare, insurance companies - perhaps not all, but certainly those such as mine - keep looking for ways to deny you help. If you hang on and survive in good health until you are 65, then they will likely pocket the money that you spent with them and then turn you over to Medicare, where a whole new set of tax dollars will now have to pay up your care.

Wouldn't it be better to have all the premiums that you spent over the decades, either out of your own pocket or your employer's, to be there for your care health care, once you turn 65, rather then to go to enrich CEO's and shareholders who never cared about you, anyway?

So I will vote for Scott McAdams.

But where are his signs?

I did not see a single one.

Just a flood of Joe Miller, and a spattering of Lisa Murkowski.

Well, enough of that. I did not mean to get carried away like that. I did not mean to politic. I was just going to matter-of-factly say: here are the signs, vote as you will. My anger got the best of me. Now, I will let readers enjoy looking at the signs.

I get a chuckle out of this one.

So that was last night. This is this morning. I decided that on election morning, I would have breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, then shoot a few more election day pictures from the car.

Here I am, at Family, where, as seen in their reflection upon the window, Connie takes an order.

As I sat there eating and sipping, a big number of emergency vehicles came by, lights flashing, sirens whining but quickly going silent. I knew that the accident had to be close by, that someone's day had gotten off to a bad start.

A very bad start. It happened very close to where I had been eating. I am back in my car, now, but still in the parking lot in front of Family Restaurant.

A terrible start. I hope not as terrible as it looks.

I hope they found success in their mission.

Just down the road, sign wavers had returned - two, at least. Both for Joe Miller. It was about 8:30 AM. Maybe other sign wavers were just waiting for daylight.

Please note the "Luv" charge on the one sign. That's the thing. It is a lie. Lisa Murkowski stood as a thorn in Obama's side. She showed him no love at all.

But you know what? When it comes to so much of campaigning, and certainly with this campaign, truth means nothing. It is an alien concept.

Wait... what is that just beyond them... just beyond the Harry Crawford sign? Is it a Scott McAdams sign?

I turn around in the Target parking lot, so I can go back and have a better look.

Yes, it is! It is a Scott McAdams sign!

I still didn't see any for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ethan Berkowitz or his running mate, my friend of three decades, Diane Benson.

I love this valley, I love Wasilla, but, sometimes, it can feel like a very lonely place.

Now I am driving down Lucille Street, headed back home. The 9:00 AM hour is drawing nigh.

I pass by Metro Cafe, where people, Republican, Democrat, Independent and indifferent, are getting their morning coffee.

I will stop by this afternoon.

I could have pulled in to vote, but I will wait until later in the day. Then I will come back here to Tanaina Elementary with Margie and we will cast our ballots.

I continue on, towards home, and see a boy waiting for a school bus.

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A pocket camera glimpse back at the gathering before I get going for real; roadside scenes while on coffee break in Wasilla: Baby Jobe in green

That's Harold Frost of Old Crow, Yukon Territory, playing fiddle on the left and Chester Fields of Fort Yukon on base. Yesterday, I stated that today I would begin posting my Gwich'in Gathering images in earnest, but I am not yet ready to do that.

I was very lazy yesterday and it was the only day this week that I would have Margie home with me. I did not even begin to transfer the 360 gigabytes or so of high resolution, RAW images from my big pro cameras from the portable hard drive I took to Fort Yukon into what for the moment is my big working harddrive attached to my desktop computer, until about 8:00 PM.

Those images were still transferring when I went to bed about 12:30 AM. Now I must put them in my photo editing program and start the task of editing and processing and I feel completely overwhelmed. It feels like a task that would take a month to do right.

The very thought makes me feel like I just want to go back to bed and sleep for a year or two.

That's another thing that I really like about my tiny pocket camera - the Canon s90. Not only is it tiny and light, but there is no way to shoot pictures fast with it, so you don't get that many. The ones that you do get have nowhere near the resolution of those taken with my pro cameras, so they do not bog the editing program down and they are quick and easy to work with.

I didn't use the pocket camera much in Fort Yukon, but I did keep it in my pocket at all times and every now and then I did pull it out and shoot a frame or two - such as in this case.

There was a table in front of the fiddle player. I wanted to get a shot from under the table but there were speakers and other gear beneath it, so it was a whole lot easier just to reach under there with my pocket camera, frame it in the LCD and take a snap than it would have been to have crawled under with all that stuff with my big gear and then let rip with bunch of frames.

So for today, I am just going to use  the few scenes associated with the gathering that I did with the pocket camera. Once I get some editing done, you will see Harold and Chester again, along with a whole lot of other folks.

Harold did not come to the home of Ben and Carrie Stevens, my hosts, with his fiddle, but when we all gathered there we could still hear the fiddle music in our heads.

Little two-and-a-half-year old Alex, "Sunshine," must have heard the music very clearly and he remembered well how people had jigged to that music. So the sound and the memory went down to his feet, took hold of them and suddenly he began to jig in the kitchen. Soon, Sunshine had three women dancing with him.

I wish I could dance like that.

This is Jessica Black, who served as Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 2000. Jessica also spent part of the gathering camped out in the Stevens home in the room across the hall from mine. We became friends, just like that.

She received the scarf tied as a band around her head at a give-away held in honor of a deceased baby boy. After she put it on, she did a short dance, Gwich'in style.

My host, Ben Stevens, preparing moose-rib soup to feed to those gathered at the gathering. Mighty tasty. Excellent ribs. I wish I could have some now. I can't, so maybe I will go to Taco Bell instead.

Ben had to leave early to return to his fish camp far down river, near Stevens Village, his original home.

Just to remind you that I am now back home:

Yes, I am in Wasilla and yesterday after stopping in at Metro to say "hi" to Scott, Carmen and Sashanna, I drove away with an Americano and then took a short drive to drink it. Along the way, I saw this car, parked with its lights on at a corner.

And I saw that someone had rebuilt the memorial for the young woman and her unborn child who had been killed in a collision at Church Road and Schrock. Two crosses used to rise from this memorial, but vandals broke them and messed up the scene.

Now it had been put back together, but without the crosses.

On my last day home before I left for Fort Yukon, I took Margie to Metro and as we waited in the drive-through, a succession of police cars and emergency vehicles screamed by, red lights flashing. A bit later, on our drive, we had just turned off Schrock Road onto Lucille Street when we saw that the road was blocked ahead and red lights were flashing.

We detoured elsewhere through the neighborhood to avoid the scene and then I forgot about it. I did not know what had happened. I never thought about it again until yesterday, when I drove past it for the first time since my return. This is what I saw.

Given the location, my immediate thought was that it had probably been a four-wheeler accident and that the person who had died had been young.

I looked it up online after I got home. Indeed, 17 year-old Cheyanne Jorge had died after rolling her four-wheeler. Her passenger, also 17, was treated at the hospital and released.

Horrible.

Early this morning, I drove Margie into Anchorage so that she can spend the rest of the week babysitting Jobe. Here he is, dressed to match the bathroom colors.

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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.

He came walking through my town in the snow; Royce setback; an accident, a horse and a few teenagers

As I have written a few times, I keep experiencing odd coincidences. This has been going on for years now and it happened again today. When I took this picture, I had A Prairie Home Companion on the radio and a Utah Phillips song was being performed by Robin and Linda Williams:

I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I got no place to go, all the trains are running slow
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

I carry my home on my back,
I carry my home on my back,
But the police only frown, every time I lay it down,
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

The train track was just across the street and the Wasilla Police station just ahead. The man wasn't carrying a pack, though. He was pulling a piece of rolling luggage.

So we finally got a modest dropping of snow to coat the old stuff. Nothing to brag about - six inches, maybe. Still, I was glad.

I suspect that this fellow could have just as soon gone without it.

I wonder why he was walking through my town in the snow?

I'm afraid Royce has had a couple of bad days. Something is leaking out of him and it stinks terribly. It has almost made me barf a couple of times and has left me feeling sick to my stomach, but different than the usual way. I haven't yet figured out how to describe it. Yesterday, I gave him a bath, but it all came back and I fear it would be too hard on him to have another bath right now. I have made a warm place for him and try to keep him off the furniture, because whatever he comes in contact with stinks, too, but he managed to slip by and get onto the couch. Once he did, the damage had been done.

I did not have the heart to make him move until he was ready. 

I called the vet this morning, hoping to get him in. They could not get back to me until nearly closing time (they close early on Saturday's). I explained what was happening and they had a couple of theories, but did not see it as an emergency.

So he is scheduled to go back to the vet Monday morning at 11:00 AM.

We may have to postpone, because I think Lavina is likely to be giving birth at that time.

Two snowmachines coming down Wards.

Pickup truck on Seldon. The ISO control on my pocket camera had inadvertantly slipped to 2500. I don't care. It just gives the picture a different feel, that's all - more contrasty and grainy.

Ditto.

Minor traffic accident near the corner of the Palmer-Wasilla and Parks Highways.

Horses on Sunrise.

Through the Window Metro Study, #9701. These numbers are completely arbitrary, because I cannot remember them from one post to the next. The tall man is Nick and he used to work at Northern Air Cargo in Anchorage with Carmen. That's his son on the left, but they had already moved on when I got the ID's and his name had slipped out with him.

A group of teens caught in my rearview mirror.

Detoured by death on the highway as I take Margie to the airport; bright, red, fingernails; Kalib rides the escalators

The plan was for me to drop Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center so that she could pick up the medications she will need for the nearly four weeks that she will be in Arizona.

I would then drive to Camai Printing where I had a little business to take care of, come back, pick her up, we would get together with the kids for coffee or maybe even dinner, should time allow.

I would then take her to the airport.

But, just before we got to the South Birch Creek exit, traffic came to a halt. There had been an accident ahead.

I knew that if I could get to the exit, we could get off the Glenn Highway, switch to the Old Glenn and go around the accident.

Several other drivers had the same idea, so it was a slow process, but, after close to half an hour, I made it onto the ramp, where traffic was moving maybe one mile-an-hour - but it was moving.

See all those cars still on the highway? They are beyond the exit and they will be stuck there for hours.

Furthermore, if we had been perhaps as little as one mile further back, we would also have been stuck. We would not have been able to make it to the exit.

As we crept along, a bulletin came on the radio. A very serious accident had happened and the highway was closed at this exit.

It is a strange thing when you find yourself in this situation. You are annoyed at the slowdown. You think of the inconvenience and trouble that it is going to cause you - in this case, Margie could potentially miss her flight, or have to go without her medications, which we would then need to get and mail to her.

Yet you know that, up ahead, at the source of the slowdown, someone might be badly injured, in terrible pain, perhaps facing a different kind of life from here on out. Or someone might be dead, or dying, their entire life now behind them. Several people might be.

And yet, you still want to get moving.

As we crept further, a new bulletin said that a helicopter was coming. We knew then that someone had been hurt very badly.

And still I wanted to get Margie to the airport, on time, with her medications, and I wanted to get my business taken care of.

Finally, we got to where traffic was moving and then arrived in town right as the rush hour was beginning. I dropped Margie off at ANMC, then headed to Camai and arrived just before closing. I took care of my business and then returned to get her.

But she had got stuck in another long line - at the ANMC Family Medicine pharmacy. Kalib was there, waiting for her with his parents. Margie had entered an area in which only patients picking up medicine are allowed, so I sat down as Lavina helped Kalib learn how to operate an iPhone.

See how red Lavina's fingernails are?

A friend at work had chosen Saturday to be her wedding day and had asked all her lady co-workers who would be participating to paint their nails bright red. She also wanted them all to wear black dresses.

So Lavina painted her nails red, went out shopping on her one free day and bought a black dress.

Then her coworker changed the wedding date to June.

Kalib watches the movie, Cars.

Lavina had heard an update on the accident - it involved a pedestrian. That seemed pretty strange, since it happened on the freeway.

Later, on the radio, we heard that a man was trapped beneath a vehicle. I hoped he was unconscious. How miserable would that be, to be broken, injured, and have a ton or more of steel sitting atop you, jamming you into the cold pavement?

By the time Margie finally got her medications, there was no time to get together for coffee, let alone dinner. So all of the Anchorage part of the family came to the airport, to see her off.

Kalib and his dad led the entourage toward airport security.

Kalib soon dashed into the area where only ticketed passengers are allowed. Thankfully, he turned right around and dashed back out before he could get arrested and thrown into jail.

Traffic was very light in the security area. Kalib gave his grandma a goodbye hug.

As Rex gives his mom a goodbye hug, Kalib reaches out to hug one of his aunties. Kalib hugged everybody, whether they were traveling or not.

Then he got to ride an escalator going down.

He rode a series of escalators.

At the entrance to the parking garage, we discussed the matter of dinner. Melanie suggested Pho Lena, a Vietnamese - Thai restaurant that was more or less on the way out.

At Pho Lena, the waitress brought a toy over for Kalib's amusement.

But Kalib was more amused by the paper and coloring marker that she also brought him.

After I arrived home in the late evening, I sat down right here, at my computer and found a bulletin from the Anchorage Daily News in my inbox. Robert Marvin, 76, had apparently experienced some kind of car trouble on the Glenn and had pulled over to the side of the road - but not all the way out of traffic. He was standing in front of a Volkswagon van when it was rear-ended and pushed 50 - 60 feet down the road with him under it.

Rescuers managed to get him out without help from the helicopter, but he was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Traffic had been stopped for three hours.

Now, as I write these words, Margie is in Seattle, where she has a seven-and-a-half hour layover before catching her 7:25 AM flight to Phoenix.

How miserable she must be!

I am afraid to call her, though - she might be napping.