I take my first bike ride since I fell off the chair; The Fit Lady falls into Catch 22 with the Department of Agriculture and the IRS; various and insundry Wasilla scenes

The last time that I rode my bike was in early June of last year, just before I went to Barrow, stood on the chair, fell off the chair, shattered my shoulder, took a $37,000 ambulance ride in a Lear jet back to Anchorage and got a new shoulder.

But today I rode it. Now I want to ride and ride and ride.

It hurt. It burned my lungs and strained my arms. I am so out of shape.

It felt good.

I just want to ride and ride.

But I have places to go, soon. I won't be able to bring my bike.

As you can see, I kept my brace on. I have been told to keep it on all the time. 

As I neared Serendipity, I saw The Fit Lady, walking on the bike trail ahead of me. I slowed down and pedaled beside her for awhile. She always has a good story. I wondered what it would be today.

Here it is:

Not long ago, she got a bill from the Department of Agriculture demanding that she pay the interest on an agricultural loan that they had never given to her. The Fit Lady is not into agriculture. She is in to skiing and biking and sailing, but not agriculture.

So she wrote a letter and told them so. In time, they wrote back and said okay, maybe you don't have a loan with us. Sometime after that, they sent a statement to the IRS claiming that they had advanced $38,000 in taxable income to her.

Now, the IRS expects her to pay taxes on money she never received for an agriculture business that she does not own.

"I'm not going to pay it," she said. "If I had a cow on my porch, I think I would know. Well, yesterday, I did have a cow moose on my porch. I opened the door and accidently banged her nose. She was there for the bird feeder. She got it, too. There's no food for the birds, now."

Just when so many of them are arriving after their long winter's absence!

After I got home, I parked my bike by my wrecked airplane. After I crashed it, many people told me that I was lucky to have walked away unhurt. It didn't feel lucky then and it doesn't feel lucky now.

I was also told, many times, "any landing that you walk away from is a good landing."

I made many good landings in the Running Dog. This last one wasn't one of them.

Later, I saw this guy, riding his bike. 

I took Margie to Carr's, so that we could buy three-dozen eggs to boil and color. Kalib is coming home tonight. He will need eggs to find tomorrow.

Before I got out of the car, Michael came by. I had never met him before, but he was a nice kid, pleased to learn that he would be on the blog.

Michael has been working at Carr's since January or February, taking groceries to cars for customers, and retrieving shopping carts. "It's a good job," he said. "I meet lots of nice people. I enjoy helping people."

There you go: Michael of Carr's in Wasilla, Alaska.

Inside Carr's, I was surprised to see Slackwater Jack. Slackwater is a commercial fisherman from Cordova and a member of the Native Village of Eyak Tribal Council. I first met him many years ago, when I was doing portraits and interviews of Alaska Native veterans of foreign wars. 

Jack is Tlingit, and fought in Vietnam.

Now he shops at Carr's in Wasilla, because his wife moved here, so he must hang out here a bit, too.

A lot of people will be eating strawberry shortcake tomorrow - Easter Sunday. Does this look like a time of hardship?

And yet it is, for many. Maybe us, in a month or two. You never know, when you work freelance and have no business sense. When I have money, I spend it. When I don't, I don't and when it gets really bad, I sell things, and hock things and sometimes I never get them back - like those guns I was telling you about.

This hasn't happened for awhile, though. Years. Not even this last year, when my income dropped by more than half, due to my injury. I hope it never happens again, but one never knows.

I just want to write my books, now, and do this blog. Neither activity pays any money.

And then these cats who hang out with me always need food, and litter to deposit it in after they process it.

One place I spent money recklessly today was at Little Miller's, where I pulled up to the drive-in window and bought an Americano for me and another for Margie. I could see through to the other drive-in window, where this guy studied the menu before ordering.

I don't know why he stood there and did not sit in a car like the rest of us, but he did.

Margie spent the day working on taxes. I had to spend time rounding up receipts for her. As usual, wherever I was, Jim was there, too. He is here with me, in this office, right now, asleep, curled up on his chair.

My buddy, Jim.

I treasure his presence.

Valiant though his effort be, Muzzy pees and pees and pees and pees, yet fails to reclaim Serendipity

Muzzy and I walked into Upper Serendipity (the developers call it, "Serendipity Hills) and Muzzy immediately marked the subdivision as his.

Muzzy continually checked for any challenges to his claim as we walked on through Serendipity.

Perhaps some dog has challenged him on that berm, but the leash is too short for him to reach and sniff it.

The Saint Bernard zeros in on a challenge.

Muzzy stakes his claim deeper in Serendipity.

He believes himself to be grabbing even more new territory.

He will soon claim this spot, too.

Of all the new homes in Serendipity, this is the most ostentatious - excuse me - I mean "grand." This is the most grand home in all of Serendipity. Muzzy must find just the right spot before he stakes his claim.

Muzzy finds the spot. He claims the property, along with all of Serendipity.

He zeros in on his next mark.

Soon, we will leave Serendipity. He reinforces his claim with a final mark.

Muzzy is proud and happy. He believes that he has claimed all of Serendipity. He does not realize that human law does not recognize "Deed by Pee." He does not realize that, the moment someone called these former woods Serendipity, they were lost to us forever.

As we near home and walk back down Sarah's Way (the name was quite innocent back when we moved in) we spot Tiffany driving the oppposite way. She had been at the house to visit Caleb. She stops and pets Muzzy, who still believes himself to be the owner of Serendipity.

He is most definitely The King of Pee.

The country that Willow knew, before it was called, "Serendipity"

In this blog I have often lamented about the construction of the destruction of the life that I had known here before they tore down my woods and put up the subdivision called Serendipity. I have also noted how easy it was to take the dog on a walk back then, as I could let her run free while I walked, contemplated, and played with words. By pure chance, this image of Willow running through the woods now gone and called Serendipity, just popped up in my computer.

And this one was nearby. So there you go. Now, I will shift to my latest walk with Muzzy, right through Serendipity.

Two skating partners from years past, photographed in different places

This is Alyssa, who used to figure skate with Lisa and Melanie, and even partnered up with Lisa when the two skated in plumpy raisin outfits. Once, she traveled with Lisa, Melanie and Margie to Seattle to skate, and stayed with them in a hotel. She popped up at Cafe Darte' a few days ago, but I did not recognize her.

Today, she asked me if I was related to Lisa and Melanie. Now I know who she is.

We always knew that these little girls would grow up, we just didn't realize it.

And here is Lisa, Alyssa's raisin skating partner. I recognize her, of course. I went in to town to attend an evening of Iñupiat poetry reading, but had dinner with her at Beartooth before going over.

I have more from today to blog - or yesterday, I should say, since it is now 1:00 AM - but it is too late so I will make just this short note and then go to bed.

Perhaps I will blog more about today tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes. Me.

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

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

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

I wonder where those photos are?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't even try to stop me.