When it comes to Metro Cafe and the couple who created it, it is mostly Carmen who appears in this blog. Her husband Scot gets in now and then, but Carmen is the public face of Metro and it is her face with its bright and exuberant smile that tends to appear in front of my camera and then wind up here. On the day that I took this picture, sometime last winter, I was inside the cafe, visiting with Scot and I told him what a remarkable thing he had brought to us when he designed and built Metro.
For those fortunate enough to have taken the time to stop in, this little coffee shop has given a whole new feeling to this neighborhood. It has created options to relax and enjoy that never existed here before. On a cold day, it is a warm place where people gather - warm not only in temperature but atmosphere and spirit. In my opinion, the coffee is the best to be found in Wasilla; Children come here for smoothies and Kalib really likes the hot chocolate. It is a place for old people, teens, young adults, conservatives, liberals. It doesn't matter. Carmen wraps her warmth around all who enter. She causes all to feel that they are special to her and that this place that belongs to her and Scot is theirs, too.
Metro is a pleasant place for us all. There has never before been anything like it in all of Wasilla. This is what I told Scot that day.
"I see Metro Cafe as a stage," Scot answered. "All I did was build the stage. It is Carmen who directs the show. She is the one who gives it spirit and brings it to life."
Take a close look at Scot's face, and then come back and look at it again after you finish reading this post. News of great import had just come into his life, into Carmen's life - the life they share together, the life they share with their five-year old son, Branson.
Late yesterday morning, this three-year old girl, Robin Harrison, pedaled into the Metro parking lot from Kentucky. She entered the stage that Scot had built and ordered a hot chocolate from Carmen. Yes, you read right - she pedaled in from Kentucky. I am not making this up. It is true.
On August 1 of last year, she pedaled away from her home in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky, headed south to the tip of Florida, turned north again and continued on in a 7,000 mile bike ride that took her across the south, through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon and on to Seattle, Washington. From there, she put her bike on a series of ferry boat rides up to Prince Rupert, BC, Juneau and then to Whittier, from where she had so far pedalled on to Wasilla but still had more than 300 miles left to go.
I asked her how it had been for her, a little girl, to ride a bike all that long way?
"I'm not a little one!" she shouted in feisty indignation. Well, she looked kind of small to me, but how could I argue, given what she had done?
I pressed on. How had she liked her bicycle journey?
"Good!" she shouted. What she had liked best? "I like riding the ponies!"
Readers probably suspect by now that Robin had not pedaled all this distance alone. This is correct. That's her seven-year old sister, Cheyenne, sitting across the table from her. Cheyenne had pedaled with her. I asked Cheyenne what had been her favorite part of the trip.
"I liked riding the horses," she agreed with her younger sister. So far, they had had two horse-riding excursions - one in Tennessee and the other in Texas. Since entering Alaska, the sisters had also seen a moose, eagles and bears.
Could two girls of such young age really have made such a journey alone?
I must confess... no, they did not pedal alone...
Their five year old sister, Jasmine, pedaled with them. And what had been Jasmine's most memorable experience thus far?
"The sea horses," she answered. "I loved the sea horses. All the colors, the texture..."
These they saw when they stopped at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California.
Okay... the girls' parents came with them and they all rode on one bike, a five-seater. Here they are, all together with their bike and with Carmen, Scot and Metro Cafe. That's their dad, Bill, on the left, and their mom, Amarins, on the right.
The family name may be Harrison, but on this trip they call themselves the Pedouins, which, they explain on their website, is derived from the Arab word Bedouin, "signifying a member of an adventurous family" traveling the continent by bicycle.
They have had adventures and they have met many people, most of them helpful and good. They plan to write about it in a book. Once that book is released, they hope to come back to Wasilla and do a book signing at Metro Cafe.
Many people, such as the dentist seen waving at Robin in picture two, have put them up for a night or two and have fed them. They have been helped in many ways, but on occasion they have met unfriendly people, too. The worst incident happened in Alabama, when they were pedaling up a hill on a four-lane highway in the right hand lane of the two that went up. There was no shoulder so they had to stay on the road, but there was plenty of space for drivers to go around them. Even so, a man driving up that hill grew angry with them. He honked and shouted.
After they topped the hill, they pedaled into a gas station and there he was. He scolded them and called the cops. An officer came, but he took their side, not his.
What they have found on the whole is that truck drivers generally show them the most courtesy. They give them a wide berth and appear to radio ahead to their colleagues so that they can be on the lookout. The most problematic drivers they encounter tend to be driving big RV's. All too often, these are the ones who crowd them the most closely.
Many people honk and wave in a friendly way. Some stop to take their picture, or invite them to dinner.
They have pedaled over mountains ranges and the uphills have grown harder as they have progressed - in part because the girls have grown and their weight has increased. On the downhills, they never let their speed climb above 20 mph. "If we did, we would become just like a runaway train," Amarins explains. "There would be no stopping."
Amarins says they have been most impressed by the magnificent beauty of Alaska. She has visited Wyoming's Grand Teton Mountains, which were breath taking - but Alaska "quardruples that - and we have only seen a little bit of Alaska," she adds.
From Metro, they pedaled off toward Denali - 200 miles, hoping to go 20 miles a day. Many people visit Denali National Park and never see the mountain as it spends so much time buried in the clouds. The Pedouins have already seen it - on a clear day from Anchorage. Before they get to Denali, they are going to make a little detour into Talkeetna. Now, on their behalf, I make a plea to anyone in Talkeetna or who has good relations with any of the mountain flying services that operate out of there.
Think what this family has done! Please, if the weather is suitable, load them into a 185 or 206 or 207 or whatever the hell you've got and fly them up the Ruth Glacier into the Great Gorge. They have come so far - please! Let them see the Great Gorge. Then they will truly see the truth of Amarin's statement about the Grand Tetons, not merely quadrupled, but multiplied ten times over.
After Denali, they will go on to Fairbanks, where their bike journey will end.
Bill and Scot found they had something in common. They both love old cars and machines, particularly machines that transport people from one place to another.
That brings me back to Scot, to the day that I took the picture that opens today's entry as well as this one. Not long before that day, after undergoing more tests than he was comfortable with, Scot and Carmen learned that he has a dangerous - but not unbeatable - colon cancer. Until now, I have been quiet about it but many of their regulars know. On this day, one of them, a church-going Christian man, had given Scot the book that he holds in the hope that it might encourage him.
I have few left and it is hard for even me to get more without paying more than I can afford, but I gave him a copy of Gift of the Whale. I did so because Scot has a long history in the oil fields of the Arctic Slope and operates his own, very successful spill containment business there. An Iñupiat man who is the son of the late Mary Edwardsen, the woman who made the white hunting parka that protected me from the cold for so many seasons before it finally wore out, has often worked with him.
This man respected Scot so much that he secretly had his mother prepare a polar bear ruff for him and then had that ruff delivered to Scot by snowmachine to a camp nearly 200 miles from where Mary had made it.
I figured that if Doug Edwardsen respected Scot that much, then I would give him a copy of my book. Plus, he had brought this fine thing called Metro Cafe into my neighborhood. I wanted him to have the book.
Scot, who is determined to beat his cancer, says it is okay to let people know about his cancer now. Carmen adds that Scot is a fighter and does not give up. She hopes that maybe someone else who has cancer and who feels like giving up can learn about Scot and find more courage to wage his or her own fight.
Scot, sitting where he had told me that he built the stage, but Carmen had created the play.
I should add that Amarins told me that in all her travels across the United States, she had never found a coffee shop to equal Metro in warmth and coziness. "You just don't find something like this," she stressed.
Carmen now carries this token of divine strength with her. It quotes from Psalm 23:
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me by still waters...
It was a gift to her from her friend, Elaine, who lost both breasts to cancer and carries her own, pink ribbon, pendant.
Scot and Carmen, late last winter, before Scot went in for his first surgery.
Once, as Scot was out of state for medical care, I was in the shop with Carmen and their son Branson, who was still four. Scot called on the phone. Branson talked to his dad.
Carmen shows me - and a young visitor whose name I have forgotten - some of the drawings that she and Scot made as they put together their plan to build Metro Cafe.
Yes, many people have stepped into this stage that Scot made for Carmen. Several of them have appeared in this blog.
There is Sashanna, the 19 year-old barista who uses her earnings to help fund her college courses. This summer, she is taking a creative non-fiction writing course. Last week, she let me read a piece she had written, about rain and how rain not only nourishes the soil and plants, but helps to heal the hurt soul.
I was moved by that piece. When I read it, I knew that, as one way or another we all must, the writer had experienced pain but knew she had to continue on. In the rain, she found the courage to do so.
The fellow she is serving is named Paul, another player on the stage. He is a regular, comes by just about every day. That's all I know about him.
Yesterday, Jobe was carried onto the stage that Scot built for Carmen. He was warmly received...
...by Scot as well as Carmen.
I took this picture in late spring, of Branson as he rode his bike past my rearview mirror. Close to the same time, Scot told me how he planned to teach Branson to drive a snowmachine, because he wanted him to be a responsible driver. He told me how he had discovered a Metro bus, decades old, how he planned to rebuild it.
Two days ago, on my birthday, as I sat at the Metro drive through window, I looked out the passenger window. I saw Scot on his Harley.
"You look really good," I told him.
"Yes," he answered. "Today."
On Monday, he will go in for his regular Chemo treatment. There is no way to describe that experience, he told me. He will not look so good afterwards. He will feel awful for days. But to survive this cancer, he must survive the chemo. Survive is what he is determined to do.
It was a hot day, so I ordered a raspberry mocha frappe. As it was my birthday, Scot would not let me pay for it - not even with the gift card Funny Face had purchased for me. He pulled out his wallet, removed the few dollars that it would cost and handed the money to Carmen, who stood within the stage that he had built for her. He paid for my frappe.
I think it just may have been the very best frappe I have ever tasted.
I mean it. It was that good.
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Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:08AM 
