I take a break from the Loft to take Margie to town and to eat at Abby's

Yesterday, I had to drive Margie to Anchorage so she could babysit the boys. Thanks to the Martin Luther King holiday, I was able to keep her for an extra day this week. She had to be there no later than 9:30 AM, so we were headed out of Wasilla by 8:30 AM.

Crews were busy cleaning snow from the roads.

We followed the waning moon toward Anchorage.

I found Kalib and Lynx studying each other as Al Sharpton pontificated in the background.

I lingered through much of the day to nap and take care of some things, then I began the drive out of Anchorage. I stopped for gas with one mile to go before empty.

A moose ran alongside the freeway.

This cop had pulled someone over. Now he was getting out of his car to go talk to the driver. Maybe he was going to write a ticket. I don't know. Perhaps he just wanted someone to talk to. Perhaps he wanted to make a bet on who would win the Super Bowl this year.

Maybe he wrote the driver a ticket, or gave the driver a warning and said, "don't do that again!"

Whatever "that" was.

Speeding, I would suspect.

But I don't know.

Things are not always as they appear.

Whatever it was, the driver probably did not think it was fair. "Unmarked car!" the driver probaby muttered to the driver. "Is this what I pay my taxes for, so cops can prowl around in unmarked cars and ticket people who would not even have been speeding if the cop had been in a marked car? Unfair! Unfair!"

I'm pretty sure that's what the driver muttered to the driver.

Come dinner time, I could find nothing handy to eat. So I went to Abby's, where I discovered that I, the camera man, was on camera. And see that aloe vera plant in the window? What I did not know when I took this picture is that it was gift for Margie and me, from Arlene Warrior.

When we visited her just before Christmas to pick up the atikluks, we admired her aloe vera plants. And now she had given us one.

This morning, I did not want to cook oatmeal and Caleb was watching TV, which was OK, because I had planned to go to breakfast at Abby's anyway. Here is Shelly, reflected in the window, just before she cooked an omelette for me.

Abby was not there.

I took a walk. This dog came and barked at me. I don't know this dog. I don't know why he would bark at me. I am good to all dogs.

A C-130 Hercules flew over.

When I went to the post office to check my mail and get Visa photos taken for my upcoming trip to India, I found a bill from my doctor for the visit that I had made in early November when I was diagnosed with shingles. I decided that I had better go pay it right away before I forgot again and while I still had some money left.

Along the way, I got to photograph two school buses at once.

It was a terribly exciting day here in Wasilla.

So exciting I damn near had a heart attack.

The doctor's office is just ahead. 

Now that I have updated the near-present a bit, I will return to working on my David Alan Harvey Loft series. 

Break to update on the home front: Melanie and Charlie come - we all head to Vagabond in Palmer, etc. Internet Explorer proves faulty in displaying this blog's pix

When Melanie and Charlie came out yesterday afternoon, they parked right behind our Ford Escape. This meant that when it came time to go get coffee, Charlie had to move his car and park behind Caleb's rig. Caleb was asleep, not planning to go anywhere, so it was okay.

Then he walked back to get into the car.

As you can see, I have once again pulled back from my Loft series to catch up a bit on the home front. I have two conflicting feelings about doing this. First, I know this breaks the flow and is probably frustrating for some readers and might lessen the experience for them - although some readers have told me it is okay. 

Second, once I finish, I will have a record of the entire event as I experienced it. It will all be there. People can then come and go as they chose - they can read it all at once, if they want. They can start at the beginning and move to the end.

Or, as people tend to do when they come upon a blog series they have never read before, they can start at the end and move to the beginning.

They could start in the middle and zig back and forth.

They could read just one entry, or maybe two, spread apart.

Anyway, it will all be done and it will be there.

Melanie about to get into the car. The temperature is -26 F, or 32 degrees of frost, as the British of old might say (-32 C). Sometimes, I fear we put too much trust in technology. We are all dressed this way - very light clothing to go out into the kind of cold that can quickly rob you of toes, fingers, hands and feet, or even kill you altogether.

But the car has a good heater, we are going to a warm place, so we just go, and don't worry about it.

It used to be that I always kept a bag filled with cold weather gear in the car, but I have gotten lazy about it - at least for short drives in populated areas.

If we broke down, it could be trouble - but we do have cell phones.

Still, I think I should go back to keeping a bag of cold-weather gear in the car.

Every time I leave the house now, I seem to come upon a moose. On Thursday, when I drove to Metro for my rolling coffee break, I saw six moose. I photographed them all and I was going to put up a post and title it, I take a six moose coffee break, but I had too many other things to do. All six moose slipped into my archive, unseen. Likely, it will be that way for eternity.

This time of year is very hard on moose. The snow gets extremely deep out in the foothills and places where they like to hang out. Many die; they starve, get killed by wolves and so on. So they move into the populated areas, where the snow is not as deep, and there are roads and railroad tracks to walk upon.

Many die. They get hit by cars and trains.

Little kids throw snowballs at them.

Life is hard for our moose.

Later, after the weather gets good and they get nice and fat,people shoot them and put them on the dinner table.

They taste good, too.

Better than deer.

Better than beef.

Off we drove. Metro Cafe was closed, so we decided to go to Vagabond Blues in Palmer. The Talkeetnas stood frigid and beautiful.

On Seldon Street, headed toward Palmer, 12 miles from the house.

At Vagabond, we were briefly joined by 17 month old Carre. The temperature was much warmer there than here: only about -8, or maybe it was even as warm as -4.

Melanie, at Vagabond Blues in Palmer.

Charlie, at Vagabond Blues in Palmer.

On the way home, we passed by the Mormon church house across the street from Colony High and Middle schools, where Rex and Lisa graduated. Their older siblings all graduated from Wasilla High.

As we neared home, we saw a pickup truck stalled in the road, someone in a car trying to jump start it. After the warm temperatures we had experienced in Palmer, we were, once again, back in -26 degree weather. That's why the exhaust looks this way.

This is from this afternoon's coffee break. As you can see, we have had a big warm-up. Plus, look at the time, and look at the light. Remember when, so short a time ago, it had been pitch dark for a good hour by this time?

The season of light approaches. Give it a little time and it will bring summer with it.

We will forget all about darkness then. Pretty soon, we won't even remember what it looks like.

Awhile back, the folks who owned this house had a moving-out sale so Margie and I stopped and bought some worthless junk. Among the items they were selling was the house itself, and the property it sits on. I don't remember the exact price, but it was in the $40-thousands.

We wanted to buy it, but we didn't have the money. We even thought about selling our house, then using part of the proceeds to buy this place and put the rest to retiring our debt. Then we could live here simply and quietly, our cost of living dramatically reduced. I could write all my books - right here, in this house.

The owners wanted to sell soon. No way could we pull something like that off, soon.

Plus, we like our house. We raised our family here. And we have internet. There is no internet in this house - except maybe if we had put up a satellite dish. 

Two more things:

1) I must drive Margie back to Anchorage tomorrow, so she can resume her babysitting duties. There are a couple of other things that I must do while I am in town. I believe I can still get my next Loft post up tomorrow night, but I won't know for certain until it happens.

2) Some readers with Internet Explorer, including IE8, have discovered that some of the pictures that I post do not appear in their browser. Firefox works well - although on my computer it throws the color balance off on the magenta side, which makes snow in particular look bad.

Safari works great, color balance and all.

After I severely overwrite my next Loft entry, I must pull back to do repairs, so, here is the daily moose, the daily dog, and the daily shovel load of snow

I didn't mean to get so carried away. I placed my photos for my next Loft Workshop entry and then set out to write the text, intending to keep it short and simple. When I write these blogs, I tend to write whatever comes to mind when I look at the pictures. When I looked at the pictures of the temple, the taxi-cabs, the broken computer, and the missionaries, I tried to think of just a few words to say, but a flood poured through my fingers, onto the keyboard and into the draft entry of this blog.

It was as if I was not writing a blog at all, but a book - a long and book, possibly brilliant, possibly just tedious and a tad insane. The process got completely out of hand. Most readers would have ran away screaming and of those that stayed to read to the end, a certain number would have run screaming toward me, pitchfork and boiling tar in hand.

So I decided that I had better pull back and see if I can repair the damage tomorrow. It won't be easy, because I have to drive Margie into Anchorage early in the morning so that she can spend the week babysitting the grandchildren.

Even if I do manage to somehow keep my trips to Anchorage brief, they never take less than four hours and theys always disrupt my plans bigtime. It is going to take some real time to repair the chaos I created today and I might not get started until Monday evening. Even so, I will try my best to get it repaired and posted before I go to bed Monday night or, more likely, Tuesday morning.

In the meantimes, above is today's daily moose, spotted on the corner of Brockton and Seldon.

And here is today's daily dog, spotted just off Ward's Street. This dog really wanted to come home with me, but I said, "No, pup! No, pup! Stay here, pup!"

So the dog stayed, but with regrets.

And here is today's shovel-load of snow. The shoveler is a stranger, who I just happened to pass by on the road, the name of which I know, but it escapes me at the moment.

My poor friends down in Cordova - they have really been dumped on. Doors are completely blocked by snow piled above the eaves. Worse yet, Cordova sits right smack on the ocean shore and it rained, the snow got impossibly heavy and roofs collapsed all over town.

Take care, all of my friends in Cordova.

Valdez got dumped on, too, deep enough to bury houses, but I don't think it rained afterwards, so it wasn't as bad. Plus, Valdez always gets dumped on to ridiculous depths.

I encounter a few problems on my next Loft post, so turn to my bike instead - a moose comes at me; I switch to the car - another moose charges in front of me; horses mock me

I have been working on the next Loft post, the one that will actually have Mormon missionaries in it, but I encountered a couple of problems. They are completely solvable, but it will take awhile and if I were to finish it up tonight, I could not actually put the post up until early tomorrow morning.

I do not want to work on this until early tomorrow morning.

So I decided to take the easy way and post a few photos from today - beginning here, with my first bicycle ride since I got struck down by shingles in November. I will solve the problems and make the post tomorrow, hopefully fairly early in the day.

Two days ago, I bought some studded snow tires, which I just put on my bike today. So I went out for a spin. It felt so tremendously wonderful to be out in the cold, pedalling my bike. My conditioning has deteriorated, but still it was wonderful. It reminded me of who I am really am. I felt like a living man in a way that I have not for awhile.

Yes, my shingles continue to drive me half insane, despite the reduction in the pain level, but now that I have got my bike going again, I intend to keep it going. I like feeling like a living man.

True - my toes got cold. It took them two hours to warm up. I don't care. People who are bothered by the occassional cold toe should not live in Alaska.

As I was nearing home, I came upon this moose. I lifted my camera. It started to come right at me. I think it was mostly curious. I did not perceive it as a threat. Still, I decided it best to take no chance and just pedal on.

It is not easy to pedal away from a moose and take a picture with one hand, so please forgive the blur.

After I parked my bike, I switched to the car, headed to Metro Cafe for my afternoon coffee break and then took the long way home. I saw several folks riding snowmachines, including this guy.

A new moose, a young bull who had not yet shed his antlers, suddenly charged in front of me. I had to hit my brakes, keep the car under control and take the picture at the same time.

So please forgive the blur.

The moose jumped over the berm, and bounded off into the trees.

Then a raven passed over.

On Sunrise, I came upon these two. They were going very slow. I soon passed them.

Next, I came upon the Mahoney horses. "Hey Bill!" the palimino shouted. "We hear you encountered a couple of moose today. We hear they scared you so bad you couldn't hold your camera steady. I bet you peed your pants, too!"

All the horses snickered, in that neighing way that horses snicker.

This was so unfair. It was just not how it was. But I knew that if I tried to deny, tried explain what really happened, I would only draw increased ridicule from the horses. These horses really know how to make fun of a person.

So I just drove on, returned home, and ate a boiled egg, wrapped in a slice of ham.

It was pretty good.