All Wasilla: study of the young writer, Shoshana; the girl who walked away from the school bus; raven hops off dead tree

It has been a long time since I have run one of my universe-wide famous Studies of the Young Writer, Shoshona - so here she is:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #1,000,003: she stirs my Americano.

This is the girl who walked away from the school bus. The temperature soared to 44 searing degrees today (6.7 C). Snow is melting fast.

I spotted this raven perched atop this dead tree. I stopped and waited to see if it would hop off and how it would look when it did.

Sure enough, the raven hopped off. And this is how it looked when it did.

And be sure - I have at least two more White Mountain Apache stories coming and at least four or five more from India. I intend to finish them all before the end of next week - but none tonight. 

Physically, I still feel very strange. It is still hard for me to function. It is just about 11:00 PM right now - still pretty early for me, but I cannot keep my eyes open. I cannot think. I cannot write. I will go to bed soon. Then, if tonight proves the same as every other night that I have been home - almost one week now, I will fall asleep almost immediately - a rare thing for me, but something I have done maybe every night. Then I will wake up sometime between 12:30 AM and 2:30 AM and I won't be able to go back to sleep. Tomorrow, I will once again feel like hell, just as I did today, as I did yesterday. I take Melatonin almost every night, but now it occurs to me that I ran out of Melatonin after I reached Phoenix, before I returned to Wasilla.

Maybe that is why I can't adjust.

I had better buy some Melatonin tomorrow and see if that makes a difference.

One raven feasted, the other complained; Kalib battles Melanie over her cake; train wreck - Friday, I will begin my gray whale rescue series

This morning, I saw two ravens in the road. One was eating something. What could it be?

It was a toad! One of those famous Wasilla Anti-Freeze toads! As the raven gobbled up the toad, the other raven grew upset and began to shriek at it. "Share the toad! Share the toad!" the second raven screamed. "I always share my toad with you! Share the toad! Share the toad! Mabel! Share the toad!"

But Mabel did not share. She gobbled down that toad and didn't even care that the other raven had none.

Thereafter, I went out for my daily bike ride. I have riden every day this week. I am kind of sad, though. I have just over two weeks left to ride and then I leave for Arizona and from there on to India. I will not be back until March 23. My winter bike riding will be over, so soon. Maybe I will be able to get in a little more winter biking after I return, but not much.

I might not be able to get any more at all. March 23 could be cold, March 23 could be warm, with slush everywhere. There is no way to know just yet. If I have my way, I will go to the Arctic Slope not long after I return. It will still be cold up there, but I won't be able to take my bike with me.

And I don't know if I will be able to go, anyway. I have no contracts with anybody right now. I have no paying work lined up. I do not know what will become of Uiñiq. Maybe its day is past. Our cash is just about gone. I am expecting one more check for another project I did and I am hoping that can carry us through until I get back from India and can figure out how to carry on, but I don't know.

Still, I am optimistic I will get paying work and I will get up to the Slope this spring. I have to. I must. The Slope is in my DNA.

As I drew near to home on my bike, this dog came chasing after me, barking. The dog that I believe was the mother to this dog once teamed up with another dog, who might also have been a forebearer to this one, invaded our yard and killed our wonderful orange and white tabby, Thunder Paws.

After that, I had a lot of hatred in me for that dog and its people for awhile, but I have pushed that hatred away. At their core, the people are good people and the dog was just being a dog - albeit a mean dog. Plus, after it raised some bloody hell with someone else's pet, it got put down.

It does one no good to carry a grudge against a dead dog.

In the early evening, I got in the car and drove towards Anchorage. There had been a super warm up. The temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing. The roads were treacherously slick. Lots of cars had slid off.

I drove kind of slow, but not real slow.

I went to town because it is Melanie's 31st birthday. Kalib tried to prevent her from blowing out her candles. He wanted to blow them out. Funny - on his last birthday, he did not want to blow out the candles at all.

Finally, Kalib let Melanie blow out her candles. Except for Caleb, the whole family was there, but I am lazy tonight.

She failed to blow out the last candle. So Kalib blew it out for her.

Jobe got tossed almost to the ceiling. I was tired and lazy, and did not want to move from the couch where I sat, so I didn't. Then I felt kind of bad about that, because I could see that picture was directly below, where I could have caught Jobe rising into his own shadow.

So I moved to the floor to get it, but Jobe ran off. The opportunity had been lost. Photography is like that.

Baby Lynx seems to be all better now. He has put his viral infection behind him.

Just before I left, bringing Margie with me, one night early, I found Kalib, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Thomas's friend, James, pushing Thomas over the edge of a cliff.

This is why I do not let Kalib and Jobe play unsupervised with the electric HO Thomas the Train that Sujitha gifted to us at Christmas.

Tomorrow, Friday, February 3, the movie Big Miracle will be released nationwide. I also plan to start blogging my own experience. I usually don't get my post up until late at night or even after midnight, but I will try to get my first post, which will start out where the movie starts out, up fairly early.

Technical glitch causes Loft final day delay, so I go local: the wind blows; my weekend wife; when the night lights of Wasilla outdo those of Times Square

Damn! I had stated that I would finish up my David Alan Harvey Loft Workshop series without any further breaks to update locally, but here I am, updating locally. This is because I ran into a technical glitch. I have a copy of the slideshow of all the student work that was shown the final night of the workshop and it has to be included in my next post.

I thought it would be a simple matter, because, just like there is a photo icon in my blog tools that I use to begin the process of uploading photos, there is also a video icon. I had never uploaded a video into either this or my previous blog and I thought it would be a simple matter of clicking that icon, then navigating to the video file and uploading it - just like I do with photos.

Instead, when I clicked on the icon, I got a window that instructed me to insert the code. I had absolutely no idea how to do this. I am sure it is a simple task once you understand it, and tomorrow I will understand it. But right now, I don't.

I don't feel too bad about the new delay, though. I will get it and in the meantime I can catch up locally a bit, and, while Times Square is fresh on reader's minds, prove to you that right here in Wasilla we have nighttime lights that are far more wondrous and spectacular than what you will find in Times Square.

First, I must tell you that since I last posted anything local, the wind picked up, to about 60.

I found a raven riding the wind. A very strange thing happened, temperature wise. In one place, the temperature would be - 20 F. A few blocks away, it would be +15. A few blocks beyond that, - 10. And it did the same in Anchorage. On the radio, I heard the announcer that it was -25 in this neighborhood, and 15 in that neighborhood.

When the wind quit blowing, it warmed up everywhere to about 15.

But now it is cool again; - 17 when last I checked.

I don't know what it is in the cold places of Alaska, but much colder than this, I am sure.

Here she is - my weekend wife. She is my weekend wife because she spends her weeks in town with Lynxton, Jobe and Kalib and so I am alone all week.

On Friday, Lavina brought her back to me for the weekend. Kalib came too. The first thing he wanted me to do was get Thomas out, set up the track and send him rolling around it. So I did. Just as I had hoped, the disappointment that he felt Christmas night when he had to go home and leave this wonderful gift that his Aunt Sujitha from India but now in London had given us has all gone away.

Now, when he comes, he is excited. He is eager to have his grandpa get Thomas out and when he goes, he is happy, because he knows Thomas will be waiting for him when he returns.

So, Monday I drove Margie to Anchorage, to begin her week babysitting. I found Jobe playing with Muzzy.

On the way home, I saw Denali, standing above everything. I am afraid my hoped for plan to climb Denali this May has fallen apart. Shingles just kicked the hell out of me physically. My conditioning is all gone. I was nowhere near ready physically, anyway, but had figured I could get ready.

But now I don't think it is possible. I am slowly trying to get in shape, but for whatever reason the shingles, while not so severe as when they hit, just seem to linger and linger and linger. There are days I think they are about to be gone and then they just come roaring back.

Late next month, I will join Margie in Arizona and then I will go to India for Sujitha's wedding and won't be back until late March. There is no way I could possibly get in the shape I would need to be in to climb Denali between then and May.

With Margie gone, I can hardly make myself go to bed at night. Even after I finish posting this blog, I will sit here at my computer for hours. By the time I get to sleep, it is time to get up. Instead, I sleep in. Then I get up late - noon, today. I do not want to cook oatmeal and eat it by myself. So, today, I headed to Abby's.

Shelly cooked me an excellent omelette and Abby cooked the hashbrowns. I think it was Shelly who toasted the homemade wheat bread. Afterwards, her shoulders were sore. So Andy gave her a little massage.

I listened to Obama's State of Union Address in my car. The moon was out. Just a little while ago, it would have been completely dark at this time.

Even in Barrow, the sun has come back. Two days ago.

I thought the President did a pretty good job with this speech. I could elaborate, but I'm too damn tired. It is 2:55 AM. I am going to try to get to bed a bit earlier than I have been lately.

Tonight I drove over and out onto Anderson Lake. In the wintertime, when I had my plane on skis, I used to tie it down on the lake, right about where this plane is now.

See? The lights of Times Square are something, but can they compare to this? 

A dramatic display of the Northern Lights had been forecast, but it didn't materialize - just a weak one.

Maybe tomorrow night.

I'm still a little chilled from taking this picture. I could not find my tripod head, so I decided to use the snow as a tripod. I did not want to rest my camera directly on the snow, so I covered the snow up with my jacket and put my camera on my jacket.

I spent some time at it - no jacket, no gloves, no hat, kneeling down and lying down on the snow atop the ice, the temperatue at - 10 when I started, - 12 by the time I finished up. When I would get cold, I would get back in the car for awhile. The ice was making those popping and hollow cracking expansion noises that it sometimes makes -- occasionally it sounded just like a rifle shot. It did so directly underneath me a couple of times. I knew it was too thick to crack open and drop me through, but it got my attention, anyway.

God! I love Alaska! I absolutely love it!

Damn! How could I be so fortunate as to live in this magnificent land? You've heard about God, and how he made the earth in six days and then rested on the seventh? He spent the first four of those six working days practicing on the rest of the earth, so that He could get Alaska just right. Then, on the fifth and sixth days, he took all that He had learned and then, very carefully and lovingly, shaped Alaska into the most wonderful part of all.

I will poke my head outside before I go to bed. Maybe that magnificent display of Northern Lights will finally have materialized.

If so, what will I do?

It doesn't matter. This blog post is up now.

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.

Near present interlude - today, a raven hopped off a street light in Wasilla

Yesterday, the plug-in extension to the engine block heater in our Ford Escape fell off. For those of you who live in warm climates and don't know about this, this a device that allows you to plug your car in when it is cold and keep some warmth in the engine block. By eliminating the bitter cold start when your oil is thick it helps to lengthen the life of your engine and it also reduces the amount of pollution spewed out in a cold-start and warmup.

So today I dropped it off at Mr. Lube to get a new plug-in extension. I knew it was going to take awhile and I have not had a haircut or beard trim since I was in New York, so I walked to a barbershop about one mile away.

I shot many pictures walking to and fro, but it is now 6:01 PM and if I am going to keep my David Alan Harvey Loft series going, I need to get this posted fast so I can get start pulling together the photos for the next segment.

So, along the way, I soon came upon this raven, sitting on the street light above me, calling out to its peers.

Then the raven jumped...

...tucked its wings to dive and pick up speed...

...then spread its wings to enhance its airfoil...

...flapped and flew away.