Jimmy peeks around a tree from both ends

I was very discouraged. For one thing, I had been roaming about with my camera and I had taken some brilliant pictures, fantastic images, probably the best I had ever shot in my life, images that

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Charlie's raven show; Margie returns to Alaska; Thomas and the boys; biker in the rain; sky warrior remembered

I had to go to town to pick Margie up from the airport. I had not yet had a chance to see Charlie's raven show, so, an hour before Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive, I picked Charlie and Melanie up and we headed over to the Midnight Sun Brewery to take a look and have dinner.

I remain amazed at what Charlie has done with his raven photos. Everybody who reads this blog regularly knows that I photograph ravens when I happen upon them, but Charlie has gone beyond that. Some time ago, he gave himself a mission: to photograph a raven and a stranger every day.

He has done good.

Charlie had a little placard up and in it he gave me the credit for inspiring him to take up a camera and do what he has done. That was nice. He and Melanie should now be driving south, towards Homer, where they are going to join Rex and Cortney on a boat ride to Halibut Cove and then camp out in a cabin for the rest of the week. I hope they catch lots of fish and share with us.

Rex made a kayak and they are taking it, too.

I have written a few times before about how desperate Margie gets for Arizona during the winter, how badly she wants to go back. As always, when I picked her up at the airport, she was happy - no, thrilled - to be back in Alaska.

Of course, winter is over. The sun shines. She would soon greet her grandsons.

Big Thomas was on the go.

The sun does shine - today. But not yesterday, not when I drove to town to see Charlie's ravens and pick Margie up.

Yesterday, it rained.

Dad, top row, third from left, who died on Memorial Day five years ago. May you, your fellow B-24 crew and all the others who fought alongside you for this nation, in this war and others, so many to die in the fight, never be forgotten.

Old hippie friend of Lyndon LaRouche stands up to hostile Alaska and pleads for a peach; five other Alaska - Wasilla roadside stories, shot through the dirty, cracked, windows of the Ford Escape

This guy shot past the Ford Escape in a flash. This one was through the open window, on the Parks Highway, pointed toward Anchorage. All that follow are through the cracked and dirty windows, in Wasilla.

As I approached Wasilla Lake, I was shocked to see this sign ordering the great AK (Alaska) not to feed old hippies. Some of my readers may not know this, but there was a time when I believe I had the longest head of hair of any male student attending Brigham Young Unversity. This was in the days when cops would pull you over for having long hair, hamburger/soda shop owners would come at you with a baseball bat to drive you out of the friendly gathering places they had created for upstanding youth with short hair (yes, I did experience these very things and, in its way, it was fun) and Mitt Romney would lead a posse gang and forcibly cut the hair off a fellow student who had long hair and was rumored to have been gay, too - although in those days, they would not have called him "gay." They would have called him, "queer," and other epithets I do not care to repeat here.

So, in a way, that experience at BYU makes me an old hippy - and now someone had posted this sign here, telling Alaska not to feed me. Boy! Was I angry! Hungry, too. Angry and hungry.

I should add that one day I got called into the office of one of the BYU deans, who warned me that if I did not get my hair cut within 24 hours, he would expell me from BYU. I can't remember for sure, but I believe his name was Dean. Dean Dean.

So I got my hair cut.

But I grew it back out again, just as fast as I could.

Which wasn't all that fast.

And then I went on a mission and got nearly all of it cut off.

I looked pretty respectable at that point. You would have never known I was a hippy.

I was very pleased to see that this old hippy had seen the sign and then positioned himself right beside it so he could defy it. He even had a pretty good sign of his own made up, asking Alaska passersby to feed him a peach. If you could see all the lettering, this is what you would read:

"This old hippie says AK feed me a peach." A bit more follows of course, but that was the basic message. This guy wanted a peach. I don't know why he wanted a peach and not a chunk of moose meat or salmon, but a peach was what he wanted.

I would have given him a peach, too, but I didn't have one. I did have a bean burrito, but he didn't want a burrito - only a peach.

He claimed to be a friend of Lyndon LaRouche, who apparently backs up the quest of old hippies to be fed by the great AK! It is nice to know there are still compassionate people in this country, state and town.

As for the focus, in this kind of situation I must let the camera decide what it wants to focus on and it chose the mountain.

I saw walkers, walking.

Next I saw a family out for a pleasant Saturday afternoon outing in Wasilla.

These two played, "caboose."

The heat was searing - maybe 52 degress F (11 C) under cloudy skies and soon I was parched. I went looking for a Pepsi and found a truck load.

I drank it all, but was still thirsty afterward.

Did you notice how green it suddenly is around here?

Isn't it amazing?

Lynx at IHOP on Tudor Road in Anchorage

Doubtless, readers by the thousands of millions will be studying this picture and will be wondering why I was eating breakfast yesterday afternoon with Lynxton and his dad at IHOP on Tudor Road in Anchorage. I assure you, it was not because I was lazy and had slept in until afternoon and then decided to drive to Anchorage for breakfast with cute little Lynx.

No, I was up very early yesterday and I arrived in Anchorage very early, but was unable to eat a bite of food until afternoon. I think it likely that the answer will not only become very clear in this blog very soon, but is also likely to dominate the content of this blog for awhile, but I cannot divulge it just yet.

I can say this - everything went very well with Red Nose's heart surgery in Tucson. He went into surgery with the doctors giving him a 50 percent chance of coming out alive, but he did come out alive and in pretty good condition, considering. He has been improving since and Margie is ready to come home - hopefully tomorrrow.

That's it, for now. I doubt I will blog much this weekend. Maybe one picture a day, plus a few words of nonsense.

Scot and his son Branson and the Metros; Scot and his Super Sluice Box

I decided to blend two Metro Cafe shoots together today, in part because I was busy working on my India series when I shot the first on April 18, and this blend gives me a good excuse to still run it. The other reason is because both are about Scot Starheim and his six-year old hockey star son Branson, yet Branson is only pictured in one of the shoots - this one.

In the spring, Scot parks the little Metro car and the Metro van he refurbished in Metro Cafe colors with the Metro Cafe logo out in front of the coffee shop to attract passers by. In the fall, he moves them into shelter to protect them from the weather.

This was the day he decided to park the Metros out in front of Metro. Branson joined him out back and then Scot let him hold the wheel as they slowly crossed about half the parking lot.

Scot's mechanical and inventive talents go way beyond refurbishing Metro vans and cars, as well as his beautiful red Corvette that I must one day soon post a picture of. Awhile back, Scot got interested in gold mining. He looked at many different apparatuses miners and engineers had come up with to extract gold from the earth, but even the best of them did not succeed in pulling out all the gold that passed through them.

So he designed and made his own "Super Sluice Box." I stress this is not the real name of the apparatus. Scot has yet to come up with a name for it. But it does what a sluice box does, but in super size and super effective.

Before they reached the spot where the Metro car would spend the sunny months attracting coffee drinkers and such, Branson had to scoot over into the passenger seat. Greg directed Scot as he guided the Metro into its billboard spot.

To meet his own requirements, Scot had to design his Super Sluice Box to accomplish two things: it had to trap every single fleck of gold that passed through it. Most mining operations eject a substantial amount of gold into the tailings.

And it had to be environmentally friendly. Scot has made his career on designing, implementing and running systems to keep Arctic oil operations as clean and environmentally safe as possible and to catch spilled oil, so he had the environmental know how.

Once the Metro car was parked, Branson took over the heavy lifting and rebuilt the short block wall behind it.

I will not attempt to explain how Scot's Super Sluice Box traps every fleck of gold, as I would have to fully understand the process first and I don't. Scot did explain the basic concept, though. Gold is 19 times heavier than water and nine times heavier on the average than other minerals and this is why gold panners and sluice box users alike use water to wash away dirt, gravel, and whatever else might be in the earth while leaving the gold behind.

Yet, gold does escape. Scot has designed a system that employs several small holding tanks and piping apparatus and he tells it will trap every single speck of gold.

Once they had parked the Metro car, it was time to go get the Metro van.

As you can see, a host of folks had come by. Some had helped him put it together. The two guys in black had come to give its safety features a critical look, because federal inspectors are certainly going to, and to offer any suggestions they might think of. A spectator or two drifted in and out as well.

I got everybody's names on a small sheet of paper, but damned if that small sheet of paper didn't somehow disappear. I have looked every place it could possibly be, but it is not in any of them, which is impossible, but true.

I could name some, but then the ones I didn't name might feel left out.

Greg joined Branson and Scot as he drove into the parking lot, headed for the Metro Van's summer billboard parking spot.

You probably wonder how Branson fits into this story. Scot faces a bit of a dilemma - should he rent his Super Sluice Box out to miners who already have proven claims with gold to be mined, start constructing more and make his money that way? Or should he stake his own, unproven claim, take it out and maybe come out with not much?

His good business sense tells him he should market it out.

Yet, if he were to go out and mine his own claim, he would take his boy, Branson with him. Branson would learn how to do it all. Branson could one day be the boss of the whole operation.

Scot was joking, laughing, picturing his son bossing tough looking crews like these rugged hands around. "C'mon, get your lazy... to work! Let's finish this! I've got to get to the second grade!"

After his father parked the Metro van, Branson took over the driver's seat. He didn't go anywhere at all, and yet he drove further and faster than anyone had ever driven a Metro van before.