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I got snail mail a few days ago from a journal editor letting me know my story had not been accepted for publication. No biggie, right, add it to the pile. Except this story… I’d sent it in three years ago. Talk about your long wait time. It’s a story about a young man who was betrayed by his friend and mentor, with a tragicomic end. I rather like the story, but I agree with others who read it that it’s a bit long for a short story. I think it may work better as a book chapter.

Imagine, you’ve drifted off into a luxurious sleep. When all of a sudden, you’re awakened by this

It happened to me. July 4th. I’d checked out of the party early (being the wimp that I am), tended to my ablutions, chased my statin and two Ibuprofen with a cold glass of water, slipped beneath the covers and, well, like I said, drifted off into a luxurious sleep. Sometime later, I’m guessing maybe an hour, these five pushed open the bedroom door and woke me up. Even though I was groggy I had the presence of mind to snap a photo. Damn good thing I keep my phone bedside. Positively Hitchcockian.

The one far right was our guest from England. He’s leaving Anchorage tonight to fly to Chicago, a seven hour layover, and then on to Heathrow. Seven hours to Chicago, another nine to Heathrow. Ugh. One thing I love working for an Alaskan company is I no longer have to fly for work. We’re going to miss our friend from England. We didn’t get to know him well, but what we did get to know we liked very much.

He showed me how to root my phone! Encouraged me to keep at it with the guitar (even suggested a novel method for accelerated learning). Praised my latest software at work, and was a most gracious guest as we showed him all we could of this wondrous place we call home.

Oh yeah, and he liked my martinis,

Summer is holding on. Back into the 70s this week. (Speaking of luxurious). Along with our guest from across the Pond we had family visit us for a few days — thoroughly enjoyable. And now, this weekend, it’s just me and Happy Wife at our Nest, taking a breather, until more guests arrive in August. And then come September — Ta Da! — we are Wisconsin bound. Not saying where, exactly, but if you find yourself in front of a tv come 9/28 (hint: Monday Night), tune in to this, you may spot us!

A grand 4th it was! Although, as I feared, this year it was not a day marked by American Exceptionalism. Take for instance the Mount Marathon race. The course record for women was demolished by Miss Forsberg, a French woman who hails from Calais, France.

I caught her cruising to the finish line, her hair barely mussed from the effort, like she’d just come from the bathroom after freshening up

To be fair, a young Alaskan woman who finished second, her first year competing as an adult, also beat the course record by a few seconds. She will be one to watch in future years.

In the men’s race, a Spaniard, from Spain — nothing gets by me! — also set a course record. Nobody in sight behind him either as he also cruised to the finish

If you think this a race only for the young, think again. I captured this old timer as he approached the base of the climb. Must’ve been 65 or older. Alone in his thoughts I’m sure. Clearly he’s not in it to win. It’s about bragging rights if I had to venture a guess. Or something he does every year because of a promise he made long ago, probably to himself. Whatever it is he had a long time to think about it. That’s a steep mountain to get up and down.

 

Another one of the men approaching the start of the climb

Some return a lot more beaten and ragged than when they left

Here’s a look at the summit from near the finish, should you be thinking, “What’s So Hard, It’s Half Downhill.” Less than 42 minutes up and down? These people are not human

“May I have my Latte now please.”

Stat Dear!

That was earlier in the week. Now the long weekend begins. We are headed to Seward, the busiest weekend of the year down there by far owing to the Mount Marathon race. We’ve invited along a man I met at work who’s here from the UK doing some contract work. The irony of celebrating our nation’s independence from Great Britain with him has not escaped me. Maybe a little reenactment, sir? Haha.

By the way, why is it called Great Britain? You never hear Great Egypt, or Great Brazil, Great United States, or Great India. I was told by our guest that in fact it was a matter that had stirred a lively national debate. When put to a vote, Great narrowly edged out Fantastic and Amazing. I don’t need to remind you of the all the dangers of an excessive national pride.

And here I sit, as I type, eating an English muffin and listening to a woman on the radio with a heavy British accent go on about something or another. This is what happens when you let your guard down. The proverbial Camel’s nose under the tent. The seemingly innocent day-to-day things that become established in our lives may in fact be the harbingers of tyranny.

Gotta run. Many Honey-Dos to tend to before we can depart Anchorage. Supposed to be warm and sunny throughout the weekend. This pleases me greatly. Enjoy he Holiday!

If you had asked her forty years ago, “Can you imagine that someday you’ll be walking a beach in Alaska, on summer solstice, carrying dog poop, fishing line, and an empty can of Miller High Life inside a discarded plastic grocery bag?”

Well.

Sometimes, dreams come true

Mercifully cooler today. We slept together in the same bed! I felt like I had to learn everything all over again.

After a restful night of sleep we awoke, had coffee together on the deck — a soft boiled egg and muffin (me) — and then we rolled up our sleeves and completed laying the new floor in the guest house.

Supposed to be in the seventies again next week, near eighty in Anchorage.

…

The tragedy in Charleston. It doesn’t seem right to me to say nothing about it. Which might be interpreted by some as a kind of acquiescence, that tragedies like this will continue to happen from time to time and there’s really nothing more politicians can do about it. On the other hand, it peeves me to see the mainstream media thrust the mic in the face of every politician to goad them into saying something about it, and then grade the responses by depth of grief, or imbecility. For what purpose?

We live in a dangerous world. I wish it weren’t so. But it is. Everyday and everywhere be vigilant, careful, and selective of who you trust. What else can any one person do?

Her hair was wet because she’d just run through the sprinkler. At night she’s back to sleeping in the tent in the backyard to escape the heat in our second floor bedroom. There are forest fires burning north and south of us. Lowes and Home Depot have sold out of fans. Downtown, men stand on street corners prophesying The End of Times.

Tourists are puzzled. They step off the buses, some wearing coats — coats mind you! — and wonder why us locals appear so Woeful. “It’s summer,” they shrug, “supposed to be warm.” They don’t understand. What they want is tax-free Moose Poop jewelry. Their names appear on cards dangling from lanyards slung around their necks. This is so the tour guide can spot them more easily when it’s time to hurry them back onto the bus. And for the shop-owners, too:

“Evelyn is it, from Indiana?…yes Evelyn, I can assure you, all our turds come from 100%, purely grass-fed Moose — right here in Alaska!”

Ka-ching.

I take it all in while eating a polish sausage topped with grilled onions, seated on the rim of a concrete planter outside the Public Lands Information building. Just watchin’ ’em go by.

I never tire of seeing the tourists. To live and work in a place so many people can’t wait to experience, some for the first time — priceless.

Low 80s the past couple days. Forecast is for it to continue the next two, then cool down into the mid 70s as the month draws to a close. I just now kissed Happy Wife goodnight before she headed off to her cocoon of coolness in a swale of grass in the backyard. By the time it’s cool enough for her to return to the bedroom, sleeping together will seem new again. Some things are worth the wait.

Happy Wife and I slogged up to Marmot Overlook to glimpse Exit Glacier. Aptly named. One thousand feet Up in 1.2 miles. 74 degrees. 82 by Tuesday if the forecasters are to be believed.

Our Anniversary today. Nine years ago We began like this

Never before have I been married nine years, far less nine consecutive years. Our immediate goal is ten, and then ten more, and so on, until death do us part. I could lie and tell you every step of the trail hasn’t been rich and wonderful. If there were days when it was otherwise I can’t recall them. Or I don’t see the point.

Doesn’t mean every day has been Amarone and Cherries. Take for instance today. We both took the day off. Happy Wife (HW) because of a concern over waves of pain in her gut, which defied a simple diagnosis. Me, because, well… In Health And Sickness. I first called to make an appointment with our Primary Care Physician. She was out, and her partners were already booked the entire day. Then Happy Wife calls another office. They said, “We don’t make same day appointments for new patients.” Then she tried to leverage her influence in the medical community to pry her way into a same day appointment at some other office. No sympathy. Fine. So we went to a Doc ‘n The Box, where they welcome walk-ins. A PA looked her over and said, “There’s a bug going around, symptoms vary, but that’s probably what ails you. I can order you an Ultrasound if you think it may be a Zebra; your call.”

Happy Wife declined. We left and went to breakfast where we discussed the likelihood this really was nothing but a GI bug. I’ll tell you this much, HW is not alarmist. Not in all the ten years I’ve known her. If there’s a concept of an inverse hypochondriac, she’s its avatar. To take off work and make a doctor’s appointment, it meant she thought this was different. For now we’re accepting it probably is a nothing more than a nasty GI bug that will eventually run its course. As I write her episodes of discomfort haven’t disappeared , but they haven’t worsened either.

This past weekend we took an impromptu mini vacation and drove north. We left Thursday late afternoon after work and overnighted at a nice lodge in Talkeetna. On Friday we continued north to Cantwell, where we turned east onto the Denali highway, a 135 mile dirt road (actually, the last 20 miles are paved) which is closed in winter but passable in summer. At the mid point we overnighted at Alpine Creek lodge. Pretty primitive place, but the proprietors and their guests were awful nice. One of the tires on the Suabaru was flat by the time we finally made it. The road is notorious for being brutal on tires. Turns out there were two punctures in the same tire. One guest loaned me a tire plug kit, another had a mini air compressor, thankfully. If not for that we would’ve had to limp out the next morning on a limited use spare with 50 miles of gravel ahead of us and the three other tires showing their age. And virtually no services for the next 120 miles or so, save McClarens at mile 42, which we discovered when we stopped there offers basic tire repair service. (I wonder why). No matter, the plugs held all the way back to Anchorage, ~250 miles.

A few pics from the trip (embiggening enabled)

~11:00 PM at Alpine Creek. Bandit, the cutest Jack Russell you can imagine, atop the proprietor’s lap, keeping watch

Happy Toes on the deck of our cabin at Sheep Mountain Lodge. 69 degrees at 10:00 PM. Living is easy

See what I mean? Imagine Nine straight years of this

Happy Wife paddlin’ her kayak (aka “Lucille”) on its maiden voyage, among the ‘bergs.

Sheesh. The Hotspot on my phone, which connects me to the Interwebs when I’m here at our Nest, this morning is slower than a sloth swimming in molasses. I sent technical support an email, which, of course, took like five minutes to send. A few hours later I get an email back with a ticket number referencing my problem — LTK11177743212X — and a suggestion from a man named Joseph L.

Joseph said, “There appear to be no issues related to wireless data in your area. Shut down your phone, remove the SIM card, wait a minute, put it back together and try to reconnect.”

Seriously? No “issues?” So it’s all in my head? Imagine your garden hose is badly kinked, water dribbles out the end like a 95 year old man takin’ a pee. You call me and I recommend you shut off the water, disconnect the hose at the faucet, wave the hose heavenward for a minute, then reconnect and try again.

“What? No? That didn’t work to correct your problem? Well, thank you for contacting technical support today. Is there anything else I can (not) help you with?”

Double Sheesh.

Anyhoo…

Misting this morning on Lowell Point. At Bear Glacier? I can’t say for sure, but the optimist in me wants to say the overcast to the south appears to be thinning. I should know better. This is Seward, after all, the northernmost reach of a rain forest that extends from southeast Alaska. Locals here dismiss what most people would call a steady rain as merely high humidity.

If you embiggen the picture (courtesy of Google Earth), you’ll see only a thin isthmus separates the ocean from Bear Lake, a freshwater outflow from Bear Glacier. In truth I expect the water in the lake may be brackish owing to the high tides up here which flush into it twice daily. Tidal surges in Resurrection Bay can be up to thirty feet or more. Why Resurrection Bay? In the early 19th century a Russian named Alexander Baranov roamed these waters beating otters over the head to service the Russian fur trade. (Okay, supposedly he did some good things too, but butchering otters… that’s worse even than deflating footballs). Anyway, one year he was aboard his ship far out in the Gulf of Alaska when the weather came up suddenly. He quickly sought refuge in the first bay he could find. When the storms finally relented it was Easter Sunday, so he named it Resurrection Bay. Sentimental, perhaps. Yet today if you ask the Otters out there who call this bay home, they’ll tell you ol’ Alex was just another Asshole who murdered their ancestors. History is messy.

I have a Honey-Do list to get started on today. I shan’t be idle. Well, not going forward anyway. It’s already 11:07 am and I’ve accomplished next to nothing save coffee and breakfast, if you can call it that — one fried egg, two slices of bacon, and a half a hamburger bun toasted w/butter and garlic salt. Absent Happy Wife I’m reduced to the simplest means of existence. A half a man, really.

Let’s see

• A dump run (at least one).
• Visqueen the floor in the guest cabin (“Bear Cub”) out back in preparation for the vinyl plank floor install next week (Honey-Do Phase II).
• Replace the broken check valve outside the Bear Cub. (Finished last week!).
• Murder squirrels living in the roof of the Bear Cub. (*).
• Laundry (note to self: turn on water and gas in laundry room).
• Shower, Shave, & Read.
• Three Olive Martini (>1 ?) at Chinooks.

The view from Chinooks bar yesterday

Well well, would you look at that, a cruise ship. Tourists! I’ll need to get to the bar early to find an open stool. Some tourists ask the silliest questions. One time I fielded one from the wife of a couple when they learned I was an Alaskan (mind you, this question came right after they had just stepped off a boat, you know, a boat floating on the Sea): “What elevation are we at right now?”

* Unlike ol’ Alexander Baranov I am not killing squirrels just to harvest their fur to further the rapacious interests of some Russian aristocrat. No. It is more like self defense. So history will judge me as morally superior. Besides, not all Otters are cuddly little balls of fur who spend their days floatin’ on their backs nibbling on molluscs and such. Like I said, History Is Messy.