Another one of those nickel quizzes UPDATED

Short and sweet, the first one to guess the contextual reference on this photo wins the nickel. A nice sort of day for this kind of silliness.


7/9/16 Well that was a bust but I guess it told me what I needed to know. Not a single person came up with the answer even though it is just two items down in a post titled A few things I learned in the past few days.

No responses on this post itself and a couple of way-off guesses on facebook and obviously no one looked for the answer, even though the post received 49 hits. What that tells me is that while there was some curiosity, there was not much interest and makes me question what the worth of this whole effort is.

I suspect we are reaching the end of this chapter.

Mission accomplished

Trim repainted all around.

Stove cleaned and painted, like new.

A few things I learned in the past two days

If you have trouble locating the trail to your cabin when everything is leafed out in a normal year,
when it's an abnormal year and everything is twice as high as usual, get off the damned four-wheeler and walk around to find the trail instead of just blasting into the pucker brush. Stuck twice between the main trail and the cabin straddling tussucks and high centered on a log I should have cut out years ago. For the second one I was glad I had brought along a comealong (A thing learned on a previous trip.) (Also later I took the chainsaw downhill and turned that log into sawdust."

Even though this is Alaska, if it's going to be 80 degrees, you really should consider bringing along some sunblock.

If you are hooking up a heavy trailer on a down slope, DO NOT get between the trailer and the four-wheeler.

And, sepaking of 80 degrees, I didn't have one shirt out there that isn't wool or flannel.

Don't pick up a steel tool that's been laying (lieing?) in the sun for three hours.

Thirty-year-old Bic pens don't work.

Fair sized blocks of dry ice are great. Tiny ones six inches square and half an inch thick are not.

One thing I haven't learnned is how to handle photos in blogger on an iPad!

Addendum: Apparently I suffered hot sun in the past. A massive search did not turn up any sun block, but I did uncover a substantial supply of aloe burn ointment.

Five things I learned in the past two days

It's only fair

Several years ago I took the Fred Meyer stores to task over what I considered misleading advertising, some of it aimed specifically at us old folks. One of those posts is the most-read of any on the blog so far.

That said, today a Fred Meyer employee went out of his way to help me in a manner totally unexpected so that has to be worth mentioning too.

Yesterday I bought some shrimp at another store to build my seafood Caesar salad for some friends coming to visit. When I opened the package of shrimp, first of all it had an exceptionally strong seafood smell, not something I am used to from shrimp. Then as I was removing the shells I found the meat to be, well, the best word I can think of is squishy. I hesitated using it. My experience with shrimp has been largely fresh out of the ocean in Prince William Sound and I've never encountered soft, squishy shrimp meat.

I hesitated using it, but went ahead anyway. Then regret began in that mélange of thought that confounds the brain just before you fall asleep. It wouldn't go away. Soon I found myself up and sniffing the salad thinking it was probably all right, but then probably when it comes to seafood doesn't mean it is. For one thing I wasn't even sure it was cooked, although it was pink. Before I went to sleep I was up again and examined the package and nowhere on it did it say cooked, and that compounded the suspicion.

When I awakened in the morning that was the first thought. As I thought through my move from haze to consciousness, I even considered just throwing out the salad and starting over this morning. Mind you this one is not just throwing a bunch of lettuce in the bowl. Finally I decided I would just throw out the shrimp and go get some more. Before I even started my morning medicine ritual I was in the kitchen pitching soggy shrimp into the garbage.

This all happened well before the store opened so I putteerd around for a couple of hours until I could go. I went to Fred Meyer where I found shrimp I wanted, not prepackaged but packed in ice in the display case. As the clerk was packaging my shrimp, I asked her if she knew much about shrimp and told her about the soggy, limp shrimp I had just thrown away.

She said no but she knew someone who did and called a man from the cutting area behind the swinging doors. I explained my experience to him and his verdict was it was at least suspicions. I thanked him and then he did something I would not have expected. He said we are not going to charge you for these. I thanked him but said it was not his fault and I would rather pay. He just smiled and walked away.

But when I checked out and the checker rang up my shrimp it showed up with no charge. I decided not to argue it any further and went home with a pound of cooked shrimp I was much more confident about.

And, with good thoughts about Fred Meyer, I was determined to let the little episode be known. It's only fair.

Incidentally, two of the three visitors had never tried this salad before. The three of them just about cleaned out the bowl and one of them took the recipe home with another saying she wanted a copy.

Even more ramblings from Alaska

Graffiti artist Banksy invited students to add to a mural he left on a school building that was named for him.

I don't like to put these ramblings too close together on the blog but there have been so many recently and I've been distracted elsewhere so here you go.

Bridge Farm Primary school in Bristol, England, named a new building on campus after the mysterious graffiti artist Banksy who is believed to be from that town. After a week-long holiday students and teachers returned to school to discover the artist had been there and left a mural on the building.

George Zimmerman auctioned off his gun, the one he used to kill Trayvon Martin. He said he wanted the money to help defeat Hillary Clinton. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse than that, somebody paid him $250,000 for it.

Target ran an ad on TV with four beautiful women modeling summer fashions. One of the women was in a wheelchair. Respect.

After my regular physical exam my doctor told me I'm a perfect specimen. Her words, not mine.

Well, there's the problem, the paper is on the
roll wrong.

Mike Webb a conservative candidate for Congress in Virginia posted a screen shot of his browser online and it showed two open tabs for porn sites.

One benefit of baldness is I will never be tempted to tie my hair into one of those man buns.

In Texas you can use a gun permit as identification when you vote, but not a student ID.

The most commonly misspelled word in Alaska is "Hawaii," according to Google Trends.

The Bush/Cheney White House deleted 22 million emails and we hear nothing about it. Hillary deleted a grocery list she sent her maid and we'll never hear the end of it.

At least part of the US missile defense system still depends on floppy disks to operate system computers. Before the NASA space shuttles were retired, computer technicians working on them had to go junkyarding for parts because the gear on the flight craft was so old some of the manufacturers had gone out of business.

A 4-year-old fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo and a big male came over and all observations seem to show it protecting him. So the zoo people shot the gorilla and told the boy's family they were praying for them without ever contacting the family in person. Lesson here? They did, however, contact the zoo's lawyer. Maybe gorillas have more compassion than zookeepers. But remember in Paul Simon's song they ARE very fond of rum, the zookeepers are.

Donald Trump told Californians there is no drought; all they have to do is turn on the water.

Why are these people smiling? The two people on the right are from 

AARPAlaska in Washington, D.C., to among other things lobby for increased 

Social Security. The guy in the red tie is Alaska's missing US Senator who 
can be expected to follow the Republican mantra and vote to cut Social 
Security  if it ever comes to a vote.

Target does it again. In an ad for swimwear, four models dancing around and one of them is decidedly heavier than the other three or almost every other model you have ever seen. Even more respect.

Anderson Varejão of the Golden State Warriors could receive a championship ring no matter who wins the NBA finals because he played for Cleveland earlier in the season.

Most photographed non-birth ever. A moose was reported to have given birth to a calf in the parking lot of an Anchorage big box hardware store. The story hit national headlines but several experts who did not see the moose said it was most likely born somewhere else and wandered into the parking lot.

Google says the question Alaskans ask most is "how to smoke salmon." Well with pot legal now, might as well try other commodities.

Introversion attack: when you have your first guests in months coming for lunch Monday and in panicked anxiety you begin preparations Friday morning.

Iran refused visas to three Republican Congressmen who thought they'd like to  take a trip over there.

Big box hardware purveyor Lowe's hired an employee who needed a service dog. No problem. They hired the dog, too. It was at one of their stores in Canada. More respect.

Alaska Airlines has flown two flights powered in part by biofuel made from corn.

The Anchorage Dispatch News has a dedicated reality TV reviewer. With all the TV versions of Alaska reality, someone to sort it all out seems necessary.. Incidentally the Browns were caught living in a hotel. If you don't know who the Browns are, you're better off and to tell the truth if I hadn't learned that in some context I never would have known either.

Within two hours after Trump ducked out of a debate with Bernie Sanders the hashtag #chickentrump had generated 104 thousand tweets.

As the snow receded this year, so far the bodies of four missing persons have been found in Southern Alaska, one nobody even knew was missing. 

Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States, had a record snowfall June 9.

And facebook now insists I might know someone named 近藤未来.

Then there was this fellow found along an Anchorage bike path whom officials thought had been stabbed, then decided it was a bear attack, but a day later settled on a moose tromping. Alaska provides all new challenges for the traditional CSI. Latest was someone suggesting it is a Kooshdakhaa, a mythical shapeshifter from Tsimshian and Tlingit folklore. 

Dirt track Saturday night

The Chugach Range and Pioneer Peak rise over the south end of Alaska 
Raceway Park as moderns start a race on the inaugural Saturday night.

Give human beings anything that moves and soon enough we'll find a way to race with it. Perhaps nothing has captured the competitive compulsions more than the advent of the automobile, and racing them has become embedded in the American culture like almost no other. And the one type of automobile that has captured the interest more than any other is the stock car. Stock car racing has been the country's most watched spectator sport for years. Part of the allure of the stock car is almost anybody can recognize the car itself, why, it's the same Chevy Gramma drives to the store ­– almost anyway.

And, stock car racing isn't just a once-a-year  event where professional drivers steer exotic looking open-wheeled vehicles like at the Indianapolis 500 or sleek sports cars built in remote European conclaves. Nope, just about anywhere in America on a Saturday night you can find an oval where local folks are racing what could be Dad's sedan on a dirt-track seldom more than half a mile long.

In one part of that misspent youth I keep alluding to, a trip to the local track on date night constituted the go-to arena to take your favorite girl – not that she did anything but feign interest while the men discussed cars and engines and drivers while all manner of wheeled vehicles roared around the track raising dust mixing that with exhaust fumes and ear splitting noise contained within the bowl formed by the raised edges of the banked raceway.

At the time, when service stations really were service stations, each with a couple of bays with huge doors where mechanics worked on customers' vehicles, you couldn't drive by one of those gas stations without spotting some sort of wildly colorful stock car parked somewhere on the property. Today all they sport are mini marts and Subway shops.

During that aforementioned misspent youth a summer Saturday night lured us to the nearest track with its beer and loud cars, living vicariously through people who we could almost be driving cars we could almost drive ourselves.

As I thought about it, going to a stock car race sort of conflicts with what I want Alaska to be and going somehow seemed a betrayal of all that is Alaskan. But, this past Saturday night that lure came back – big time – and it was stronger than my loyalty to the North.

Every summer Sunday since I've been here this neighborhood has suffered the roars of big-bore-high-rev engines at a drag strip not half a mile away. Neighbors complained. Not me. The sounds of those Sunday races took me back to the drag strips of that youth, like music from a song that spoke to you in years past. In recent years the folks who own the strip wanted to put in an oval. Hearings were held, arguments argued, neighbor against neighbor for and against more noise and more racing in this neighborhood which is relatively quiet if you don't count the occasional rifle shot.

The Butte guards the north end of the track.

After that dust settled, the folks built their oval over there and last night the first racers took to the track. I have always meant to watch the drag races but never went. The new oval, stock car Saturday night had a lot stronger draw and I went to the races.

I was barely out of my car and walking across the dusty parking lot when the nostalgia hit almost full force. My eyes welled up and a flood of memories from the past washed over me. The occasional roar of an engine tested in the pits, the crowd, all manner of people dressed in combinations of NASCAR paraphernalia mixed with Alaskans' need to stay warm on aluminum bleachers with a healthy wind blowing down the Knik River Valley from the glacier not even 20 miles away.

There probably isn't a track in America in a more beautiful setting with Pioneer Peak looming over the south end of the oval and the Butte rising from the horizon to the north, both sometimes wearing fluorescent green when the sun briefly came out from the clouds overhead. The only thing missing was the dirt. This track is paved.

Soon enough races started and ran for about three hours.  Classics, mostly cars that looked like the Ford coupes of the 30s with wide fenders; then a class I hadn't heard of consisting of modern smaller models (think Camry); and of course modern with recognizable Chevys and Dodges, the loudest and fastest of the bunch. There's also a mini stock class with four-cylinder engines, but only one of those showed up.

None of that really mattered. I didn't know any of the drivers, didn't recognize most of the cars, barely cared who won; all I wanted to see and hear and smell was stock car racing itself, all the while feeling the cold creeping through my clothing despite long underwear, heavy wool socks, turtle neck, heavy hoodie and a winter jacket. Even back in Western New York we would feel chilled as the evening wore on. I do remember applauding particularly adept driving and some good duels between a couple of cars.

For a time I was transported to that dusty dirt track in Holland, New York, where I had spent many a happy Saturday night in years past, sipping beer and cheering over the roar of the engines and sometimes holding hands with a date who needed everything explained to her or at least I thought so. Now that I think about it there were very few second dates to the stock car races.

As the evening moved along with many delays between races that taxed the patience and made enduring the creeping cold more difficult, I was tempted to leave but just about the time I decided that, another raced started and I remained glued (maybe frozen?) to my seat. I stayed through the main feature with the moderns racing for 50 laps and then on the way out I paid $25 for a flimsy ball cap heralding the inaugural season of stock car racing in this neighborhood. 

All that's missing is the dirt.

I suspect from now on I will be content to listen to the races from my own yard as I have done with the drag races, but there probably well come another Saturday night when the lure is stronger than the resistance and I will find my way over there again.

Alaska Raceway Park

Robin primps for a day in the sun

The beginning: A bad feather day?

There's an axiom for writers that goes "look at something common and find something uncommon in it." Robins certainly aren't the most exotic birds posted on the Birds of Alaska facebook page. As a matter of fact an ibis has been sighted in western Alaska recently. Now that's exotic, at least in the sub Arctic. Robins were so common in Western New York where I grew up, we barely noticed them. Even around here they get little attention, at least until yesterday. This robin stood on the edge of the little water bath I put out for the birds for a good 10 minutes preening and primping. I think I caught him after he had already been in the pool and this was his cleanup regimen. One thing I noticed was he could turn his head almost 180 degrees and could reach most parts of his body, mostly with his beak but some with a foot. The camera just kept going off in my hands until I had dozens of images. I can be pretty ruthless when it comes to culling pictures but today the fascination with all the poses was too much to resist. I hope others find it as entertaining as I did.

Got to get the pits.

Birds of Alaska on facebook

Am I the only one who didn't know robins could do this?

And … ready to go