Alaska


11
Nov 22

Whurrwhurrwhurr

After work I rushed right back to the house — because where else am I going to go? — and hustled right inside. I wanted to put my bike on the trainer. Well, wanted to isn’t exactly the right word. I wanted to ride my bike, but it was cold and almost dark, so the trainer it is. Or, rather, it was, since this already happened.

I rode in the desert, with snowcapped mountains ahead of me. Whurrwhurrwhurr is the sound the back wheel my bike makes on the roller.

At the conclusion of my ride people that don’t exist threw confetti, which … also … doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean this isn’t still a nice little feeling, though, after 23 quick little miles.

And now I’m that much closer — 23 miles closer, to be precise — to making this my third biggest year ever. I should do that this weekend, make 2022 my third best year. The second spot is an easy possibility after that. Not sure if I can set a personal best.

But if I don’t, there’s only myself to blame, and none of this matters anyway. So far, though, the 2020s are giving me a workout, and that’s what matters.

It is time, once again, to catch up on the Re-Listening Project. I’m going through all of my old CDs, in order, and enjoying the nostalgia and the music and trying to write a little something about it. It pads out the site and burdens you with music I like — or at least music that I liked once upon a time. These aren’t reviews, they’re whimsy, as so much of music should be.

I still like a lot of “Happy Nowhere,” it turns out. This was Dog’s Eye View’s debut. This was Peter Stuart’s band. He got a break by opening for Tori Amos and Cracker. He warmed up crowds for Counting Crows and then signed a record deal. With that in hand he formed this band. One single got a lot of airplay, which is how I found them. He apparently wrote the hit in 15 minutes, while nursing a hangover.

So, as hangovers go, that worked out fairly well, I guess?

I don’t remember all of these details from the narrative part of the video. In fact, the biggest memory of that video I have is how he’s smiling singing this song that, on the face of it, should be pretty sad.

Also, the instrumentation. It’s infectious.

This came out in 1996 and there was a music store in town that let you listen to things before you bought them. This was a great idea for customers, but I’m sure it had drawbacks for managers and employees. I don’t know if that’s why I have this record, or I picked it up just on the strength of that single, but here I am, an embarrassing amount of decades later and I still sing along with almost every track on the thing.

This guitar, Stuart’s voice, it all just works.

I sang this one, with attitude, well into my 30s.

I consider this a perfect mid-90s rock ‘n’ roll song.

This always felt like a beach ballad, and I’ve never listened to it on a beach, so there you go. I always wonder if this is a character song or biographical. I wonder who he’s singing to. Sometimes I wonder who other people sing this to.

I never sang this ballad with a particular person in mind. Weird.

The good tunes continue. Car, headphones, shower, whenever.

I never understood how this record, and the subsequent work, didn’t get more label support. That was a real problem on the second album. It’s just a business choice — most of which are obvious in retrospect, I guess, but back then? Again, mid-90s … a bit of honesty, a bit of heartfelt rawness … this fits the mold without complaint.

I loved this record. Always enjoyed DEV, and Peter Stuart. He released three more records — two of them will show up here eventually — before disappearing. Recently I learned he’s a clinical psychologist in Texas. I read an interview with him and he came off as so content and focused. It was one of the better Where Are They Now? stories.

Anyway, more from him later. We must also consider here, today, the remastered version of Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert. I’m not a proactive Clapton fan, let’s say. I appreciate the work, but it’s just not something I’ve sought out.

I have no recollection of why I have this. I have no real recollection of spending a lot of time with it, either. (Like you can recall all of the reasons why you did, or didn’t listen to the second song of an album you purchased 26 years ago … )

But I listened to it this week and … it needs to be re-remastered. Which, hey, makes since. The original came out in 1973, Pete Townshend got Clapton on stage and helped re-start his career. And, given Clapton’s heroin-addled reclusiveness, his star power and the different music ecosystem of the time, this was probably a tantalizing thing for his pre-existing fans. (The original vinyl held six tracks. I have 14 here.) In that light, there’s a lot to appreciate. Also, this disc was released in 1995, and I heard all of this for the first time in 1996 or 1997, let’s say. We’re farther, today, from the remastering than the remastering was from the original. (Sentences like that come far too rapidly to me these days, and that’s middle age to me.)

As much as anything, that the stage also held Townshend, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Jim Capaldi was probably part of my initial appeal — and that pays off. This record highlights Winwood as much as anything. Here he is now.

The blue-eyed soul and blues between them works pretty well. It sounds and feels a bit raw. It’s all hasty and seems largely unrehearsed. That’s part of the charm. AllMusic wrote a retrospective review, which seems appropriate. The author concludes, “Today, the album is an adequate live document, though one can find better performances of the songs on other records.”

As for other records, the next time the Re-Listening Project comes around we’ll gloss over a soundtrack and, probably, something a little more contemporary to the point of purchase.


7
Apr 20

Tonight on #IUZoomington

Tuesday’s home-office mood:

I spent a part of the day reworking the home office, because it needed some work. Things got stacked in different stacked and other things were stored in different places. Now it works, the home office, until I decide to rework it again, which will probably be sometime next week.

At least I have a nice window view! And I had to rework my office so I could enjoy that window more. And also because we had another video guest this evening. It’s a former student, and WISH-TV reporter Sierra Hignite:

She’s been out in the world for three years and landed in market #25 in her second job at the beginning of her third year as a reporter, which is a pretty remarkable ascent. She’s doing a great job there, which is no surprise, and she had a lot of great advice for today’s students.

The weather was nice. I skipped a run to see my old friend, but it was worth it. And I spent the evening out on the deck. That’s the moon at 10:30 at night and it’s 72° and there was a very, very, faint breeze. You can hear bullfrogs in the distance and the katydids up close. But otherwise it was perfectly quiet and still. I must have sat outside for 90 minutes late into the evening just looking at that moon:

… and wondering where the clouds were so busy getting off to (somewhere to the east), and wondering how long the nice weather will stay (not hardly long enough).

The moon was so bright tonight, it put me in mind of the dimmest I’ve ever seen the sun. We were in Alaska in May of 2014, and an Alaskan summer is something to behold. We didn’t see the full of darkness for 11 days. The sun, one evening, though, was a curious thing.

We were leaving a glacier cruise, which was tremendous, and we got off the vessel and stepped into a surrealistic world. It was, I’m sure, where we were on the planet, the time of the year, the time of day and, of course, a nearby raging wildfire. That particular glimpse of the sun was not much brighter than this moon.

Should have stayed there longer, Alaska then and outside tonight.


2
Jun 14

Back from Alaska, animal videos

We made it back to the continental United States, and to the east coast. We landed at JFK, were picked up by my father-in-law and then spent most of the day just trying to stay awake until it was time to go to sleep.

All red eye flights should be discontinued by Congressional vote.

Here are the last two videos from our amazing Alaska adventure. This first is the moose we saw eating on the side of the road in Denali. I got within 15 feet or less. When I got to close, the moose would just amble away.

This one has to do with the puppies you found here the day before yesterday — or three weeks ago, whichever it was. This is four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King telling the visitors to Husky Homestead, the kennel where he raises his dogs:

Alaska is a great trip. You should visit. I hope we get to go back!

But not on a red eye.


1
Jun 14

So long Denali and see ya Anchorage; leaving Alaska

I forgot this panorama yesterday. It is almost like I felt you might have, perhaps, seen enough of this beautiful scenery and didn’t want to burden you with any more of Denali. Who could get tired of this, though?

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As always with panoramas, click to embiggen.

We left Denali today, drove back to Anchorage, cleaned most of our clothes and repacked, this time for the airport. Our Alaskan adventure has, sadly, come to an end.

Cheers to our good friends and wonderful hosts:

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They are sweet people and have been wonderful to us as always. And they are terrible enablers. We would have done none of this adventure without them. They’ve only been in Alaska for about five months and they already come off as experts, at least to us. Adam’s work keeps his attention far more than a 40-hour work week, but I hope they get to go and do and see more and more of the area; it is surely beautiful.

Today, Adam is already in France and now Jessica is joining him there. He’ll be jumping as a part of the D-Day anniversary festivities next week, which is some incredible news for him. To catch up, Jessica will be flying with us to Seattle. We are due back in New York at around 1:30 tomorrow. Her trip will, really, be just getting underway. Leaving from Anchorage after midnight to fly to Paris and take two trains to the English Channel is just about the worst red eye flight you could imagine.

If my math was correct she’ll be traveling for almost 31 hours. Of course, she’ll make it halfway around the world, but still.

Her layover in Seattle is ridiculously long, so we bought her way into the Delta club. I insisted. Better chairs, more plugs, no crowds, free snacks, private restrooms. The one in Seattle has showers, apparently. For all of the driving around and putting up with us she did, she deserves to not spend almost eight hours as an airport refugee.

As we’re sitting in the airport, waiting on the plane, listening to these guys talk about their work schedules on the north slope — the real frontier — I realized something: This is the first time that I have seen darkness since Tuesday of last week in Wilton. Every waking moment it has been daylight or something vaguely resembling twilight. It wasn’t creepy until just this moment …

Anyway, here are the last of the scenic Alaskan pictures — I have some random shots that’ll land on the Tumblr site eventually — but these are the last mountain shots. It has been a wonderful trip, and they tell us we have to come back to see the other Alaska, the winter Alaska. Wouldn’t that be neat? I bet all of these mountains would look different then!

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The only two bears we saw:

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But this guy was the best animal in the entire 49th state:

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31
May 14

Puppies! Err, Visiting Denali, Day Two

We booked a tour at Husky Homestead, home of Jeff King, the four-time Iditarod champion, and his many dogs. At first, I was a tiny bit skeptical. Learning about the Iditarod would be interesting, but Jessica and The Yankee were more interested in seeing the puppies.

They did not disappoint. And they’ll win you over. Cuteness follows. You step off the shuttle and they thrust dogs right into your hands:

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Those puppies are all about six weeks old. We’re told we are a part of their training. We’re socializing the animals. They should be paying us for our help!

This is Chase, he gave us the general idea of the place, introduced us to a few of the 60 or so dogs there, including a couple of champion huskies and told us about their general life with the mushmaster. Some turn into competitive sled dogs, others get passed along to a more domestic lifestyle. For now, they’re all pulling stuff. In the winter they drag a sled. Right now, as we were there, they hooked up nine or 10 to a four wheeler and the dogs ran like the kibble bowl was on fire. The rest were loudly jealous.

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The short version: they’ve got it pretty good.

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This dog is already a champion, and at a young age. King said she could be one of the best ever before she’s done.

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This one is a couple of months old. Each litter is given a theme name. This litter is named after Jeeps. This is Cherokee. Or Wrangler. Hard to keep them straight:

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King has a nice patter as he talks about running the races. I have some video of this I’ll be putting together in the next few days. Be sure you come back to check it out. It is informative and entertaining.

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In the afternoon we went out riding four wheelers. There’s a large parcel of land that abuts the national park that is private land. The story goes there was a coal operation there when the park was federalized. And that was in a time when the government wouldn’t just snap things up. So the mining continued. When that played out, the land stayed private, and now there are ATVs.

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And this guy is our guide. What could go wrong?

He was good, a personable fellow, a fine guide. He didn’t drive fast enough.

He took us up close to views like these, though:

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We saw the train on our way back to the lodge:

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More mountains:

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And a moose — unconcerned on the side of the road. I walked to the center line on the road before the moose would worry about me. That’s, what, 15 feet? Not a bad evening find.

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Tomorrow we head back to Anchorage and, much later tomorrow, back to the lower 48.