I know nobody needs my take on the current situation in the world, I can only tell you how and why we've made a few decisions. We were scheduled to end our season and fly home on March 26th and as the situation changed and I started to look around we decided to jump the jet early and got home this last Friday...Our last sunset at LaMarina was simply gorgeous and a reminder of what we're doing in life, me and MPeasy.
I'm really not the nervous type but as Mid March arrived a Canadian Air carrier canceled all flights to and from Mexico and many of our friends were left scrambling. Some developed the ' we'll be just fine here ' and others were frantic to get home. In my mind when still over two weeks from our scheduled flight I started thinking about the if's and buts and one day as I sat with friends at the Palapa at the entrance of our building a light went on for me.... I realized we needed to be in charge of our own lives and at LaMarina we are at the mercy of what might be the most dysfunctional Condo in Mazatlan. You see unlike other Condo building ours has a restaurant and bar that are open to the public as well as a terrace that hosts public yoga. So that day I saw people from outside the building walk by on their way to breakfast and they were close and someone sneezed and the light went on for me...our building will do nothing to help protect the people that in theory own it. Right now we have people we love there and I'm so concerned, one of my musical partners is there and they intend to wait it out in a building that didn't even put a jug of hand sanitizer on the reception counter. I asked someone why and was told it's because it was all sold out....give me a *&^%$ break, with just a little effort the lotion can made and then made available just like me and MP did with alcohol and some aloe jell and some nice natural oils. ALL the open to the public places in the building should have been closed so people who live there could create a strategy of their own. So, I changed our tickets to take charge of our lives as soon as possible and we got home Friday morning....here's me and MP in our natural environment, walking along the Kenai River.
At Mile 14 self isolation is easy, duck soup as we used to say shooting pool . The only tough part for me is that this 14 day stint we're doing is...well.... I love people and you know me, I love to chat. So we'll be on the phone and we have excellent internet here ( unlike at LaMarina ...but that's another deal ) so keep looking at Mile 14 and I will post some songs and maybe video of life here, just last night in the middle of supper a moose walked under the eve of the house and put his nose to the slider to check us out...or maybe he was looking at the green potted plants on the other side.
So we come home to snow like we've not seen in at least 15 years...it's knee deep to a tall Irishman. Within hours of getting home I can tell MP is pine ing away when looking at her snowed in greenhouses. There's no getting around it, I gotta fire up the snowblower so she can get in and get to doing her garden starts etc.....never min that I didn't put up fire wood before it left because lately we have an inexhaustible supply of dead standing beetle kill trees to cut when ever we need...well, with this snow there's no way to get to them.
I got a 25 year old MTD brand 'Gold Edition ' snowblower and even though it's only 5 horsepower that baby can do some work. I decided to see if I could get a trail down to the launch so we can not only cut trees but we just have to sauna and to use the sauna right I need to be able to take a bucket of water down on the 4 wheeler....this will give you and idea of what we're up against, I did about 1/2 of what needs to be done yesterday and when it warms up today I'll finish and we'll sauna tonight !
The town is so quiet. Yesterday morning we just had to walk and when we got to Redoubt Street ( where we used to live ) the view of the volcano and the alpenglow was amazing. MP and I reminisced about how it felt much like it did when the volcano erupted and shut the town down in the mid 80's...same feeling, no cars moving, Alaskan's hunkered down waiting for spring when things are always better.
We got to the river walk and it's apparent that everyone is having a tough one. The river itself ice jammed at freeze up and the flows are impressive and once again did some $$$ damage to the boardwalk but not to bad. And when you see the moose have been ' bark stripping ' it means life ain't been a bowl of roses for them either. Generally they eat the tender shoots at ht e top of the Willow bushes. When the snow is this deep the moose are in the same predicament as me with our firewood supply, there might be plentiful browse but try getting to it. The moose take the easy way and that's why they're on the roads and eating the grass from under the eve of our house at Mile 14.
We hope everyone stays safe. For me being a guy who usually doesn't trust authority I have come to the obvious conclusion that in this situation there is only one thing to do and that's EXACTLY what the experts and public people tell us. For all of you that miss live sports like me....man oh man I had no idea how much a part of the American fabric that is... I will try and make this blog entertaining with some videos and maybe even do a Facebook watch event... I guess for me some of the good news is that the Seattle Mariners are still in contention 😎🐟🐠🎸🎸🎵🎵
