Icewind's Ramblings

Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be pre-determined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears, or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged.   Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. How is your own endgame of Life? Live fully and be prepared for the unexpected! Ice

I had a great weekend with my friend Mark Evans in town after his long motorcycle ride from Texas to Alaska.   He made it all the way up past the Arctic Circle and on to Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay at the top of the world a feat many people will never experience.   Congratulations Mark, driving a vehicle is tough enough but doing it on a motorcycle is a feat in itself! We met up on Wednesday and I took him to see Sarah Palin’s house on the lake and drove up about an hour where we enjoyed lunch in “Beautiful Downtown Talkeetna”. We wandered the streets and airport seeing the crazy sights and listening to all the sounds of a busy tourist season.   We drove back to the cabin he was staying in Wasilla where we enjoyed sitting on the porch of a two room cabin built in 1931.   Totally rustic with a gas lamp and outhouse we sat on the porch for hours talking and getting to know one another after communicating on FB for several years. Sipping from bottles of Jack & Crow...

I blogged about this in 2006 and with all of the recent death of friends and people I have known over the years I thought I would write about this once again.   I wanted to share it and see what you are thinking about your own “Theater of Life”.   Friends and friendship play an important part of our everyday life whether we are consciously aware of it or not.   It is one of the things you go through life & hopefully as you get older there are those you have around you everyday by choice, those that are there for you without question without the everyday or recent contact but you know they are “in the wings” for you if you needed them. This was a simple analogy and I do not know where it originally came from or who the author is.   The words and concept have me thinking and looking at the different possibilities from my own life as different people have come and gone over the years.   With Facebook it makes it even more real as we can now re-connect with...

It’s March again which means it is time again for “The Last Great Race” . . . The Iditarod, pitting men, women and their dogs against the extreme and many times harsh elements and terrain of the Alaskan wilderness.  Over a thousand mile distance to work out the rhythm of the dogs and one’s inner self in a place that sometimes defies description. From humble beginnings to a world class sporting event.   The Iditarod trail began as a sled dog trail to carry mail and supplies to and from coastal mining towns.  In 1925, a group of sled dog tag teams used the trail to deliver anti-diphtheria vaccine from a hospital in Anchorage to the then-isolated community of Nome .  Historian Dorothy Page and musher Joe Redington Sr. in 1967 organized a shorter race to commemorate the use of the trail.  The first long race from Anchorage to Nome was in 1973. What some have called the "ultimate marathon" but the distance is only part of what differentiates the Iditarod fro...

I suffered tonight while eating dinner as I sat watching television.  I had been watching the local news which as I did that manly thing of channel surfing I stumbled upon either “Show Biz Tonight” or “Entertainment Tonight”.  They both look the same to me as I never watch these programs but the ‘teaser’ during the commercial gave reference to a pre-Olympic story on skier Lindsey Vonn which I wanted to see. While I waited for the story I was bombarded by a story about John Meyer’s raunchy talk about his former love Jessica Simpson.  Who cares was my first thought, and then I went into wondering who the hell John Mayer is?  Turns out he is somewhat of a singer and had the song from The Bucket List, “Say”.  Yeah that was annoying long before I ever saw the movie with its repeating the line “Say what you need to say” 41 times in just over 3 minutes and 44 seconds.  It was not the neat little ditty like some songs that stick in your brain to help you bright...

It is hard to believe that this show has been on 19 seasons . . . Check it out on Thursday nights on CBS. This was one of the first “Reality” television shows and it is strange to realize what we have seen over those years . . . from winner Richard Hatch (the first evil) and the great retired Navy Seal Rudy Boesch who showed us that despite age we can accomplish anything on season 1 to Season 8 “All Stars” romance of Rob and Amber who went on to other reality shows like the Amazing Race.  Season 10 “ Palau ” gave us fireman Tom Westman a likeable man whose tribe won every immunity challenge.   Season 16 gave us “Fans vs. Favorites” which had interesting dynamics between those who had watched the show and thought they could do better than previous contestants . . . Parvati won that one. This season renews itself with a few fresh characters and infuses new life into the familiar mix of challenges and camp interactions.  This show is back to the ‘beach base’ prog...

One more Summer fishin’ and crabbin’ adventure. With the Autumnal Equinox passing today giving Alaskans a ‘normal’ day of almost equal amounts of light and darkness it was nice to have another opportunity to head out fishin’ one more time this summer. In what was a slight turn about of seasons I awoke Friday morning to an unexpected sight . . . the sun . . . with hardly a cloud in the sky?  We have had cloudy and somewhat rainy days the last few weeks so everything appeared to our heading into fall and winter.  I had packed away rain gear and warm clothes so I could layer up if needed for a trip to Homer Alaska to meet up with a friend of mine, Lance who owns an insulation company that I contract with to work on many projects all over Alaska .  He had recently bought another ‘boat’ and he wanted to hook me up with a few of his contractor associates.  It would be a great break from the office to network more work in a social setting. I left early Friday mor...

On Aug. 15 to 17, 1969, (and into the 18 th ) hundreds of thousands of people, me among them, gathered in a lovely natural amphitheater in Bethel (not Woodstock ), New York . It was the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in upstate New York officially billed as “Aquarian Exposition” in White Lake , NY . New York was foreign to me at the time, worlds away from a typical southern boy’s existence growing up in Atlanta during the 60’s civil rights movement and all of the national chaos going on around the country during those times. I was just a funny kid with places to see and things to do in what I now, years later have jokingly called the series of my travels, “Looking for America ”. Gasoline was cheap back then at fifty cents a gallon so three boyhood friends were going to make the trek from Atlanta , Georgia to a farm in New York State . Steve Nash, Stuart Morris and I planned to leave three days before the concert started s...

I have been thinking lately . . . I know that may not be a good thing but it happens sometime. I wanted a glass of Beringer’s as I was writing this but none could be found so I will just have to do without for awhile. Back to my thoughts . . . recently it came to me as probably most people who share time with other people that there are those things that happen in the normal course of everyday living. The thing that struck me was what might seem normal for me might not be ‘normal’ or acceptable to others. They might be those annoying things that either totally gross out the other person but they may never say anything and let things go on possibly for years and years. You probably know where this is going by now as it gets down to those basic things of living in close proximity with other people. Do you “let it rip” in front of your spouse or mate? Then it gets into the whole ‘fluffing the covers’ issues whether that is foreplay to some while total...

I first saw the movie The Bucket List while I was on vacation last year in Cancun . I had taken my Netflix movie with me on the plane to watch but instead watched it while everyone slept. There were several things that struck me while watching as both Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman did an ample job developing their characters. Sean Hayes was also good as Edward’s (Nicholson) long suffering assistant. Toward the end of the movie while Carter (Freeman) is back in the hospital after the globe trotting duo had spent several months doing things and striking items off of their “Bucket List” (as in things to do before one kicks the proverbial bucket) I was drawn to a passage by Morgan Freeman. Carter tells Edward this: "My pastor always says our lives are streams flowing into the same river towards whatever heaven lies in the mist beyond the falls. Find the joy in your life, Edward. My dear friend, close your eyes and let the waters take you home [heaven?...