Sat nite in Lile aux Coudres and Sunday's race

It was a musher's supper Sat nite at the only restaurant on the island- Italian cuisine- and pretty good! We sat with Bellerive's and Ludovic Couloux (from France and now lives and races very competitively in the 6 dog class in Quebec) and Hege Ingibristen and Per from Norway who can't find very many people to speak English!! (none that speak Norwegian!!!!!!) and had a delightful dinner! they had an auction of hockey stick and jerseys from the Montreal hockey team that went for thousands of dollars to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis campaign (apparently from having a "closed community" on the island, cystic fibrosis has become more prevalent than in the general population and is of great concern to the residents) We went to the dance after that where they had a band that played mostly American music (except for one song in French that sounded kind of like a polka) and my wonderful husband danced with me even with sore knees from last week's extravaganza race!!

Sunday - started out warmer, but got cooler and the course was faster. I went out feeling good about the trail, and I'll be darned, if at the very-short portion of the trail that was head-on passing (in the woods where the trail is narrower and the birm in higher) a team almost slammed into me on my right side of the trail and pulled me up onto the birm.....and down onto the ground!! Now if you remember,,,,, I lost my team last week........there was no way in "he- double toothpicks" that I was going to lose them again.....they stopped for moment but started up too fast for me to stand up and so I dragged (it seems like the "DeKuiper thing to do") first from the driving bow, then lost my grip and dragged from the brake......and just as I lost all strength and had to let go.......PEOPLE TO HELP ME!!!! No, my friends, I did not have the same measure of exposure that Randy had last week, but my snow pants did inhibit me from pumping after the fall!!! (hanging about 10 inches lower than normal!!) I feel more accomplished having had the trouble that I did and hanging on like I did, than if I finished where I could have (finished in 14th but probably without trouble could have been 11th or so) the really good thing is that I am strong enough to drag that far- we are guessing 1/4 of mile, could have been more or less, hard to tell while your face is in the snow, gathering in your jacket, your hands wanting to let go.........

Randy started out in 7th place from yesterday -he had dropped 3 dogs from the team and left with 13- everybody (including Sarah "Palin" in lead instead of Molly -who sometimes stops to poop ) and ended up 6 seconds out of 7th and 0.77 seconds out of 9th - lots of sore feet and shoulders.

At present, we are parked in the starting parking lot for the race.....all alone (everyone has left for the ferry back to the mainland) and we are about to have frozen chicken dinosaurs for dinner (didn't want to leave and have to drive the very steep hills in the dark and we are not in any hurry!!!)

The people here were fast to thank us for coming back to their race and we even had a chance to see our friend Francine Tremblay (we stayed at her house 2 years ago) and found out she has been very busy with a new job (used to teach English and interpret for bost cruises out to see the whales in the St. Laurence Seaway) as a manager at a "natural-made from cotton-paper company" the only one of a kind in Canada! so she was so busy we couldn't even spend dinner time with her! Dogs are fed, Randy is reading a book he doesn't really like and time for me to cook!!

Love you all and love each other!
God Bless you!

PS I so wanted to have pictures and you are probably wondering why - at the moment I have temporarily lost the location of my camera - as soon as it is recovered, more pictures!!