The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Pictures I forgot: me at L' Epiphanie (red hat, back turned) getting my check; me with my Mushing USA jacket on in Bellerive's house

We can start out with the Good: Thursday the 6 of us (Bellerives and Lou Serre) were hosted by the Bellerives at their business, "Place Biermans" for dinner and lots of fun- I will try to post some pictures from their web site, but is is a "family entertainment complex" with 6 theaters, a Greek restaurant, bumper cars, every arcade game imaginable, billiard room, dancing club and bowling alley (did I leave anything out?). This is their smaller business in addition to their roofing business. We had a great time, Claude, Renelle and I had scampi for dinner, Lou and Randy steaks and Melanie fish- delicious- don't think I have ever seen such big scampi!!! Then off to the bowling alley - Claude and Renelle even brought their own bowling shoes which they can't remember the last time they used - I think the last time they bowled was with us 2 years ago! So you can choose......regular bowling or a smaller-larger-than-a-softball bowling (I think they called it "10 pin") and I was really glad that somebody chose the 10 pin cause I bowled the best game of my life!!!! I didn't get to see the scores for the first game but on the 3rd Claude and I tied for first at 191!!

Now the Bad: Started packing up for the trip to the race at Kamarouska Friday morning (pack people food, dog food, feed the dogs, drop the dogs, fill the gas, pack the clothes, feed the people, check the brakes, etc.) and finally left at 11 for the "4 hour trip" up to Quebec City, across the St. Laurence, up the St. Laurence to Kamarouska.....only the race they call "Kamarouska" is really "St. Gabrielle de Kamarouska".......so we went at least 1/2 hour further than we needed to (note to Cris; next time check the website to double check the race location) and stopped for directions at a grocery store where the only person in there didn't speak English (even with my marvelous "miming/sign language abilities"!!!) and couldn't help so sent me to a red house across the street where they make home made soaps (she told me it is a very touristy town and she makes $80,000 seasonally) and they looked in the newspapers, called friends and finally figured out where the race was and gave us directions- back to one turning point in the town of Pancome, made the wrong choice and stopped for directions again, got a nice English speaking man to tell us to go straight at the church (by the way, it was built in 1851- that's older than the Civil War!!!)
and we found the small village of St. Gabrielle - now you would think that you should be able to tell in a small village where the dog sled race was to take place......not so!!! Stopped at a house, English speaking girl says straight at the corner.
Now the UGLY!!!!!! Randy pulls out from the front alley/drive of this house and all of a sudden we hear this very loud sound on top of the truck and see this blue wire hanging down from the sleds..........you got it........clothes line haging across the alley way!!!!! so this guy comes over mad, Randy tries to communicate, not, they both go over to a mechanic building and see if this guy speaks English, NOT, Randy throws his hands up in the air and says we will be here for the race this weekend, we drive around the village still not findig the race site, a guy stops in front of us with his truck says "follow me to the race site" and guess who is following us???........the clothesline guy!!!!!! The truck guy helps Randy to offer some money and the guy won't take $100, says that probably won't be enough!! So we finally find our parking spot and by this time Randy is on his last nerve!!!

Sat morning is warm and starting to get slushy and I have not good idea what kind of trail I am going out on in the 6 dog- we get our bibs at the drivers meeting and who shows up.......the clothesline guy with a bill for $120 ($20 of it is labor). To avoid possible world conflict, Randy pays the guy................what a fiasco!!

I go out and have good run - the curves aren't too bad; playing it conservatively cause I now know it's better to be in control and not drag or fall or lose your team!!! The worst part is the teeny weeny turn-around 1/2 way, I'm thinking go slow into the turn, it looks pretty good and then wham!!!!!! hard left, almost lost it, said "OH S--T!!!" and stayed on! Amazing grace, I came in 11th ......and we are talking almost all of the best 6 dog teams in Eastern Canada, and 33 of them!!!!!!

Randy goes out with 14 dogs, has a really good run going until..............head on pass at the road crossing, his dogs shy to the right, 2 of them hit a stop sign, break the snaps on both their neck lines and tug lines (so they are free) the one runs down the trail ahead of Randy, comes back when he calls him, gets to the team and turns around and heads down the trail again, but finally comes back and Randy has to go back to the sled to get neck lines to hook him back in the team - the 2nd dog is very shy and usually doesn't come well when we loose drop them so Randy was very lucky that he didn't realize he was loose and Randy sneaked up on him caught him!!! Then as he was trying to leave this mess.......the snow hook won't come out, it kind of comes out, catches again, and Randy rams his mouth into the driving bow!!!!!! (his upper lip is twice as big as normal and a lovely shade of purple!!) He used up alot of his time "playing around with the loose dogs" and came in 15th.

Because it was the 30th anniversery of the race, they had wine and dinner for all the mushers and a kareoke guy that sounded alot like Frank Sinatra- I asked him if he could play something a little faster to dance to and he said his instructions were to play "tranquil" = so Randy danced one slow dance with me, one with Real Turmel and one with Simon (the really good dancer from the L' Isle aux Coudres dance)

Sunday, a little cooler (still about 30 degrees) and even though I knew what the trail was like yesterday, that turn around loop and it being faster still made me nervous!.....went out conservatively, slowed a little at the loop, almost lost my footing but stayed up (no small thanks to the prayer I said on the trail!!!) and the only other problem was an almost crash at the last curve with a head on team with me on the right and them trying to take the curve on the inside- the same side as me!!! close but no crash!! Begosh and begorah.......I came in 9th!!!!!

Randy made a wise decision (knowing the trail was getting slushier by the minute) and took out 2 dogs and changed leaders and finally had a clean run!!!! moved up from 15th to 10th!!!!! (maybe the end of our run of bad luck????????)

Back to Bad (but not really soooooooo bad) I missed our turn off to go back to Bellerives through Quebec City, so it may have been a few miles longer and then when we got back to the "sugar shack" at 10:30p, no lights, no power! Slept in the truck (good thing we have it for a option!!!!)