Upper left pix: me in the lobby of the hotel/museum that the race was held at on the Wendat Indian Reservation- notice the skin-covered drum tables and wolf hides! Upper right: a painting on the concrete embankment along the river depicting the story of the life of the Wendat Indians Lower left: the Indian church fro the early 1800's Lower right: the race parking lot with our truck in the foreground, the hotel/museum in the backround, with the river running with rapids all along the back of the building!
Thursday nite we did go bowling at Place Biermans again (Claude is quite the 10 pin bowler and has bowled more with us in the last month than in the last 10 years!) This week I didn't have sciatic nerve pain from being goofy prior to bowling but my game didn't improve drastically!! I think the best was 138 - and Randy really had a hard time cause his knee is still hurting - even with wearing a brace! so his bowling score was the worst of the guys...Marcel and Ghyslain joined us.
Up at the crack of 9am Friday morning and packed up and cleaned the sugar shack and bid it a fond farewell! Left Charrette for Quebec City about 11......about an hour down the road on a really rough patch, what should re-appear, but the horrible metal on metal noise we thought we got rid of last weekend!!!!!!!!!! My anxiety level immediately soars cause we don't know what it is making the noise or if we are going to break down on the expressway any minute!! It comes and goes every few minutes or so we are on pins and needles all the way into the city, get lost making wrong turns a couple of times in the city (tension getting pretty high!!) and we finally make it to the hotel.......just beautiful area and so much Indian heritage. The bib draw was held in the Wendat community hall which is decorated with Indian artifacts and moose and bear, etc. I did manage to shop "quickly" on the way to the meeting and picked up some grandkids stuff!! Moccasins (one pair for the new baby) and other Indian items. I got number 16 and Randy was amazed to get #1!!! (which is really good in a race when you have head-on passing the whole trail - cause then you have no one to pass until after you make the turn-around).
Saturday was sunny, warm and the snow on Sarah (Randy's leader) is pregnant and can't run the longer trail and we just got a little girl "Ace" from Claude and Randy isn't sure she can run 8 miles (my trail is only 4.7 mi) I am my usual "nervous self" before going out not knowing for sure what the trail will be like ......especially the turn around on a fairly icy trail! No problems head-on passing with my "trusty leaders" Fratz and Spiff, I do however run up on 4 4-wheelers going up the hill slower than my team is going (part of the trail is a snowmobile/4-wheeler trail and they can't close it down for the race!) so I am yelling at the top of my lungs to tell them to hurry up (like that does alot of good when they probably only speak French) and it does no good.....then on the way back after I slid around the turn around, there's somebody's pet dog in the trail!!!!!!! I am thinking the worst.....dog fight.....my dogs chasing him off the trail into someone's back yard, you can imagine!!!! Nope!! Frantz and Spiff cruise by, no problem! I drive them hard back over about 6 road crossings with people everywhere yelling and clapping and finish strong! You will never believe what I see when they pass out the times........me in 6th place!!!!!!!! You have to remember this is stiff competition and this is the best I have ever done!!!!! It was the fasted 15 minutes of my life!!!!
Randy had not such a great run.........Rudolph pushed little girl Spring way out cause he was getting tired in the soft snow, so she quits and Randy has to put her in the sled!! So he ends up 13th......not what he wanted at all!!
Saturday nite we walked around town and took pictures and spent time visiting with other dog drivers.
Up on Sunday and I am nervous cause I don't want to screw up my place but know how easy it can happen!!! Then we find out with only 15 minutes to spare that the 6 dog class is going out 30 minutes earlier today.......so speed/panic preparations.....up to the line.......even softer trail today.......good start though Sarah isn't really pulling at point......she starts to pull....good.....then I notice Tarzan next to her.....not pulling....actually pulling back!!!!! I slow them down for him not knowing what his problem is......finally I think I am going to have to put him in the sled....and see my name dropping place by place in the standings!!!! I stop the sled and have my gloves off and he acts like he wants to go......we start going and he does better but never pulls the whole way until the last mile where he stops and poops and then actually looks like he might be helping!!! I try Randy's theory about yelling loud enough to make the dogs focus on only the driver and whether it's working I can't tell and we finish 9th!!! Still very good!! On the way back to the truck somehow Randy trips and falls flat on the pavement while leading my team, thinks he broke his hand and now doesn't have just a sore knee, but a whole body!!!
Randy is in the chute with 9 dogs today (I tried to convince him to only take the ones he was really really sure of) and they count down to 5, 4, 3 and I look up and the shyest dog in the team is fanned way out to the side cause her neck line is off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am holding the leaders, Randy just got his gloves on and 3 people jump in to try and catch her and re-hook her!!!!! She's like a squirming worm and finally one of the other dog drivers get ahold of her and holds her tight enough to hook her in and Randy is off!!!! Well.........I can take maybe a little credit for the suggestion about taking "sure dogs" but Randy pulled off the biggest save I have ever see him do!!!!!!!!!!!!! He passed 2 teams and almost caught another and moved from 13th to 6th!!!! The dogs worked really hard and so did he.....pumped the whole trail even hurting with his knee and from the fall!!! Lou Serre also made a huge improvement and came from 5th to win!!!!
The awards were at the same hall and when I went up to get my check I thanked all the Quebec club members for how wonderful they are to us while we are here and Randy said it was great to compete against the best competition in dogsledding!! Lots of cheers and lots of saying goodbye until next season! To celebrate our anniversary and good fortune we walked about a mile both ways and found a little bistro to have dinner - the bartender, who did speak English, had very little on the menu but said the "dried beef sandwich" was good - do that's what we got!!! I was half way thru the sandwich when I realized it was "corned beef"!!!!!
Back to the bad, unknown-source-of-origin noise..... Randy had looked under the truck and thinks the noise is coming from the place where the drive shaft connects to the transmission but needs an impact wrench to get it apart. He had inquired with the help of some very nice local guys and the soonest they could get us in a transmission shop was Tues. So Monday morning (we slept in the hotel parking lot) we are up dropping dogs and the same guys stop by and volunteer to take us to a fellow dog driver's garage and help us fix it!!! We follow them to the garage, they get a new part, put it in, we thank them and force some money on them knowing it was way cheaper, and we are on our way!!! Not 3 miles down the road just as we are getting on the expressway................the dreaded noise, AGAIN!!!!!!!! So not only did we not fix it last weekend in La Tuque, we did not fix it today!!!!!! We drove all the way back to Bellerive's with the same heightened anxiety level accompanied by an extra measure of frustration!!!!!!! Stopped at the local garage and the mechanic rode with us to hear the noise and now we have an appointment tomorrow at 10am with him!!!!! So much for going home today!!!
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