Saturday and Sunday

As you can see from the pictures we did indeed walk down and saw more than 40 Iditarod teams going down the trail for the ceremonial start – they were even on parts of the trail that I was on the day before with my team!!! We were actually looking for a gift shop in the Native hospital when we found the hot dog roast – and when we asked to buy one they said the picnic was a fee community event!! By the time we were back to the trailer it was time to head downtown for our “exhibition” race – still had not gotten a“light bulb” idea for a costume so Randy went as a Michigan dog driver…………original huh?? You can see from the picture that the snow in the street was really chewed up from all of the Iditarod teams going through and it made it very hard to run in up to the line – thankfully with only 10 dogs and a lot less fart than the 3 blocks we had to go to the line for the Rondy! (right , Jess???!!) It was about 4 miles with a dual start and the guy that went out with Randy came back quite a bit sooner so I was starting to get worried……Sarah had to poop and then he got a tangle but still came in 7th!!!! Actually I was really worried that Sarah wouldn’t want to take off at the start with her remembering “Oh this is just like the start when Dad made me run 25 miles for 3 days……..!” – Randy said that when they went through the turn-around at 2 miles he could tell she knew they were going “short” and she really hauled ……..!!!!! When he got back (and at the start) the young guy from Colorodo, Ian was there to help me with the dogs and that was very appreciated! After the race (and yes, the “Runaway Bride” won the costume contest!!! Her mom spent 3 days sewing dresses and tuxes for the dogs – it was Heather Hardy and they are getting married in April) we went to the most authentic Mexican restaurant “La Cabana” with all of the dog drivers and that was a good chance to get to know them better. Lots of dog racing stories floating around the place!!!
Today was a low profile one - I have a bit of a cold and slept most of the day – the cold outside makes it tighter in my chest – but I did get the picture of the mountain scenery behind our truck with the sun out (blizzard last nite and beautiful today – just like Michigan weather). That’s’ about it – don’t know when we are leaving for Fairbanks- someone told us today they will for sure have a race it will probably just be on a lake (my last lake race I had to load a dog, bad memory….). Talk to you late – time to put the dogs back in!!