Happpy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!

After the meeting last nite we visited with the Hartum family and Cheziks and Amanda Byrd and Donna Reynolds -getting to know many, many more people! got to bed late and got caught up on some current events by watching the TV news that we have missed by not being able to even get on the computer.

Up early (for us anyway.....usual is 9 or so......) at 7 and went down to the restaurant for a very good breakfast. Drove back to our "home base" at the musher's hall for the 9am driver's meeting. We have been given a "special parking place" because our rig is sooooooo big -we get a whole alley to ourselves! Just now Randy left to ride around the trail so he gets familiarized with it with all the other people that have not run it before - as a sidenote, even though Randy did this race last year, the trail will be very different because last year they held the whole race here at the musher's hall (usually the race starts and ends downtown Fairbanks but last year the river started breaking up and someone drown in the are where the trail would be) and this year it is back downtown. They also had to talk about what to do if you encounter a moose on the trail and said you are allowed to take your "weapons" with you - we of course, don't have any weapons with us because you can't take them across the border...... The race marshal said if you see one call you handler or the trail crew and report it - but unlike what they tell you on the Quest....you don't have to gut it if you kill a moose- they do use "non-lethal" methods of deterring them if possible - and you don't want to encourage them to run on the trail because then they leave big "potholes" for the dogs' legs to get stuck in! I usually don't attend the driver's meetings for the races Randy only runs because most of the info applies to the person running the race but this one was interesting (and the trailer wasn't warmed up yet and luckily I have (for some reason) wifi today!!

Randy will probably be gone until 1 pm our time and then he says we will water dogs - then it will be time to drop and feed them 2 hours later!!! Drop and feed, drop and feed, drop and feed............

We have to be at our parking spot tomorrow morning at 11 am (race starts at 1pm) so probably early to bed tonite as well - Randy reminds me that if you feed earlier in the afternoon you are likely to have everybody poop good in the morning and don't have as much on the trail- speaking of which, we have one dog with diarrhea again- hope it is just "pre-race jitters" for him.....though I doubt he even knows it's "pre-race"! If you want to hear the race it will be broadcasted on 660 AM and I don't know if they have it on the website - I haven't even checked..