Saturday at Nicolet, Quebec race

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It’s 7pm and we just let the dogs out 2 hours from when we gave them their evening dinner (no candlelight….) – our dinner was actually tuna salad on lettuce with tomato!  Again, I am cooking/preparing meals wayyyyyyyyyy more than I ever have because I am trying to stick to our low cholesterol diet and plus I actually have a pretty good (albeit small..) kitchen to work in – the fridge is currently so full I have to store the chicken noodle casserole I made Thursday in the very-cold-bathroom because I have no room in the fridge!!

Slept well in our new race spot.  We are in Nicolet, a small city on a river that feeds the St Lawrence – we are only about 2 miles from the St. Lawrence and 15 minutes from Trois Rivieres – so close for Bellerives (only 40 minutes – they went home at 4 today) but far enough and trouble enough moving this big rig around that we are happy to stay here in the parking lot.  We are next to a huge old brick building that is now the Hotel Monfort, and it looks like it used to be a seminary.  I went I last nite to see about wifi and was surprised to see a modern décor, not like the wood and antiquity I expected.

We awoke this morning to another very cold day – this afternoon I may have irritated my already frostbitten cheeks when I was waiting for Randy to come in from the race.  The 6 dog race went out and had problems..one gal didn’t have the trail help close off one of the trail options for her team at the right time and so she finished the race in the starting chute and I believe got disqualified even though it was not her fault.  Melanie came back and said the corners were very hard to negotiate, and she is a woman that generally likes to “rock and roll” a trail!!!  Patrick came in 15 minutes later and he said it was a difficult trail also.  Based on their descriptions and care for Randy, he decided to run 10 dogs instead of the maximum of 12 – it was a 11 mile trail and went from fields, through a kennel (the dogs werent’ there but I am sure their smell was…) over open fields with all kinds of snowmobile tracks crossing and re-crossing the main trail and down onto a river with a 3 foot drop.  He actually had a pretty good run but did have a problem when he came to a crossing where the trail help had to decide whether to have the gate open to the team finishing ahead of him or to let him (the outgoing team) go through – he made the decision for them and stopped his team using the rules he is used to in the US where the incoming team has the right of way- once he stopped the team, they assumed they were supposed to turn somewhere so they turned into a small trail that ended in a yard with a barking dog!  There was a fence surrounding the barking dog so no problem there but his team did get tangled so he had to hook down and go untangle 2 dogs.  That probably cost him 2 minutes so he finished at the bottom of the pack at 18 out of 20.  The 20^th guy, Jim Blair from the US had a great week last week and finished first and this week fell leaving the starting chute, fell again and then ended up getting disqualified……………all in the day of the life of a dog sled driver…….

Tonite we are among about 3 trailers with sleeping quarters staying the nite and watching American movies (Twilight and some movie with Brandon Fraser- Inkheart – never heard of it…) with French language – makes me wish I knew how to lip read!!

While we were sitting here enjoying the evening, the generator quit – complete darkness….out of gas.  So right now I am here by myself – Randy went to see if someone would give him a ride in to the gas station so we wouldn’t run out again tomorrow – it’s hard to predict how much gas you are going to go through  = he thought he had enough for the weekend but the truck was acting like it dind’t want to start this morning so he had been heating the engine all day which used up  way more generator fuel.

They are offering a trio musical performance this nite in the hotel if we feel up to it – right now it just feels like “sit” – maybe we will have a resurgence of energy later ?????!!!!!