Wrap up 2017

Sorry about not writing sooner……………too much busy!!!!!

Saturday morning seemed like a heat wave………as did the rest of the weekend = about 14 but with sun felt warmer – and it got really warm fast!!!   By the end of the day the parking lot was getting slushy and we had mini ponds next to the trailer!

We helped our usual group of mushers out with the 6 dog teams (Danae and her girls, Claude running Melainie’s team, Suzanne Bellanger and many more….)

Warm enough Randy didn’t  have to dress warm but just a light jacket (quite the contrast from last weekend where he is still peeling from frostbite on his cheeks and nose!!)  The trail was still hard and fast at 1 o’clock and he surprised me by speeding in to the finish line!!!!!  He had lost some time with Fred, the 2 year old leader, hesitating at road crossings with a lot of spectators and at a spot where they have a machine that looks like a merry-go-round with inner tubes on it (right near the tubing hill – it’s as big as a ski slope if you could tell from the picture) but they finished good!  He wondered about how many dogs to take because we have about 6 that have only raced once this year but decided to play it safe and take only dogs that have proven to finish solid – so 12 dogs.  We were very happy with 15^th out of 22 teams!!

Invited Danae Bryar and her daughters Brittany and Rachel and the folks they were rooming with (Jay Olmstead and his wife) out to dinner at the Valcartier Hotel.  Brittany was disappointed that they didn’t have poutin (a Quebec specialty that is French fries with brown gravy and cheese) at this restaurant in the hotel (the other 2 apparently do….) but my salmon was very good!  I even wore the red suede jacket that Randy gave me 15 or so years ago to dress up for our “anniversary” weekend! (19 years – so it was fun to watch live the coverage of Mitch Seavey winning the Iditarod and to see the burled arch where we got married at the finish line……..Leo Rasmussen was even commentating on the coverage and he was the one that “gave me away” with Martin Buser as Randy’s best man!)

Up on Sunday to an even warmer morning but the slush had frozen into treacherous terrain around the trailer.  Helped with 6 dog again and Claude ended up 4^th or 5^th with Melanie’s team – Patrick thought he should have run it because he is lighter but it gave Claude a chance to see how her new leader was working (Melanie and Patrick did come to the race both days to watch – Patrick said it was good for her to get out of the house and back to the sled dog excitement)

Randy had another good run but dropped down to 16^th by only 26 seconds!!!!!  And therefore was out of the money-  but another great run!!!  Even less problems with Fred shying and didn’t go down on one knee on the drag like he had Saturday -…………that even might have been the 26 seconds…….

Pulled out to go to Bellerive’s at 3:30 for the 2 hour drive back – Melanie had texted to see if we could do the practice cholesterol tests (Patrck purchased a machinnon-fasting Sunday nite instead of Monday morning since they had a work related class to go to in the morning (team building for their construction company Cirtech) so when we got back to their home we walked up to the house (about a block) and we had a cholesterol screening seminar!!!! (I had a monitor that I used at Gerber Products for employee health screening so this was somewhat familiar)  AS expected, everyone’s levels were high because they were non-fasting but that didn’t keep them from being nervous about the results and made quite the topic of conversation over dinner (it was funny because Melanie and Patrick assumed that everyone would have already eaten by 7 o’clock but we had not and Renelle and Claude said they had a “piece of meat” they would share with us – which turned out to be a lovely pork roast with potatoes that the housekeeper, Lyse, had made Friday not knowing that they would all decide to go to Quebec City to the race since Melanie was feeling better)

They still wanted to see us before we left on Monday so Claude picked us up at 7:43 (not 7:44, not 7:42, but 7:43am) so we could visit over breakfast at the restaurant before leaving and them going to their class.  Much sadness saying goodbye, especially with Melanie who dropped us back off at the trailer.  It’s funny, because we only see them about 2 months out of the year (and the years we went to Alaska, not much at all) but it is an intense time with lots of meals and dog activity so we get quite close – this was the first year that even Patrick referred to us as “family” – so very sad not to see them again maybe for 10 months – and then only if we don’t go to Alaska in 2018.

Got started at 9:30 and made it thru Montreal without problem – beautiful clear day – almost too warm for the dogs traveling in boxes – all the windows and vents open – stopped to drop about 3, fed at 7 and made it to the border at Sarnia/Port Huron by 10p!!!!!!!!!!!!  Great travel time – we were shocked but the roads were good (but very bumpy because Randy realized that the air bags are not inflating therefore we are traveling with out any shock absorption and that makes typing extreeeeeeeeemly difficult!!) and there was only some slight slow-downs going thru Toronto.

Since Toronto no snow- what a shock coming from all snow banks and snow covered fields in Quebec!!  Got this morning at the Michigan welcome center to grass, birds singing and sun!!!!

Got on the road again by 9:15 and should be home at latest (even with a stop at the grocery store) by 1 – then put all the dogs in the kennel and go to Jess and Cindy’s to get our mail to be ready for our tax accountant appointment tomorrow at 10am!!!!

Great year- wish we could have done better but ended the season with a core of 10 good dogs that are 2 years old and can build an even better team for next year!!!!

Friday

Lovely dinner at Melanie's last nite with even Patrick's parents for pizza - hadn't had that in 5 months!!! tasted good!!  Melanie is still doing better than even I expected so that is really good!!!

Woke up to a sunny but cold 14 degrees = fed, dropped and then left at 2:15 - thinking that we may as well stay at the barn plugged in longer -  only 1 hour 45 minutes and we were there is beautiful weather - hard to believe people died near the same route Tuesday with the snow storm!!

The trail is starting and finishing at a slightly different spot this year because last year they were in progress of building the hotel and this year it is finished - the parking lot is huge and plenty of room and again, we are so close to the start and finish line!!  It's great but that means I won't get quite as much exercise!!!

Went to the driver's meeting and draw in the new hotel!!!!! my goodness - nice and even has an ice hotel part that you can rent for $500 a nite!!!

Randy goes out 11th out of 21 teams (we think- all in French tonite) - tell you more tomorrow!!!

 That's Randy waving to you - showing you us parked in the lot in front of the hotel - if you zoom in you can see the water park and the tubing hills off to the right in the backround

 This is the lobby of the new hotel - all those blue columns are bubbling water - must be to make you think of the water park in the next picture!

 This is looking at the indoor water park inside the hotel = amaaaaazing!!!!

That is the ice hotel room that you see out in the backround

Thursday update

Well the blizzard did come overnite on Tuesday!!!!  There was so much snow Wednesday morning (about a 3 ft drift) on the front side of the trailer that we had to unload/drop everybody on the back side - it can be done but lots of doubling up!

There were two different commercial front end loaders here to plow all of the driveways plus the little one they keep in the barn-  the most activity we had yesterday was letting the dogs have a play date and run around the truck!  It was sure a blessing that we weren't trying to travel during this time!!!  The same road we used coming back here on Sunday nite was closed down and a stretch of expressway in downtown Montreal was closed down over the nite with 300 people stuck in their vehicles!!!  That's not counting the big accident on 40 east between Toronto and Montreal!

Today I just finished washing dishes in the barn and we will probably let the dogs play again  !!and maybe a will give a final housecleaning to the trailer - though it's not very warm today - only 14 degrees- tonite we are going to Melanies's again for dinner - she must be doing great to have us over again!  Then tomorrow Randy says we will leave for Valcartier after noon (it's only about 2 hours drive, with good weather)  As cold as it is today it is supposed to be 37 degrees this Sunday!!!

tuesday update

 This is the view of the St. Lawrence Seaway as we were about to cross over it on the bridge going south on 73

 These 2 pics show you how close to the start line we were parked again this year - we could watch all the starts and finishes sitting right at our table!!!!

We were very surprised to have Claude stop by the trailer after we hadou been shopping to invite us to dinner.........at Melanie's house!!!!!  She had just gotten home from the hospital with Patrick at noon and was ready for family company!!  We were so happy to see her in person and see that she is doing well - her jaw is wired and closed with rubber bands and she eats/drinks with a syringe and her back is very painful with movement but she is great!!!!!  She says she will keep on racing dogs!  We looked at her helmut and could see where she hit the tree.....it left a dent on the outside!!  and her goggles were broken!  She says her new leader went to the outside of the turn instead of the inside like every other leader usually does and she must have gone into the bank with the centrifugal force. 

We stayed about 2 hours and ordered in from the erestaurant - and thought she should rest.

Today we are going to train at least the dogs that didn't race last weekend and then see if the blizzard that is supposed to arrive today has started!

Monday

We got a message from Patrick this morning and he asked that he be the only one to go to the hospital today to bring home Melanie so we went shopping instead!!!  Another $200 at Walmart!!!  I tried to find on the computer if any of the sales taxes from purchases could be reimbursed but am having trouble finding what I want and will just ask our tax guy, Steve Burt, at our appointment next week.

Very cold this morning but no wind and it should get up to 17 today!!! yipee!!!!

Not much else to say - we plan to train dogs tomorrow and just keep getting ready for the race this weekend at Valcartier - if you get a chance look it up on the Valcartier website - it's quite the resort - we may go tubing on Saturday for our anniversary if I can talk Randy into it!!!!

Update

Sunday was another cold day but not as cold as Saturday - don't know what the temp was because we didn't ask anybody and we still didn't have a phone (Bellerive's took it because theirs was dead and thhey were trying to reach Patrick to let him know that Melainie was injured and going to the hospital.........

soooooo to start back at yesterday morning -  Melanie fell in the 6 dog race, and though she had a helmut on she fractured her jaw in 3 places and had to have surgery last nite at 11 - it sounds like she is going to have her mouth wired shut for awhile.......something that I have a little experience with as Nate Amy and Luke will tell you - especially the day I was angry with them and trying to yell at them and only froth came out of my mouth!!

When we got back to Bellerive's tonite Claude told us that she had had the surgery I offered to go with Renelle to the hospital in Trois Rivieres tomorrow morning to see her - she will come home in the afternoon and then we will see how she is doing -

Randy had another good day racing with 10 boys but still finished 9th - not bad though to win $180 for a $55 entry!

Even though it is supposed to get down to 1degree tonite it feels very warm here after so cold at Daaquam!!!  They said last nite it was a record cold temp for that date!!

More tomorrow!

we won't know for sure until we talk to Bellerives but

to the best of our knowledge from others today Melanie needed surgery for 3 fractures

more later

Friday nite and Saturday

Wonderful dinner - me dore/white fish and for appetizer duck pate -Randy steak and french fries -

Soooooooo cold this morning - -14degrees with wind chill of -32

Helped Melanie get out for the 6 dog - waited for her to come back and found out she had fallen and lost her team - she hit  tree with her head dragging - I ran up to the room and saw she had a cut in her gum, her bite was off and she hurt in her upper back  = her father called the ambulance and she went to the hospital - we won't know how she is because Claude had to take our phone because his was dead - we are so feeling bad for the family .... this has already been a bad year for her and she didn't need this.  Of course she was mad at herself for falling going around the corner!  Thank God she had a helmut on!!!   When I think how many times I fell and never crashed into anything I feel so Blessed to have not been badly hurt and never had worn a helmut!

Randy had his best race of the year!!!  Knew the trail was fast and curvy and only took 10 dogs - never stopped and had a clean run - still last but a very presentable last!!!!

Bellerives all left and went to the hospital so we may not know what has happened until we arrive back at their house tomorrow nite.

All of you thank God for every healthy day you have - we should never take them for granted!

Talk to you tomorrow if I get a chance!

Friday - going to Daaquam

Wonderful dinner last nite with the Bellerives - had my favorite - shrimp in garlic butter - not on my low fat diet but, what the heck!!

Left this morning at 10:15a - 4 hours later here we are in Daaquam!!!  good weather and we took a different route to get here and found that it was much less bumpy!!!!  usually we can only go 35mph once we get off the expressway but today we were able to go 45!!!!

As soon as we got here the dogs were crazy to be let out so just as we let one dog out, Max, the head guy here at the resort asked Randy if he wanted to go with him around the trail on the snow machine - guess who dropped the dogs????????????????  I should lose another pound doing that!!!

Randy came back and reported to me and the Bellerives (parked next to us) that the trail looked really good and may be the best trail this year!!! even has some long straight aways!!

Dinner tonite with the Bellerives in the lodge!

Shopping trip to Shawinigan

This is the falls that we have never seen before because it was always frozen when we went by - it is about a mile from the Walmart where we shop in Shawinigan

Wednesday we decided to just let the dogs play around the truck in teams (or "play groups") of 4 and 5 (Except for the 2 naughty dogs that run down to the road and they get special 1 on 2 treatment.....) and not train as it was supposed to rain and we just trained Tues.  It didn't rain here but it poured when we were shopping in Shawinigan just after I took the pictures of the falls!  We got food, propane (though they wouldn't fill one of the tanks that was outdated..) and gas and diesel - it occurred to me that one time when I was in Canada I got reimbursed form any tax on  purchases I made.....we bought $193 stuff at Walmart and the tax was $14!  the diesel was $400!  so I have started saving receipts!!

On the way back the dinging problem started again!!!!!!!!!!!!  It wouldn't go away even using the trick we had used with the radio on Sunday!!!!  the only thing I was able to do is make it even louder!!!!!  So on the way home we stopped at the Bellerive's business, Cirtech, at the maintenance shop.  The guy, Simon, that speaks English was not there.

When we got home Randy helped Hermel feed dogs and he told us that the maintenance guys were there at 7am - so this morning Randy got up at 6:45am and headed out to Cirtech - they ended up taking the driver door panel off and disconnecting the speaker so now we only have the other 3 speakers - but no dinging!!!!!!

It was very windy overnite - the kind of wind that makes the trailer rock - I had a pretty sleepless nite with my cold that is re-occurring and could really hear it!  Today we woke up to about 1/2 inch of snow on the pavement and it is going to get muchhhhhhhhhhh colder tonite though it is 26 degrees now - just in time for the race this weekend in Daaquam - 0 degrees for a high on Saturday!!!!  I am so not looking forward to this!!!!  We will leave tomorrow morning as it takes about the same or a little longer as last week's trek - the roads are very bumpy and hilly (like mountainous hilly) once you go south off the expressway to St. Just-de-Breternieres (sp??)  It is right on the northern border of Maine.  Let you know how the trip goes tomorrow!!!

This is Randy making rice...................

Do a close up and you can see who is sitting in Randy's chair reading his book and watching the rice cook!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Productive Tuesday!

We were not sure we would be able to train any dogs today because it was supposed to freezing rain and then rain today - got up and it had already frozen about a 1/8 inch of ice on everything and was 26 degrees.  We waited until second drop and Randy having gone out around the trail to break up the icy crust on it and decided to run the 6 dogs that had not run since a week and a half -- it went well and everybody was happy!!!  The fissures that they had on their feet are all healed and ready to race this weekend.   By the time we were done with the 6 it still was not raining so we ran another 10 for 4 miles - they also were very happy to be out and running!!!

This afternoon Randy is making 4 batches of rice (that we add to the meat for their carbohydrate intake) and I washed dishes and my hair...........have to think of something for dinner!  now that time is getting short (we should be home at the latest on March 21) we are not going to be buying as many groceries and trying to use up what we have in the cupboards and fridge.  More tomorrow!

Sunday race results

Woke up to a considerably less windy and sunny day!!  I told more than one person that it seemed like Florida!!!

Randy dropped the young leader,
Banshee, and put Andy up with Oslo (who led yesterday and pretty much hauled Banshee around the trail and kept her going when she shied of people) and Andy has not led in a race before = so the race was essentially a training session over 2 days!  It went pretty well - had some shying at crossings with people and with head-on passing on Andy's part - one dog got over the line and he had to stop and de-tangle, but otherwise pretty good.  Still finished last at 9th but found out alot about the skills of the dogs that he ran!  He ended up with a check for $180 and it was only $55 to enter!  so gas money!!

You remember me telling you about the dinging sound we had for 3 1/2 hours on our way here so we had called couple people and had not gotten a for sure answer - sooooooooooo..........I looked on the internet!!  Remember when I was able to figure out how to get the truck out of 4 wheel drive low last year?????!!!  Well, I found a chat room where they suggested turning the radio and the truck off (the dinging sound comes from the radio speaker) and then holding down on the #6 radio button - it was supposed to say "normal" but stayed blank so we didn't know if it was working, but sure enough,  it stopped!!!!  I don't know whether it was what we did or serendipity, but what a relief!!!!!

Amazingly, we went through Quebec City twice (Sunday and Friday) without me making Randy do a wrong turn!!!!  (that was my m.o. last year.........)  Don't know if it was using the phone instead of the gps or me being bound and determined not to make another wrong turn, but we made it through without problems and back to Bellerives by 8:30p - fed the dogs and then dropped again at 11.  For whatever reason I am getting another cold - (maybe the drastic ranges of temperature???) so feeling kind of puny (once the caribou wore off from the awards ceremony!)  It was down to 2 degrees again last nite and one last time (I hope....) wore long underwear to bed - the mattress gets cold during the day because we keep it curtained off from the rest of the trailer to use less propane - it gets pretty cold during the day and then takes a bit of time to warm it up at nite!  Over nite it actually warmed up so that when we got up this morning to a sunny day and 14 degrees it was wonderful!!!

Randy has ridden around the trail on the groomer and helped with the dog chores/training  for the Bellerives but just the normal chores for our dogs today.  Not too much going on - ate chicken soup for lunch that I made yesterday from the leftover chicken carcass from the dinner Saturday nite and I just made pudding for him.  Watching my English speaking channel out of Montreal and resting to make the cold as short as possible!!!! 

danced the nite away..............

Well for an hour anyway....they had a dj after the chicken dinner (which was again delicious and have enough leftovers for a meal tomorrow!)  and we danced along with about 10 other people and 5 kids that kept disappearing into another room and kept coming out with different costumes on!!!!  Must have been a play area - clown, puppy dog, meat cleaver murderer.........you name it!!!  With the dancing and the racing Randy did 3,000 more steps than his goal!!!


Out in the cold and wind for the last drop - you should see how fast those kids get back into their boxes!!!!

Waaaaaaaaaaay cold and windy!!!!!

I don't even want to know the temp with the wind chill factor!!!!!  For sure it's a neck warmer, cover-your-face kind of day!!!!

Got up to the trailer rocking and it still is now at 5:30p!  You can see the water moving in the 2 gallon water jug that we have in the kitchen!!

Got the dogs ready to run (12 of them with a leader that is 3 and we have not run in a race and the other leader old and can't ususally keep up if the trail is fast) and Randy had a good departure.  I went back in the trailer after closing the back door to the dog part because it was so cold - I calculated how long I thought he would be with a little cushion built in and just as I was approaching the finish line he came in!!!  earlier than I thought he would be!!  He still came in 9th/last (Angie Carter didn't run and we don't know why) but there is only 6 minutes between him and the leader!  That's quite different from all the other races this year have been!  And this was more or less a training run to see if the young leader would do it (which she did get spooked and really couldn't keep up with the team) and to see if some other dogs that had been laid off were back in shape!  So Randy was very happy!

Going to feed and then go in the hall (which is 50 ft. from us) and have a chicken dinner - had it here last year and it was very good!!!  then come back out and drop dogs and then go back in for music and some dancing if we feel energetic!!!!

Will let you know how it goes tomorrow - he is dropping the 3 year old leader but keeping the rest!

 On our drive yesterday lots of the trees had a coating of ice on them that made them look "decorated" in the sunlight!

Beyond Randy you can see the mountains on the north side of the seaway and the seaway itself below

Friday travel day

Left at noon (precisely when Randy said he wanted to leave -actually 5 minutes early!!) on a clear cold day- only 5 degrees this morning.  We traveled on the north side of the St. Lawrence Seaway from Trois Rivieres up to Quebec City and then crossed south on 73 over the seaway on the bridge.  We did see one tanker going east and the waterway is open thanks to all of the recent mild weather!  Then we traveled on the south side of the seaway east up to Rivieres Ouelle.  Came into some blowing and snowing just before we reached our destination but the driving was good for the most part.  Very cold when we got out of the truck!!!!  Down below zero overnite!!!!  When we got up this morning (even though we parked between a building and a snow bank as tall as our trailer so we were out of most of the wind) and let the dogs out, everything in the dog part of the trailer was frozen!!!!  That takes some pretty cold weather to freeze back there with 19 dogs usually heating it up!!!!  We had all the openings closed/blocked and it still froze the leftover dog food in the bucket rock hard!!!
The dogs were not very excited about staying outside to pee/poop and eat breakfast but some were happy to chew on the frozen leftover dinner!!!  Randy just went inside to find out if maybe they have called off the race for today - in addition to the cold, the wind is blowing really hard and the first part of the race trail is out in open fields - he thinks the dogs will have a hard time finding the trail!!!

So the driving was good here yesterday but the irritation factor was very high as the dinging sound your vehicle makes when you don't buckle your seatbelt or leave your lights on or you key in the ignition dinged all the way here............3 and 1/2 hours!!!!!!!!  Maybe that's why I have a headache this morning ..........or could that be from the 2 glasses of caribou (a sweet liqueur that's homemade- kind of like moonshine in Quebec!!) that somebody gave me last nite!!  We called our friendly neighborhood fixit friends in White Cloud, the Pendlands, and they suggested a fuse - that didn't seem to be it when he looked at it when we got here last nite so we called our new friend, Glenn, in New Hampshire and he suggested a different fuse, I think.  Hopefully we will fix the dang thing before heading home on Sunday!!!!!

Yup, it was a laundry day.........

Rained all day and felt like shirt sleeve weather.  I ended up doing only 2 very large loads of wash and Randy helped me walk them up to the house (only about 1/8 mile) and then I came back for lunch in between so managed to bring all the clean folded clothes back myself.

Nothing else to do so also colored my hair!!!

At 6:30 we walked up to Bellerive's house and had dinner ordered in from the restaurant in town.  The dore fish was delicious!  Then for dessert we had a sample of the chocolate they will be selling at the addition they are putting in at Place Biermans -  it is a franchise they are purchasing and it is like a dipped chocolate shell that we had over ice cream- very good!!!

Visited about dogs and racing (we really hadn't been together to talk for 2 weeks) and watched a video from the race Sunday at St. Luc where Patrick lost his team and then got dq'd (in the US you can accept a ride on another sled or a snow machine to get to your team and not be dq'd but not in Quebec) - he had tried to hook down after his dogs got tangled going through one of the ponds in the trail and his snow hook wouldn't hold and they left without him - the Garmin that he uses on the sled has video, mph, average mph, and a line indicating altitude over the whole run - pretty amazing to be able to track all of that!!!  We have one that we don't use much but it is only a video camera.

Then we talked about their robbery - someone actually kicked a door in and went up to their bedroom and in the back of their closet stole only some money they had hidden behind clothes - left everything else of value there..........very scary they are obviously feeling violated.  Crazy it could happen like that in the morning and when they were just a mile away at the office!!

The temperature dropped radically overnite so back to winter clothes with neck warmer and mitts over gloves to feed dogs!!!  Randy is leaning towards not training today because we are treating feet on 4 dogs from the rough trail last weekend - Bellerives are not going to the Riviere Ouelle race (about an hour south and east of Quebec City) because they have a majority of dogs from their teams that have injured feet from the weekend so we may still go if they have a race - the rain yesterday may have trashed their race trail but we should know that by tonite.  It will only take about 2 hours to get there so we would not leave until late morning tomorrow anyhow.

More tomorrow!!