what now!!!!!

Life is if nothing else, for me NOT BORING!!!!!!!!!  Saturday after feeding dogs we left for “downstate” to have our family Christmas gathering – Dee, our wonderful neighbor, had a fire started so the house was warm when we got there!  All that was needed was to turn the water back on……so as Randy was getting ready to go outside and do that in the basement, he noticed the reflection of flames on the window – it didn’t take long for him to figure out that it couldn’t possibly be the fire in the living room woodstove reflecting in the window and realized it was a fire on the snowmobile trailer – in fact the 4 wheeler was on fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Incredibly, somehow, the winch on the 4 wheeler on the trailer started on fire spontaneously!!!  I never saw the fire because I was in the house and Randy ran out to put the fire out without letting me know – he had a hard time of it because it was the plastic fender on fire so every time he put snow on it to squelch the fire, it would re-start and he ended up having to put it out patting it down with his gloves!!!!  It was a darn good thing he had the gloves on!!!!  The rest of the nite was uneventful……..went into town to Walmart and bought some more groceries for up north and some cheap kibble dog food at Tractor supply – then had to eat something and while we were eating, who should surprise us, but Mark and Jamie Kukal!!  Caught up on the boys and their life and it was good to see them!!!

Next day up got ready to load presents and go to town – turned off and drained the water….again…..  Had a wonderful time with our family and they all made a special effort to re-arrange their schedules to make time to see us – many presents opened – I think the mice-in-a-stocking Christmas ornaments I made were a hit with all the grandkids – though I did see a couple of them trying to take the mouse head out of the stocking!!  The timing was just about right for us to visit and open presents and everyone get their fill from the pizza buffet – so we left after 3 on our way back to our northern home – Randy was tired (quite a lot of driving and much activity….) and ate the licorice the grandkids had given him to keep himself awake – we were making good time and thought we would be home by 8 ……….until……….the power steering on the truck started to fail…….and it got worse and worse and the lights started getting dimmer………it was a blessing we were only about 5 miles east of Newberry – we made it without crashing or stopping into the parking lot of the Quality Inn and got a room for the nite!!! – just a half hour away from out house!!!  But amazingly, at a place where we could get help- Randy called Frank our neighbor, a musher and a mechanic at the Ford garage in Newberry and he said he was working on Monday and would look at it – I stayed at the motel and Randy drove the 5 miles to the garage with quite a bit of difficulty……  It turns out that what had happened is that the bearing in the idler pulley froze thus throwing the serpentine belt off, resulting in the power steering loss………almost sounds like I know what I am talking about (I had to ask Randy 4 times the names of the pulley and belt…)  Frank was able to figure out what the problem was but couldn’t get a replacement belt until Tuesday morning and Frank didn’t work again until Wednesday (the Ford dealership left it up to Frank whether he wanted to tackle the problem with our GMC behemoth!)  So tomorrow morning Randy will ride in with Frank to work and fix the truck and then Randy will drive our truck back – it sure is convenient to have a neighbor like Frank!  He even let us drive his truck home yesterday because Regina was coming into town later in the day!

Yesterday we trained both teams for 17 miles – it was almost too warm at just freezing – so today just catching up on rest and Randy is just going over to follow Frank around his trail system so he can see where he goes to get 22 miles in training.  Our side of the 407 we have almost maxed out on mileage and the corners and turns are a little bit more difficult to negotiate on the sled – Randy hopes to start using the sled on Friday and train by going out the drive on our side of the 407, crossing the county road, and then using the trails on the west side (it is also the trail system that Magnusson’s use and it is where the Taquamenon race trail is located).  So we will see what he has to say when he gets home!x

this is the only extra mouse I had left!!!!