An interesting looking vehicle we saw at Woburn............

Picture of our training trail......pretty darn nice!!!

Did go to Shawinigan on Monday and returned the generator one more time- Randy told them they could fix it this time but if something else went wrong with it we wanted our money back and that they need to deliver it to us and not us have to travel a half hour again and pick it up!
We went out to dinner with Claude, Melanie and Renell last nite at the restaurant in Charette - had a delightful time talking!!!  Melanie has decided that she does not want to race dogs any more this year - just a bad time what with the broken jaw from last year and some mishaps this year - so we won't see her quite as often at the races - I know exactly how she feels- at a point the risk outweighs the fun and it's best to stop!
Today we trained everybody and they were happy to get out and run -not much else planned for the rest of the time- just regrouping and "recouping"!!!

Good news folks!!!!

I know you are all dying to know how today went so I will be brief and to the point…………IT WAS CRAZY GOOD!!!!!!!!  The first report we had about trail conditions was from a gal from New England that went out in the 4 dog – she said it was a sheet of ice (all the slush froze overnite) and you slid way out on every corner and wanted Randy to know before he went out in the 6 dog – and it was very fast and very slippery!!!!  Randy’s average speed was 19.93 mph!!!!! Shows what the team could do without Swix trying to slow the other leader, Spark down by pulling back!!!!  Today he ran Spark by himself -  for the very first time ever!!!  He acted a little funny the first mile or so but then figured out he could go as fast as he wanted to all by himself!!!!!  So he moved up to 25^th place which put him in the money!!!

After the 6 dog there was an hour and half break and during that time it started snowing great big fat wet flakes of snow!!  That covered the trail and stuck so the trail wasn’t nearly as slick as it was in the morning!  And since there was no malamute team to mess things up today, Randy moved into 7^th!!!!!!!!!  Real Turmel (a Quebec driver we have known for over 12 years and a very good dog trainer/racer though he is out of racing now- we also bought the better part of a whole team from him before we went to race in Alaska) was at the half way point and told Randy he had the second fasted time!!!!!!  Randy is very pleased with how tough the dogs are!!! And fast!!!!  Whatever we did this year with this group of dogs sure seems to be working well!!!  Randy said tonite even if he never wins another race that this season’s performance has been like winning!!!  So there you have it…….tomorrow a day off (maybe back to the generator store again because when he tried the electric start over the weekend it wouldn’t work and he had to pull start it!!!!!  At least the last time they worked on it he had them change the pull cord to the front of the generator so we didn’t have to take it out to start it!!!  Then training on Tuesday for sure……….  Randy commented that he was surprised that he feels good enough to have raced in 2 different classes for the weekend – even better than last year – even though he hasn’t lost quite the same amount of weight (still up 5 pounds from last year – too many celebratory Oreos??!!)  and Suzanne, my new best racing buddy, brought us a pint of maple butter (her boss makes it) so now he has another treat to eat tonite!!!!!  Sweet dreams everybody- I am sure we will!!

Day one at Nicolet

Nothing like racing dogs in Florida weather……………I just put the dogs away from the race and it was 60 degrees in the back of the trailer!!!!!!  It was cool last nite when we got here and snowed a little, not nearly what they could have used on the trail and in the parking lot!!!!  The parking lot was plowed down to the grass (probably thought someone could get stuck) and today it would be good to have a mud run instead of a dog race!!  It was 35 degrees when Randy left for the unlimited race------which had been downgraded to a 10 dog, 8.5 mile race-------a little disappointing for all the drivers that have been expecting 14 and 16 mile trails.  He had put some dogs in the 6 dog race so he knew the trail was going to be a “slush fest” – (the dog he was told was a leader wouldn’t lead very good for the first 2 miles and it was only a 4 mile trail………..so he came in 28^th  out of 39…………).  He was having a very good run until he came to the place where there was head-on passing – which is not a problem for our leaders……….but it was for the 10 dog malamute team that ran across the trail while passing ours and started fighting with our dogs………oh boy……..not a good thing – Randy had to stop and hook down four times to have the dogs try and get untangled but they were still a bit tangled by the time he finished so he lost quite a bit of time and came in 11^th out of 22 teams entered.  Without the trouble he easily could have placed 4^th again – so try, try again tomorrow!!!!!  The malamute team that wrecked the race for us was disqualified, not for fighting but for taking too long to finish the trail – so nobody else will have to deal with them tomorrow but that doesn’t help our time for today!  All in all, I think we are pretty happy with how tough our dogs are – they ran really good considering the conditions being slushy!  Hopefully we will move up several places tomorrow – assuming they don’t cancel the race for the second day – but it looks like it will go right now!

The race is on!!!!

We were waiting to hear (might have cancelled because of the warm weather and rain on Tues and Wed) and talked to Claude on their way to their hockey nite with customers in Montreal - they host a box all year and this is the really big hosting nite!  I was doing laundry at their house and Claude and Renelle surprised me by stopping to "freshen up" on their way to Montreal at 3:00!  He said the race was a go so today we are planning to feed early at 1 and then leave for Nicolet - it's only less than an hour away but Randy wants to go today in the light so we can get a good parking spot- which means a place where we have plenty of room, won't get stuck and is close to the starting line!  I can't remember if we have wifi at the parking lot next to the hotel Montfort or not but I will let you know soon as I can how tomorrow goes - we wish we had known earlier that the race was for sure happening because we probably would have trained a bit different this last week - we only went 5 miles 4 times over the last 2 weeks due to weather and trail conditions - we would have gone farther had we known the race was a go - they have downgraded it to being 10 miles and with a limit of 12 dogs so we shouldn't be too far off from being primed!

Both of us still feeling kind of puny -

Had great training runs on a beautiful day on Monday - took the phone so I have video and pictures to post but have to get to wifi to download them - yesterday we slept the day away again - some kind of bug that doesn't want to go away.......
Way too warm today and rained yesterday.  Randy looked at the trail this morning and thinks we shouldn't train today - pretty slushy and would have to boot everybody - so this is a regular training day but looks like they will miss it- which is a shame because they get "nuts" with energy when we don't run them!!!!!!  Hard for me to handle them getting them out of the back of the trailer!  Some of them almost drag me out with them!!!!
Today is a big event for Bellerives - they sponsor an all day gathering at a lodge for their customers - they do snow machines, fishing for trout, fire, and all kinds of fun winter stuff at a lodge not far from here.
May go to town since we won't train - or maybe laundry..........the choices are endless............??

Oh I forgot........

If you would like to see pictures from the centennial celebration here in Charette you can find the facebook page of "Ville Charette" and see them!

Sunday/Monday

Happy Birthdays to Lucas yesterday and Bec today!!!!  We love you both!!!!!

Yesterday was going to be a second-day-in-a-row training day but both of us came down with some 24 hour flu bug and spent most of the day sleeping -so today is going to be a training day - very warm in comparison to all the other days since we have been in Canada - at 7:30 this morning it felt warm at 21 degrees and is supposed to get up to 35 degrees - rain is forecast for the next few days and that won't help the trail for the race scheduled for this weekend at Nicolet (which is about 1/2 hour south of here) - so we will wait and see..............

Saturday

2 perfect training runs for 5 miles today in cool (20 degree) weather but sunny!!!  Not much else going on..........installed our new $118 speaker so Randy could hear the tv and it's making noises like the speaker is vibrating - it has a subwoofer and I don't even know what that is..........!??? 
More tomorrow!

Thursday

Had a delightful dinner with Bellerives last nite - lasagna and the "piece de resistance", ice cream cake from their Chocolato restaurant!!!  Browning in the ice cream = delicious!!!!!
Lots of conversation about everything from soup to nuts!  We even looked online at the website for Mackinac Island trying to entice them to come there and play golf this summer.

Today we go to Shawiningan to buy and new speaker for the tv so Randy can hear what's going on -so to Walmart and more$$$$$$$$$!!!!!

 The church in Charette where they had the ferris wheel set up and had fireworks for their centennial last weekend

 00ps this is a repeat of the St. Luc race

 Traveling up and down the steep hills on our way to Woburn

 Me in front of the superhero jumpy thing - this is for you Nate and Luke!!

Guess what this is????????

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!!!!!

Monday we did go to the generator store and got the same old line “I’ve never had a problem with any of these that I’ve sold………..”  Why us…….the DeKuiper mechanical curse????>>>>>>>>>  It was a solenoid in the starter so while they fixed that we went to buy a new tire for the trailer to replace the one that got shredded on Sunday - $256 later………..  We met a lovely French Canadian man that was also at the tire store who had been in the Canadian Air Force during VietNam and therefore was required to speak only English while in service.. He explained to us that there is a lot of prejudice against French Canadians in the rest of the Canada provinces- something we didn’t realize…

Then shopping to a store that Suzanne had told me had sports gear – so I bought myself a jacket and ski pants (on sale and to replace the wimpy thin jacket I had to wear at races while handling dogs and to give me better pants than just the yoga pants with long underwear I have been wearing!!!) for an early Valentine’s present for me!!!

Tuesday we trained dogs and had 2 good runs – one of the 2 hurt dogs is still running “choppy” so we won’t be running him any more this year.  It’s sad because they all love to run so much!!!  The weather was a bit cool but a beautiful sunny winter day with the sun making sparkling rainbows on all of the ice-covered trees!

Today we may go to town – we think we blew the speaker that I had purchased at Walmart for $30 with a bad DVD we were playing – and now Randy can’t hear the tv or movies even though he is only 5 feet away………

We are invited tomorrow nite to Bellerive’s for dinner – Melanie said to celebrate Randy getting 4^th place in the last race!  Claude told us she had a very successful festival turnout – I suppose we will hear lots more tomorrow at dinner.

More later………….

WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I know you are all dying to know what has been going on………..right??

Well, we ended up last week by training again on Thursday and that went very well.  Short run of 10 miles to get the dogs exercised and happy – we are following somewhat the advice of a Quebecer who said you should train berfore a race and stay out on the trail the time you think it will take the winning team to finish the race – he believes that the dogs have an internal clock and that clock ticks off the time they are on the trail whether they are running or standing and taking a break = so we took some breaks and stayed on the training trail about what we thought it would take to run the race at Woburn.

Left here about noon on Friday for the race – the gps said it would take 3 hours and 1 minute but we never arrive at the time it says……….always longer/later……….

Took expressway as far as we could because we know all the territory south of the St. Lawrence Seaway is mountainous and tough going with rough roads and the Appalachian mountains…  So even though we probably went abit out of our way it was smoother – it took 4 hours and we made it to the town of Woburn which is just a mile from the northern border of Maine.  I had put the address of the location where the drivers meeting (the “inscription” in Quebecian) was to be and low and behold……….no phone service!!!!! So not only could I not find the place with the gps on the phone, I couldn’t even call someone to find out where to go!!!!!!!  So we just went back to the race site (we knew where it was because we had passed the turn for it before the town – there was a big sign showing where to go! That road was a real trip……….pun intended!!  Really hilly on the 4 miles of side road taking us to the race site – I suppose on should expect that since the site is “Mt. Gosford”……up and down and up and down……….some so steep I thought we wouldn’t make it!!!  We were in 4 wheel drive and I still could tell the tires were slipping on one hill!!!  But we made it and got parked -

 We had a pleasant surprise that Yvan and Valerie came to visit us (one of the 2 couples that we now help with their teams every weekend and then they help us and they also live in their dog trailer on the weekends).  Valerie is also the person that I think I am going to go see in Quebec City to have permanent eyeliner put on!!!!  They ended up going to the meeting and signed Randy up for us  because they knew the meeting would be – and we didn’t want to have to unhook from the trailer to go the 5 miles back into town.

Saturday was fairly warm and we could tell from the start chute that the trail was going to be soft – we were hoping that the dogs had enough tough training miles on them they would be able to handle it.  Randy drew 13 (out of 18 teams) so that meant that 12 teams of 12 would go out on the 10 mile trail before him- 576 dog feet!! – not counting the 6 and 8 dog teams that had gone out earlier in the day!!  He took off without a problem and I waited patiently for him to get back………..but not for as long as usual!!!!!!! Yay  Yay  Yay!!!!!!

Sunday was warmer yet and supposed to rain – the trail was even softer and Randy had to drop 4 dogs – the big dogs that work so hard had worn themselves out on Saturday and came in neck lining (pulling back) because they were pooped going up and down the hills on the soft trail.  So this time he went out 5^th so not so many dogs punching up the trail ahead of him and not likely to have to pass anybody and hopefully no team to pass him!  And they didn’t………….and he stayed in 4^th!!!!!  This is monumental for him!!!!!  We have spent the last 10 years or so coming in second or 3^rd to the last and now look at him!!!!!  So many heartfelt congratulations from all the dog drivers – they are genuinely happy to see Randy do well!!!!!  Randy believes that the dog training in the UP starting in October made the difference!!! That plus 2 good leaders, Greg and Dozer!!  So a great weekend!!!  The only dampener was that the newest generator won’t start with the electric start…………..had to have somebody help us pull it out of the space in front of the trailer and pull the cord to start it………crap…………

It had rained some during the afternoon and so we left as soon as we could, having fed the dogs before leaving –which meant we were the last ones out of the parking lot……again………. So if we had any kind of trouble we would be left on a mountain, in the dark, with no phone service………………..

We got over the many steep hills OK and back on the main road.  Stopped to drop the dogs at a Micky Dees and picked up a celebration dinner for the road – got back on the expressway and heard a “pop” – I said “did you hear that noise?”………and he had and it was bad………pulled over on the exit ramp and sure enough, one of the trailer tires was in shreds and I mean that literally……….It totally reminded me of the Christmas Story movie when the dad is changing the tire……….only when I held the cup for Randy to put the nuts in I didn’t drop them and therefore also didn’t say the F bomb…….  And hour later and we were back on our merry way!  Got back to Bellerive’s late – had to drop dogs again and had to use the snow machine to go around the trailer to break up the ice that had crusted the snow from the freezing rain – didn’t want to hurt dogs feet having them break through the ice!!  Finally to bed at 11.

Today, back to the generator store…………….see what they come up with this time.  It’s hard to be upset with him because he has been so nice – and is friends with our dog friends Suzanne and Mario –and took the time to show us movies of him ice racing his horse with a sleigh!!! 

Randy pumped a lot yesterday trying to help the dogs and is pretty exhausted today -  maybe train the dogs we didn’t race this afternoon?  Hope you all enjoyed hearing about the weekend even a little bit as much as we enjoyed it!

Thursday news......

Time to train again knowing that we will be traveling to Woburn (3 hours at least) on the border of Maine for a race this weekend on Friday -   train all the dogs takes about 3 hours - then we are going to Shawinigan (twice this week!!!) to exchange our generator - they are giving us a new one -  and maybe some more laundry this afternoon.  Very exciting, eh???~!!!!

MOnday update

Sunday was a much better chance to see how the dogs would do without interference…meaning having to pass someone that wouldn’t let you get away from them (when you had already beat them by the 2 minute interval that you started with, by the time you made contact with the slower team).  So we didn’t think he would have to pass anybody because the team in front of him didn’t race (we don’t know why…) so there was 4 minutes between Randy and the team running ahead of him------AND TA DA DA DAAAAAA!!! He caught that team!!!!  He also saw Claude on the trail (Randy going out and Claude coming home on the trail) untangling dogs…  If we look at the times from Saturday and Sunday and imagine what place he could have been in had he not had the trouble passing it looks like he could have done as well as 4^th or 5^th!!!  So he was ectastic!!!!  Most all of the 14 dogs he took ran well – Soldier and Noah worked so hard in the beginning of the 13 miles that they were pretty whipped by the end and the 2 girls in the team (Swix and Trix – couldn’t make that one up if I tried………..) didn’t look like they were pulling very hard but all the rest looked good all the way – Randy believes it has a lot to do with training in the UP for those 3 months and getting about 800 miles on them before we came to Quebec –so they have some “bottom” in them and are still in good shape.  We are also pleased with how good their feet are – only 3 dogs with very small fissures (little separation cuts in the webbing of there feet where they spread out – especially in soft snow) – we believe that is because we use the Zeus Juice (a special blend of oils) on their feet when they run on less than hard trails and, having been in the UP, where their circles were on essentially beach sand for 3 months. Jim Oehlschlaeger told us that his dog’s feet were toughened up because of the sand in the circles when we were up there and we are believing it’s true.  So next week the race is at Mt. Gosford and is called “Woburn”.  Randy doesn’t ususally like the trail there because it is so hilly but I think he is pretty “amped up” and eager to race!!!!

Today we went shopping – hadn’t been in 2 weeks!  In fact last week we didn’t go anywhere!!!

So first we went to Canadian Tire (in Shawinigan, about 12 miles from here) and bought more dog biscuits – I have gone through a box of 400 in 2 weeks – and that is breaking them in half!!!  The $15 is worth it though because it makes it a lot easier on my body to have them excited to get back in their house!   Then to Walmart and spent $180 on pretty expensive food because it’s in Canadian dollars – then to the SAQ which is like Quebec’s liquor control commission to get some wine (for my back of course……).  It’s twice as expensive here as it is in Michigan!  Then to Rona to get more LP tanks filled up and then to the place we bought the generator from – because twice over the last week it had quit producing electricity even though the engine was still running – so we had to use our little Honda generator as our back up – the reason we bought the exact one we did up here was because it is an electric start so Randy doesn’t have to further hurt his old shoulder injury.  They were very good about it after we explained why it couldn’t be us trying to use more watts than the generator could “generate”.  We even talked to the main office of the manufacturer and finally they decided that the rotor and stator?? Got demagnetized and they would give us a new generator!!!!

Tomorrow maybe training since Hermel (Claude’s kennel hand) went out with the groomer tonite.  We need to be training all the dogs that didn’t race this weekend so they don’t get out of shape.  It’s done snowing (got about 5 inches last nite and awakened by the sound of Claude’s business’ loader starting to plow the drive around us.) and getting much colder so bundle up for the drop tonite!!!

 The church in Charette - very typical of all the little towns' churches

Randy picking up his very well deserved winnings!!!!!

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Big, Big, BIG NEWS!!!!!!!  I mis-wrote myself this morning or whenever and said Randy was 11^th yesterday but he really was 12^th – so that makes TODAY  A REALLY BIG DEAL!!!!!!  7^TH OVERALL WITH ONLY 1 MINUTE TODAY BETWEEN HIM AND FIRST PLACE!!!!!  Congratulations all over the place – people and other unlimited dog drivers were genuinely happy for Randy after having such a bad time for the last oh, 7 years……….so we are also very happy and Randy is very tired and I am making dinner (shrimp to celebrate) and will tell you more tomorrow!!!

Sunday morning

Started out the day with about 3 inches or more of new snowfall – they were already out on the trail with Claude’s big groomer (the kind that snowmobile clubs use to groom trails and the one he uses at his home for his own trail) when we got up at 8am.  The dogs seemed happy and healthy and ready to run this morning (except for one that had diarrhea……)

Went into the community building to support the race sponsers for the “Musher Entrée’ (eggs, toast, sausage, coffee, juice, hashbrown and, the ever popular Quebec breakfast item………..baked beans!!!!!!  It always cracks us up when we get beans served with out breakfast!!!

After I ate went to a very short Mass at the church next door – all in French, 15 people there (including me) and presented by a member of the church – priests are very few and far between here – there is a beautiful steepled church in every little town but not enough priests to say Mass on Sunday…..   They also didn’t have any local musical talent because all the music was recorded.

Next is drop the dogs and help our friends (Suzanne and Mario, and Valerie’ and Yvan) with their 6 dog teams at 11.  Valerie is in 1^st place and Suzanne in 12^th out of 46 teams!  We make an effort to help them and then they come and help us get to the line and then back again – I decided that I always need at least one other person to get them started because Greg is one of those dogs that wants to be on top of something when he is nervous (whether it’s you, the neck line or the dog next to him….) and Dozer likes to pull back on the neck line with his mouth so much so that he pulls the other dog backwards!!  And if we have Chief over being out of shape or injured (we think he is over being sore but maybe is just out of shape) and he is at point, he pulls back on the main line so hard he pulls the leaders backwards!!!!

Randy did talk to the 2 people that he had problems that warranted stopping yesterday – Claude (because his dogs got tangled while he was passing Randy while Randy was stopped after trying to pass Rosiare……….) and there are not hard feelings….just happens..!

More after Randy’s race at 2pm!!!

11th out of 18 is very respectable!!!

Wanted to be further up in the ratings, but had a few problems........passing the same team again. and then they re-passed when he had to untangle the dogs from not passing the other team well - but tomorrow assuming he has no trouble he may have to pass the team ahead of him - it's a young guy named Oliver that only runs white dogs!!!!  Can you imagine?!!  We have a hard time finding good dogs no matter what they look like and his are all white!!!  More after the race tomorrow!!!

Update for Saturday!!!

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Another big day is here!!!!  Race at St. Luc-de-Vincennes!!!!  We are in the parking lot and stayed last nite (we did run out of gas at about 7 but Randy got up and changed tanks so we had heat again……….and then could sleep another hour!)  There are again 17 open teams and over 40 6 dog (when we first raced in Quebec there were usually 60+ 6 dog teams and over 20 open teams).  Randy is running 14 dogs with Dozer and Greg in lead (the crazies – one jumps on me to start and the other pulls back on the neck line – it takes 2 people in the start chute to control them!!)  He goes out 13^th (his lucky number because he was born on July 13) and right after him is Claude Bellerive – so he is thinking that if/when he passes him he will “catch a ride” (meaning that our team will try to keep up with him after they are passed).

Not much to report for the week passed – trained everybody on Wednesday and most days, including today very cold – near 0 degrees every day  - got some snow (enough to have the drive where we park at Bellerive’s plowed out by the end loader from the business).  Oh yeah, and I learned a new solitaire game!!  (Couldn’t be on the internet or make too many calls cause we had almost run out of data)

So we will see what today brings!!  I will report after the race!!!