And the picture doesn't even show what blew off the fence!!!

Well I think I have regained my composure...……..have you ever typed an entire page and then had your computer freeze and you lost the whole blasted thing???????!!!!!!!!  If anyone has any suggestions as to why “Word” would choose to do that to me and what I might do the next time it would be appreciated!!!!  Actually it just did it again to me but this time I “outfoxed” the computer – I didn’t shut it down when it froze – I just shut it and went and made a pie and when I came back and opened it again it was back to normal???  Poltergeist??????

That’s what happened – so now I will try to re-create my masterful storytelling piece…..

The last week or so has been relatively calm………until the blizzard and me getting lost in it and getting the snowmachine stuck!!!!!!

So, we had gotten down to pretty much ice again this last weekend and were training on the east side of the road we live on – because Randy had spent so much time grooming the trail it didn’t lose much of the base and we could still train on it without booting the dogs or hurting their feet.  We were expecting snow but didn’t dream it would come so much or so fast!!! It was welcome but for a few days it was rough getting around…….2 feet in 3 days!!!

It was the last training run that we were going across the road with Randy on a sled with 2 – 8 dog teams with me leading them on the snowmachine – well it proceeded to snow, and then snow harder, and then blizzard while we were out!!  Randy had drawn me a map of where I was to lead him (this is the one part of the trail I don’t know well and it’s ever-changing with everybody making new paths to train on within the trail – so the first team I do OK; only made wrong turns 4 times………..the second team seemed to be going alright until it got to be really really blizzardy and I could hardly see the trail to go ahead!!  About that time I reached a decision point and I remembered that we had gone straight ahead the last time………or was it at another spot?????  So 5 feet into the turn I realized I was wrong and turned hard left= well with 2 feet of snow and me pulling a drag to groom the trail, you guessed it, I buried myself!!!!!  I started madly pawing at the snow around the snowmachine trying to get it to go ahead and knew that Randy would be catching me soon and would be upset……………he did and he was………..  He even hooked the team down so he could get the drag off the machine but it still wouldn’t go ahead – sooooooooo  “I will be back for you------“ and I was left alone in the Lake Superior woods, in a blizzard with a stuck machine 6 miles from home………….   Since I was not going anywhere I decided to get serious about digging myself out – so I peeled of clothes and started in earnest!!!!  I dug all around the machine and under the track and under the runners so the whole machine could drop down to the packed snow and get a grip – at times when I was pawing the snow out from under the runners the machine would drop an inch and I would thank God that my hand had not still been under it!!!!!  I finally got it dug out enough and the drag off and out onto the trail that I thought it could make it out the 5 feet I was off the trail – so I turned the key and it wouldn’t start – I thought it must be flooded so I let it sit for 15 minutes (or so it seemed since I didn’t have a watch………..)  I repeated this process for several more times but to no avail……. I had checked the kill switch (the button on the dash that you press if you want to stop the machine in an emergency) when I was first trying to get it out to make sure it wasn’t pushed down (I had already had that experience of not having start because the button was pushed down on too many occasions….) so I didn’t think that was the problem – 

Then I heard a snowmachine approaching!!!!  I thought it could be Randy but didn’t really know how long I had been out there and knew that when he got back with the dogs he still had to unhook and unharness them and put them back in their circles—it wasn’t Randy – it was Regina Caldwell!!!!! She had tipped over on her snowmachine and was trying to get it re-started when Randy passed by her with the team and asked if she could go give me a lift!  After I asked her if she was AAA she was going to just give me a ride but I wanted to try to get out of “stuck” – so I told her I couldn’t get it started and wouldn’t you know it………..the stupid ***### kill switch was down and she popped it back up and it started!!!!  I must have bumped it again in my fervor trying to get un-stuck!!!! So I pulled back up out of the hole I had dug and onto the trail, hooked the drag back on the machine and away we went with me being pretty proud of myself for digging myself out………….but sheepish about the wrong turn and the kill switch……………..

That was 2 days ago and today we went out to train with the sled; only this time with all 14 dogs that Randy thinks he will race!!!!!  Aside from “getting my jacket on too slowly” so that a dog had time to chew through his neckline, we got started to go on the same trail I still don’t know……….only this time I led for part of the way and then he passed me with the sled to do the side trail!  The dogs were trying to “empathize” with me because they made 2 wrong turns themselves (the second time we had to hook the sled hook to the snowmachine runner to turn them the right way and they could still pull the hook out of the snow and me on the snowmachine!!!  The only way I could stop them was to hold the brake so Randy had to go up and turn them, not just once, but 3 times!!!!  They definitely wanted to go for a longer run!!!

Well our plans have changed again – We were considering going to a race in Vita, Manitoba a week from now but looking ahead at the weather it’s supposed to be near zero here next weekend and it’s always much colder there – Randy says he doesn’t want to be racing in  -20 degrees weather – can’t say as I do either!!! So who knows where or when to next – just don’t want to be “all dressed up and no place to go” with a dog team with over 450 miles on it!!!!!