Thursday 1/28

January 28^th

Big Day!!!!  We are actually moving!!!!  Not that I am looking forward to it because we have to drive the scary pass back to Jackson tonite and then camp there at the rodeo grounds and be ready for the vet checks tomorrow – and then drive back here again (hoping we get a decent parking spot so it won’t be too difficult to get to the starting line!!) for the start of the first leg of the race on Saturday – from there I am almost clueless how this is all going to work – having never done it before it seems overwhelming and complex!!!

So we trained on Tuesday for the last time (thought we might train the 4 dogs today that are not going to run on Saturday but they all have foot problems so we thought it better to give them another day off than to risk making their feet worse……..) and had a really good run with both 8 dog teams – the only problem we had was with the Peeps and Yeti leaders team when we got to the turn around and I drove the snow machine off the trail to the side to get them to make a loop, when I looked back they hadn’t turned and were still facing the wrong way in the trail – so I didn’t know if Randy wanted me to try and make a loop again or get off the snow machine and pull them around in the trail – I opted for making another loop so I pulled around right in front of the leaders and this time they followed me around the whole loop!

Yesterday was a bad health day – felt like I had the altitude sickness again and slept half the day away-  we did go to the grocery store and were finally able to straighten out a $1200 doctor bill that the VA was supposed to pay but had not – so that was a load off……….

Today we helped a couple of teams and had breakfast of pancakes and bacon on the grill from the Beabers!

Later Buddy and Lina Streeper showed up on a snowmachine because they are parked in town at the motel and don’t want to lose their parking spot – they came down from West Yellowstone where they had been training and also 2 days ago Ed Stielstra and his kids and Laura Neese arrived – yesterday Jake Robinson came and he trained an 8 dog team today-  so they are coming together – tomorrow at the vet check we are supposed to stay right at our trucks and not socialize but it’s going to be a tough sell –today nobody is wearing a mask and we are 7 of the 25 racers right here !!

 

So for the vet check they have a team of vets that actually do a physical of each dog in your 14 dog pool, review their vaccinations, evaluate them to see if they are too thin to compete in this race (or too fat) and determine if they have a chip already, what the number is, and if they don’t , implant one – I have heard it takes about an hour for each team to be done –so we could be in Jackson for most of the day waiting our turn –hopefully there will be internet somewhere in our journeys in the next days so I can keep you up to date –

PS I haven’t been posting pictures lately because I am having trouble downloading the photos from the phone to the computer