Hip hip Hooray!!!!

 Well by now you all probably know that Randy had an excellent first day at Laconia!!!  3^rd place!!!  It was pretty warm and 2 of his 12 dogs weren’t working very strong but they came in looking really good – they must have thought it was just a fun run because the trail was only 13 miles!!!  At home we had been alternating 12 and 20 mile runs so this probably seemed short to them!  Today is supposed to be a high of 49 degrees and so far it’s cloudy – so that’s’ good – they took 2 more miles out of the trail because some 4 wheelers had wrecked it – so that is not to our advantage – they will just be getting warmed up and rolling and they will be done!!!  I would love for Randy to hold on to 3^rd but we will see- there’s about 2 minutes between Kenny Chezik and Randy and the same between Kenny and first place, Guy Girard – there’s only a minute and 50 seconds between Randy and 4^th place so here’s hoping!!!!!

 

Saturday was even warmer and the dog team parking lot turned into a swimming pool!!!  Randy left the 2 dogs that were having a hard time the first day off and went with 10 dogs – they started in reverse order of finishing for Friday so he went out 8^th(now would be a good time for me to tell you how much I appreciated the help I got from Sherry Johnson – Neil and Carolyn Johnson’s 23 year old daughter that we have know since she was about 6 years old – she and her dad – who both her dad and mother were excellent open class drivers in Alaska and Laconia- flew in from Minnesota just to watch the race – and rather than go with her dad in the car to watch teams out on the trail she stayed with me so she could run the team up to the start and then back at finish!!!!  Thank you so much Sherry – I don’t know what I would have done without you!!!!  I was still hurting from slipping on the ice Thursday nite and would never have been able to lead them up to the start!!!)  it was about 50 degrees and the trail was very slow and punchy but Randy managed to inspire our dogs to keep up the pace – he would have actually done better times if the trail had been longer- he asked for more from them when the trail was good and they responded to his whistling them up!!!

So Sunday was much colder and the trail had frozen before they could get it groomed  and it was a mess of trenches and holes – thankfully they canceled and we ended up having the awards at the race site at 11 – it was extremely special for Randy to get 3^rd– the best he had ever done at Laconia!!!!  

After all the racers and help left there was just us in the icy parking lot so we decided (actually Randy decided ) that we should go out to dinner for Valentine’s day early and went to the same restaurant we went to for the draw on Thursday – and I got crab cakes!!  Delicious!!!  Tonite we are back at the Walmart parking lot and waiting to get the results from the covid tests we had done yesterday – as soon as we have results I will enter our information into the ArrivCan website and see if I can get it to cooperate with me this time (I had a horrible time in September when we came up to see Bellerives)  We are 2 hours from the border so I will start the computer work as soon as I have the test results and go from there!!

Let you know more tomorrow!!!!!