the Maniwaki experience!!

 My goodness – go to sleep with it raining and wake up snowed in!!!!  We got about a foot of snow that blew all over and made drifts all around our trailer and the barn!!!!  Luckily Claude’s business, Cirtech, has a loader that clears all of his personal property and before we were even ready to leave for Maniwaki he had the whole barn yard clean!!!!

We left about 10:30 and the roads (even the expressway is most places) were snow covered and icy – so it made for a bit of a stressful trip = as we got farther up in the mountains (the Laurentides) it actually got a bit better – they didn’t get the heavy rain turned to snow!

We arrived in Maniwaki without incident (oh yeah, except for the one car that pulled in ahead of us on the expressway and then put on its brakes causing Randy to “jump” into the next lane to avoid hitting it!!!!).   We parked next to Claude’s trailer at the hotel on the river where most of the activities were to take place, only to find out that the trail they had put in on the river had been ruined when they let water out from the dam and flooded the river!!!  So we moved out of town to the revised race site at a logging business parking lot!!  It was just us and one other dog trailer there for the nite, parked next to a huge pile of logs!!

In the morning we found out that the new trail they had put was termed “dangerous” by the drivers that went out to look at it on a snowmachine – they decided that they would max the teams at 10 dogs and run the course backwards…….so all this took some time and they finally had the 10am race at 1!!  They also had decided that because the trail was “dangerous” that they didn’t want to encourage competitive racing so they let the open drivers know that the purse for that class would be divided evenly between the drivers  ---  so that made it a lot more comfortable for Randy to run he course much like a 9.8 mile training run – which he did which accounts for his placing the final times.  So it was all good.

The really fun part of the weekend was that we got to see a friend that we made two years ago when we came to this race – her name is Cat (a burst of warmth, positive energy and fun) and she is best friends with a woman named Marie Anik-Elie (spelling?) that we raced with 2 years at the Rondy in 2010-11 (I think those were the years….)  She is a delightful person and was down to Anchorage to race from the Northwest Territory – about as far north as you can go!!!  So we had Marie as the connection and it has just grown from there so that she planned to help us with the team even before she found out that I had an injury keeping me from leading the dogs up to the line and back!  (according to Cat my injury is very common for hockey goalies – she plays hockey- so from now on I am going to call it my goalie injury!!!). Then when she got called away from us to help with organizing teams, a delightful family was assigned to help us!!!  They were here for their first dog sled race but own 30 dogs and have a business giving sled rides – they also have Highlander cows (just like our son and daughter-in-law Jess and Cindy), sheep, chickens and other assorted animals!!!  They were great helpers and then Randy helped them get out with their son Alexi doing the 4 dogs and then they borrowed our Gatt sled (which Colin was very impressed with) for the 2 dog.   The mother and father were Steve and Caroline and we thoroughly enjoyed them and hope to see them at more races!!

I was pretty blizzard in the late afternoon so we decided to "hunker down" here in the same parking lot and drive in the light and better weather and hopefully roads1

So we got our share of the purse from the race director last nite – but because 2 people dropped out of the race (one because of dog illness which we hope we don’t get, and one because of trouble on the trail) we get another $119 for a grand total of $702!!!!  Lots better than a sharp stick in the eye and in Canadian cash!!!!  So right now we are waiting to drop dogs before we leave Maniwaki and for him to come with the addition purse money!!!  Then on our way back to Bellerive’s  and train probably tomorrow and Wednesday and then a race in Pt. Rouge (half way between  Claude’s and Quebec City) for another adventure!!!!