We made it!!!!

I know I have used “On the road again….” Numerous times but that’s what it feels like!  Got ourselves together Thursday morning after sitting in the hotub one last time and then draining it.  Left about 11am with 18 dogs (some old and some not wanting to run and some young – all with Dee Krise and Mark Kukal).  Good roads all across Michigan and to the border at Port Huron – it was the best border crossing we have ever had!!!!   Crossing is always anxiety provoking for both of us and we had a nice young lady who had never talked to dogsledders before and was so impressed with us she didn’t even ask the usual questions………..  so off we went into Ontario and thought the roads were good until we saw a 4 car accident on the west-bound lanes of the freeway………and then another one with 2 cars in the ditch………..and then another……….and then saw the cops (OPP) had closed off the freeway because the snow was blowing over the west bound lanes and making black ice – our side was good and we traveled without problems……..until we got to the “On Route”/rest area at Port Hope where we planned to spend the nite.  We exited into the area and I saw the sign directing trucks to the left……….well we went to where the semi trucks were supposed to park and it was full…..then I directed my quite unhappy husband to try and go backwards on the one way road to get to some open parking and found out that all of the corners were too tight to get our rig around (like more that 110 degrees)- we had to stop traffic from entering into the car parking lot and tried turning 6 times (almost going over the roadside into a very deep ditch 4 feet off the drive and over the curb…) until he saw he could back up into a drive leading into a closed park that was gated shut.  So that’s where we spent the nite!  Very cold and extremely windy – like the kind of wind that makes you stay awake during the nite thinking you might blow over in the trailer!!

Up at 7:30 am and fed dogs – too many not eating good….have tried everything we can think of to tempt them and with one the only thing he has eaten is some beef jerky.  On the road after a Burger King breakfast and made pretty good time with good roads all the way to St. Luc de Vincennes and the race site.  Just fed and it is still very cold and windy and still have about 8 dogs not eating.  The “inscription” (sign up for the race is tonite).  The parking lot is icy and the trail looks very good from here – they have been grooming with Claude Bellerive’s groomer and he told Randy they are actually going to take some snow off from the trail yet tonite.

We had a bit of a “Noah emergency” – the 3 gallon plastic water jug fell off the counter while we were traveling and the house was flooded with water…………someone, who shall be nameless (like me) forgot to take the jug off the counter and put it on the floor…………so lots of rugs and towels hanging up to dry and we are now in the market for a new water jug.

Saturday

Pretty cold and windy and very icy in the parking lot – good day for wearing those walk-on-ice things!!  Lots of people we know are here (Butler, Fran Plaisted, Guy Girard, the Saucier family, Danae and Brittany Bryar Colbath and Nova Clifford,Bellerives, and more… )and Randy goes out 3^rd today running 14 dogs.  People coming back are saying that the trail is very fast.  It was a bit too fast for poor Nova Clifford…..who wiped out when her sled caught the birm and she dragged…enough for her to pull a “Randy Trick” with her pants down around her ankles!!!  She has terrible road/ice rash on her hip and thigh!!  Randy still has a scar from when he did the same and actually, it happened here!!!  His wounds took several weeks to heal with twice a day dressing changes!

I spent another one of those anxious times waiting at the finish line…….team after team coming in that had left after Randy.  He used a dog in lead that is 1 year old and has only led in Kalkaska one day and one day in training.   Finally Emily Therrien told me she saw him load a dog in the bag when she was out watching the race on the trail.  Sure enough he came in with Quincy in the bag – she just isn’t fast enough to keep up when the team is going fast and it was a fast trail.  Randy kept his foot on the matt almost the whole trail and she still couldn’t do it.  He averaged 16.5  mph for the course and that was even carrying a dog in the bag – but he is in last place at 12^th.

Very windy again tonite – but we were so tired I slept through it.

Sunday

Up at 8 and fed breakfast to the dogs -finally Ellis is drinking and eating a bit!  It feels much colder today.  A damp cold.  Randy is going out last so no hurry with getting the dogs ready to race at 2p and then 22 minutes later – so we helped with 6 dog teams and several of the open teams.  Randy took another yearling in lead today – he had never run lead – but figured he had nothing to lose being in last – so the team was 12 with 6 of them yearlings in their second race and some old dogs and some medium aged dogs – he went out looking good and when it came time for him to finish I waited an extra (seemed like an hour) 10 minutes – the yearlings in the team had worked so hard in the first part of the race they were worn out for the finish!

It is supposed to snow 6-8 inches tonite so we decided to stay here at the race site (about and hour away from Bellerive’s) so that their snow plow service would be able to plow without us in the way by the dog barn.

I have spent the last half hour trying to make the dvd player work and am still unsuccessful……………I am tired of trying to overcome the distraction of having all sound on the tv in French- it is just not very relaxing – even when I turn  the sound off, and try to read English lips, it is just not as enjoyable.  Where are those children with their knowledge of electronics stuff when I need them????!!!

Monday – got up at our norm….8 ish and dropped dogs and then let them run around the empty parking lot – they loved it!!!  Claude said we were going to get snow and we did – there were drifts all around the truck – left to go to Bellerive’s about 10 and the roads were quite snow covered, even on the freeway with lots of snowplows out trying to get ahead – pulled into our regular parking spot about 11 – lots of people out in their driveways with snow blowers trying to clean up.  Dropped the dogs this after noon and got Ellis the sick dog to eat 4 eggs…shells and all – I think that’s the most he has eaten – might have to go buy a couple dozen eggs just for him!!

Got the tv antenna situated and wonder of wonders, I have one channel that is in English!!!  It’s the Canadian Broadcasting Channel with lots of English (as in the country….) shows on it I have never seen.  And oh yeah, we could watch Top Gun in French – just not the same to hear Tom Cruise with a different voice…

On to Quebec!!!!!!!!

Over the last few days we have gotten some info to lead us to the decision to go to Quebec - the Rondy had been formally cancelled, the snow here is a bit iffy and Melanie Bellerive told us that the postponed trail for St. Luc (their race) is on for this weekend and the trail is good - plus there are 3 more scheduled to run in Quebec.

To give an update of the last week or so.............went to the race in Kalkaska and did open and 6 dog - the 3 year old leader in the open seemed overwhelmed with the soft snow (probably comparing it in her head to the beautiful trail she had been training on....) and didn't perform nearly as good as she had been in training - plus some problems on the trail with the driver that went out first in the unlimited and then caused an emergency call to all the trail help to gather at the trouble spot and then prompted the trail judge to call all the drivers in the open and 10 dog to come in to the finish line, causing almost all of the drivers to be short mileage wise from the drivers who went out first...sooooo the whole day for that class go thrown out.  not a great day for us anywho, but we couldn't really tell how we compared to the rest of the teams because they had not done the longer mileage.  On Sunday we tried another leader in her place and she didn't do any better.  Still soft trail and hard for the dogs to go through.  The really bright spot in the weekend is that Randy also had trouble with the leaders in the 6 dog team and so he changed out at the last minute an old leader for a 1 year old that had only lead in training one time (I suggested we try him in training because three times this training season he had left the free drop dogs at the truck after training and run the whole trail again by himself!!!!) and he did fabulous leading in the first race of his life!!!!!

We had sad news this weekend- Keith Bryar passed over on Saturday nite after gallantly battling cancer for several years - he has been a long time dogsledding friend of Randy's and with his absence, we will miss years and years of his experiences and those of his famous dogsledding parents.  We happened to be racing with his sister Danae and her 2 daughters at Kalkaska - everyone at the race was devastated and remembering the times Keith had been Keith....

Tomorrow we make the decision aobut whether we want to miss the big snow storm approaching the southern part of the Michigan mitt by going ahead of it (I am leaning towards following....) or staying and trying to train on our trail if the snow comes early enough tomorrow on Wednesday and leave Thursday (cause it takes us about a day and 1/2 to get to Trois Rivieres)

bought a new infrared heater so we will have 2 in the house while we are gone to heat without the wood stove running - we have in the past just had one in the back laundry room but maybe this year we won't have to drain all the pipes and worry about frozen and bursting pipes (thank you again Mark Kukal!!)

more tomorrow when we decide when to leave!!

We are in a particulary strange predicament.............

We have snow and a beautiful training trail here at home - but no place to go with our trained dogs to race!!!!!  No races in Quebec yet (Bellerives have only 1/2 of their training trail with snow on it and are still using a 4 wheeler to train),  Jan Bootz-Ditmar told Randy that they will decide whether they will have the 3 bears race this weekend and that already it had gone down to 8 miles for the 10/unlimited dog ; Jim Lyman told us this week that he only had a few inches of snow in NH and didn't know if the Laconia race would happen; and we are believing that Anchorage is not going to get enough snow to have the Fur Rondy.............

So we will continue to train on our "Alaska-like" trail and hope for snow!!!!  Will post more when we actually know something!!!  thanks for hanging in there with us!!

Jiggety jig all the way home!

Friday and we are up to get ready to leave on our trip – We left after the second drop, shortly before 11 – the first part of the trip is quite mountainous – through the Laurentian Mountains I think – if you look on a map you will see that you can’t hardly get lost – there is only one road going up north!!  By the time we got to La Tuque it was less hilly but we did have some 11% grades going down – that “jake brake” has come in handy on numerous occasions.  You know how when you are the passenger everything seems scarier because you have no control over the driving ? – well I found a way to have a bit of control………….the jake brake!!  When I think we are going downhill too fast I put it on!  It’s positioned on the dash almost in front of me!

We made it up to Lac St. Jean and then headed northwest – about that time I expected to start seeing signs that would tell us which of the turn offs from the highway would take us to Saint Methode –(the gps would only show me the St. Methode way down south and when I spelled it the way it had it on the map it said “no results found” so the gps was no help at all) because I wasn’t for sure which dot on the map was the dot that was Saint Methode- you know how when there are lots of little towns together it’s difficult to tell which dot is which town?! so I started questioning myself , and even more when we had to make a final choice at a Y in the road – I thought it looked like it was off the Y to the right so we went that way – then no more signs saying Saint Methode made me more nervous so I asked Randy to pull over and look at the map to be sure which dot was correct – he looked at the map and didn’t remember for sure which dot is was but thought we should have gone to the left at the Y…………I say this calmly in writing it, but the conversation was not very calm………..  So we turn the rig around in this medium sized town and go back to the Y- then we see a dog truck going the way we had just come from – now we are both not sure which way to go – so we take the left Y and I suggest we stop and ask – so Randy pulls off at some office and I go in and fortunately the man in there spoke quite good English (usually it is show the person the map and say the place you want to go and have them point to it…) and he even drew us a map of where to go – as we are pulling out of the parking lot we see the Bellerives procession go by and try to follow them but couldn’t keep up – we follow the guy’s map and it turns out that both the left and the right legs of the Y make a triangle and so we could have kept going the way we were on the right leg and ended up in the same spot!!!  We finally get to Saint Methode and I see why I couldn’t get the gps to work – lots of towns in Quebec have 2 names – one on the top of the sign and another in parentheses on the bottom- the top name of Saint Methode is St. Felecien!!!!  If I had put that in we wouldn’t have had any trouble but who knew???!!

There were signs directing you to the dog race in the town and we had also gotten directions from Claude – we followed the signs and arrived in a big open field with a spot the size of a football field plowed out and 2 trailers parked – we were the first ones there and there is nothing, I mean nothing here.  We parked where the guy told us and settled in for the nite. 

This morning Melanie went out 4^th and had a good run but said it was very fast and the last 2 miles of the track were ice where the field had melted on the warm days and then frozen (oh yeah I forgot to tell you, it was -32F last nite – the generator only ran out of gas once meaning Randy had to get up and then worried about it the rest of the nite)

Randy is taking out only 10 dogs – it is a lucky coincidence that the track is so icy and we only have 10 healthy, unhurt, motivated dogs on the truck!!  Depending on whether Dee poops before he leaves (she likes to stop the whole team when she has to poop in a race or training) he will have Sterling and Dee or Beika and Sterling in lead. 

Well I know you are dying to find out…………Dee did poop and she did lead!  Randy had a good clean run and averaged 17.23mph to come in 17 out of 20!  He is happy about how they all did – some like T-Bone and Blanche that are older dogs can’t really go any faster than that but the little girls that are 1, Caleb and Trix kept up easy!!  And the powerhouse was the point dog Viper – Randy said that he set the pace better than the leaders did!  Claude is 3^rd (6 seconds separte the first 3 teams!) and Hermel had a tangle passing, couldn’t get his hook out (I know how that feels – that’s why Randy is missing part of a finger –he had to come and help me get my snow hook out and missed his chute time and then went out to train on the trail alone and had the trouble) and is in 16^th – Melanie we think said she was in 2^7th because she held back on the fast trail.  So day one down and one to go!!

Sunday = much warmer – went to a musher’s banquet in town- neighbors in another trailer took us in after he offered us Jack Daniels and gave us some syrup!  We had Lac St. Jean meat pie – it was traditionally made with all wild game but this was with beef and pork and a very thick crust on the top and botton!  Delicious!!!

Used Dee and Sterling in lead again and it went well but they were still too slow – held on to 17^th place, Claude 3^rd and Melanie think 6^th!  Claude left the chute a minute late because one of his leaders wouldn’t go so he had to switch him out and Melanie had problems with a tangle.  Took 4 hours to get home – so by 8:30 we were back at Bellerives.

Monday – Renell and Melanie wanted to have one last meal with us so they took us out to breakfast at the restaurant in town – a very tearful goodbye………it had been long time since we had been able to spend quality time with them and this month made us all remember why our relationships are so good………

Left Charette at 10:30 – one wrong turn going through a very busy Montreal but Dorothy/gps got us back on track without too much problem.  Stopped and fed the east side of Toronto and got to the other side of it in 45 minutes – we were just celebrating how well we were doing when we hit a stopped expressway!!!  After 45 minutes found out it was a overturned semi in the ditch – went a bit farther and found a place in a strip mall to park in Woodstock (all the rest areas were full) – to bed at 11:30 – will let you know how the day goes – hope to be home about 3p

Spent over 1/2 hour at the Blue Water Bridge at customs - they checked the inside of the vehicle in front of us and looked in the back of us and at dog food- looks like it will be 4:30 before we make it home - now in Saginaw!!!

Last race of the season!

Wednesday cont. – had dinner at the Bellerive’s house – chicken caccitore (spelling) I believe – no one could tell me for sure because Lise the housekeeper made the dinner- too much food – I was full and then Claude insisted we have dessert –sugarpie, banana bread and ice cream!  Ooof!!

Thursday we thought about training but the weather changed from spring back to dead of winter !!!  cold enough to think about mittens over the gloves again!  Randy went out to check the trail once and it was very crusty – what we gained by giving them a bit of exercise we might lose by hurting feet.

We were picked up at 6:30 by Renelle and Claude and we joined Melanie and Patrick at the restaurant in town for dinner.  Patrick is feeling better without nearly the pain since he started taking Lyrica but is sleeping a lot – like most of the day and nite. 

Speaking of sleeping- I had a terrible nite Wed nite – it was blowing back in all of the cold air!!  I kept hearing buckets and poop scoops blowing around all nite and it felt like it might blow the whole trailer down the road!!!

We are leaving this morning (Friday) at about 10:30 or so for St. Methode – Randy says we will probably come back here on Monday and spend the nite and then leave Tuesday morning early so we get thru the rush hour at Montreal.  Don’t know if I will have any internet access this weekend so you may not hear from me till Monday!!