You be the judge: after we packed up and left the Northern Rockies Lodge in Muncho Lake, B.C., we saw fifteen or so frosty buffalo, some on the road, some on the wayside, all of them sort of dopey and steaming and before long most of them running, stampeding, like a herd of wild, gigantic buffalo and a guy on a mountain bike riding with the pack. You heard me. He looked like one of those painted wooden woodpecker gizmos that moves violently up and down and I thought, "clearly, he's pedaling towards us for help and the buffalo are chasing him...wait, no -they're not chasing him anymore and he's unmistakeably shaken...no no wait: he's on a unicycle and..." None of the above. HE WAS RIDING WITH THE BUFFALO ON A BIKE. The wind was scalpel sharp, it was -8 degrees at 7 a.m. and this guy was givin' 'er down the Alaskan Highway full throttle, snowshoes lashed to his backpack and evidently not much else in it. What the heck? Keep in mind we were really in the middle of nowhere and this guy was way too frosty to have just left the Lodge we left; as a matter of fact, when we left Fort Nelson 250 kilometers back the night before, we were given an info sheet basically warning people to gas up and don't necessarily expect to find a place to sleep if you get tired in the next 700 miles. Buffalo whisperer or nut? You decide.
I also spotted what appeared to be a beef roast the size of an Isuzu Trooper rolling in the snow; turns out it was a moose.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Dr. Tim, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iditarod
Let's back up: Tim and I drove to Two Harbors, Minnesota Tuesday to pick up our friend Colleen Wallin, who is helping us drive up to Anchorage, flying back to Minnesota, flying back up again and then helping us drive home. She is as strong as an ox, sings like a bird and just finished her rookie UP 200, shortly after finishing sixth in the Beargrease Marathon while suffering from the stomach flu. This woman is tough as nails.
So besides Colleen, we brought Professor, Mr. Kite, Eleanor, Penelope, Sexy, Toonces, Scatman, Buddy, Sadie, Steve, Husky, Laguna, Spots, More Spots, Henry and Top along for the ride. Some are veterans and a few have never even ran a race or rode in a car before, but they're all eating, drinking and wagging their tales and that's what makes a successful dog team. That being said...
All this to-ing and fro-ing is going on, of course, because Tim is running the Iditarod this year. He'd vetted the race a few times, but never really expressed an interest in running it, so when he called me to the computer this fall to look at their website ("HEY! Check out who signed up for the Iditarod!"), I felt as though I'd been hit square in the back of the head with a 2 x 4; I knew our home would become an ant farm of preparation in the ensuing months. But Tim felt this was the year to do it and the stars were lined up just right, so who am I to tell him it's not the dawning of his age of Aquarious?
Suffice it say, then, that this fall and winter have been a wasps' nest of activity and a few weeks ago was the Taj Mahal of wasps' nests. We had to prepare 2 or 3 drop bags for the 22 or so checkpoints along the trail and they have to be in Anchorage by a certain date or they just don't go and you're up a creek, literally, with nothing. Tim made umpteen "mental" lists of what he wanted at each checkpoint based on his run/rest schedule, the terrain and a hundred different variables and finally resorted to having Emily (our daughter-in-law) make up spreadsheets to sort the whole mess out. For an entire week we spent our evenings in the garage loading ointments and instant coffee and boot liners and dog jackets and powders and zip ties and you name it in bags that went into bags that were precisely labeled and guess what? When all was said and done and on the barge to Anchorage, we realized he will have to wear the same underwear for the entire race or think outside the box (not to be taken as a euphamism). What a thing to forget.
So here we are. Fear grew into anticipation and then excitement, and now I find myself in a hotel room in Whitehorse, Yukon Territiories, typing while Tim and Colleen run dogs on a leg of the Yukon Quest trail.
So besides Colleen, we brought Professor, Mr. Kite, Eleanor, Penelope, Sexy, Toonces, Scatman, Buddy, Sadie, Steve, Husky, Laguna, Spots, More Spots, Henry and Top along for the ride. Some are veterans and a few have never even ran a race or rode in a car before, but they're all eating, drinking and wagging their tales and that's what makes a successful dog team. That being said...
All this to-ing and fro-ing is going on, of course, because Tim is running the Iditarod this year. He'd vetted the race a few times, but never really expressed an interest in running it, so when he called me to the computer this fall to look at their website ("HEY! Check out who signed up for the Iditarod!"), I felt as though I'd been hit square in the back of the head with a 2 x 4; I knew our home would become an ant farm of preparation in the ensuing months. But Tim felt this was the year to do it and the stars were lined up just right, so who am I to tell him it's not the dawning of his age of Aquarious?
Suffice it say, then, that this fall and winter have been a wasps' nest of activity and a few weeks ago was the Taj Mahal of wasps' nests. We had to prepare 2 or 3 drop bags for the 22 or so checkpoints along the trail and they have to be in Anchorage by a certain date or they just don't go and you're up a creek, literally, with nothing. Tim made umpteen "mental" lists of what he wanted at each checkpoint based on his run/rest schedule, the terrain and a hundred different variables and finally resorted to having Emily (our daughter-in-law) make up spreadsheets to sort the whole mess out. For an entire week we spent our evenings in the garage loading ointments and instant coffee and boot liners and dog jackets and powders and zip ties and you name it in bags that went into bags that were precisely labeled and guess what? When all was said and done and on the barge to Anchorage, we realized he will have to wear the same underwear for the entire race or think outside the box (not to be taken as a euphamism). What a thing to forget.
So here we are. Fear grew into anticipation and then excitement, and now I find myself in a hotel room in Whitehorse, Yukon Territiories, typing while Tim and Colleen run dogs on a leg of the Yukon Quest trail.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Two Hundred Years Drive
It's official: 'The Tim Show" has started. We're north of Edmonton, Alberta, tired as hell and still have a long way to go and a really short, cold time to get there; we've just driven through two days of prairie, we have to be in Wasilla for our vet check on Monday, March 1 (2?), it feels like we've been driving for years and the cold snap doesn't make it any easier. But as we bump along, scraping frost off the windows and wondering who has poop on their boot THIS time, my mind wanders off to the folks who live on the Canadian prairie, their beautiful desolation a palette of black and white, an occasional yellow school bus violating an otherwise Ansel Adams showpiece. What are these people doing in their lit-up, far off kitchens? Where do they get groceries? Who were their ancestors? How did their little ones get to school over acres of snow, sandblasted into a helmet of impenetrable ice? How did they do it all without Tim Horton's?
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