Friday, March 14, 2008

Mush!

I took my Second Annual Fairbanks trip this past weekend with Jenn and Karen and Wrigley. After a long drive up to the "frozen" land (it was +40 degrees there), we unpacked in our new diggs for the weekend (thank you to Karen's friends!) and got some shut-eye. We awoke to sunshine for a day of mushing. Tom has 9 dogs at his place: Siku, Lady Lou, Haiku, Rusty, Enlo, Jerry, Smokey, and damn it, I can't remember them all. Wrigley got to join the ranks of the sled dogs that day and made no. 10 on the line. Here's a pic of him...he was so confused! He stood there looking around, and if he has thoughts, he was thinking, "What the...? What's this? Why are we all tied to this line? How come I can't turn around and jump on all these dogs? Does this mean I can't wrestle?" And before he could get his last little doggie thought out, Tom gave the team the cue to go "Hike!!" And whoosh, off they went! We were lucky enough to convince Tom to let us actually "drive" the sleds...sorta. We drove a tandem sled and man is that fun! Each of us took a ride, launched ourselves off the sled as it rocketed over berms, and ended up with bruises like you wouldn't believe. Here's a video of Jenn's take off (double click the play button on the bottom left)...
We rounded out our trip with a visit to the World Ice Carving Championships. Sure, sure, the sculptures are cool, but the real reason to visit is the ice slides. Jenn's laugh describes the fun even more than words. Here is a video of our ride down the first run of the evening.