Wolf Moon Dogsledding

Location: Finland, MN
Time - 8:24am Central Daylight Time
Temperature: 64 degrees F (18 C)
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, windy
Forecast: Possible rain showers today, highs in the 80s. Sunny tomorrow, lows in the 40s

The above picture shows Jen and me coming into the yard with the yearling team. It was taken by either Bonnie or Colton, I am not sure which. They were visiting the kennel last week and we all had a blast!

Here is one seriously nice thing about Minnesota. When it gets “hot” up here, it’s not the muggy, oppressive heat we have in Georgia. When it is hot in Minnesota, I actually feel like doing things outside. While in Georgia, I just want to stay out of the heat!

Calypso and Susan are settling in. They spent the first few days in a kennel run but now have been moved out to the female yard. They are doing fine and seem quite content. I am planning to take them on a scooter run today.

The orphan puppies from last March (see http://sleddoggin.com/blogs/wolfmoonsleddog/2009/03/28/call-me-octo-mom-2/ ) are huge and beautiful now. They are currently running and playing out in the new free-run enclosure. It is the nicest enclosure I think I have seen. I cannot get over how big it is! There are trees and brush for the dogs to play in, and a nice path for them to run. For Calypso, it’s the biggest area she has ever been able to run free in (excluding when she was a puppy and I could let her run around off-leash with me).

We have been training most mornings and the teams are looking good. The yearlings were hilarious when we took them out!

Just as going back to Georgia was culture shock, coming back to Minnesota was a kind of culture shock of it’s own. I love it up here though. And there are puppies!

Be sure to check out the latest post on the Manitou Crossing Kennel blog, which was posted just before I left Georgia - http://mck-blog.blogspot.com/2009/08/august-2009-puppies-berries-and.html

I am getting my video camera ready to roll today and plan on taking as much footage as I can this Season, so I will have a “Life At MCK” video.

In other news, I should probably mention that I can’t send emails right now. I don’t know why and am trying to work on the problem. I can still receive emails, I just can’t send any out.

Later!

A

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Location: Finland, MN
Time - 9:57 Central Daylight Time
Temperature: 55 degrees F
Conditions: Clear, cool
Forecast: Mostly sunny today and tomorrow. Highs in the 60s, lows in the 30s or 40s

Just a quick note to let you all know that I am back at Manitou Crossing Kennels and Fall training has begun. I am having issues with pictures and email but hopefully I will get that fixed in the next few days.

Things here are good - the orphan puppies are HUGE and the new puppies are entirely too cute! It is nice being here again.

The trip up was great. I have a lot of pictures that I will post soon.

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Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 6:39am Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 72 degrees F (22 C)
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, humid
Forecast: Sunny today and tomorrow. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 70s

This Summer has not turned out at all the way I expected. That said, I’m not exactly sure what I expected but it certainly wasn’t this! Not that this has been a bad Summer. Far from it, it has been an excellent Summer!

When I came down from Minnesota in May, I had several main things I planned to do during my time in the South.

Expand the dog pen. I did this, with help from my Dad. I’d come up with some elaborate plans and somehow saw myself working outside for a few hours every day fixing several areas. Yeah, I really did forget how hot it gets here. Still, the pen is now almost three times as big as it was…and took three times as long to build as I thought. However, I am NOT complaining. The expansion is GREAT!

Get a car. Did that too. Finding it took up a good bit of time but was worth it! I love my little red Shuttlecraft.

Type up the novel I wrote longhanded last Summer. Didn’t do that. Nor did I write the sequel I planned. I will at some point but I chose to do some other things.

Print some things offline. I’m still doing that.

Take a roadtrip. Didn’t happen the way I meant for it to but it is happening - we’re combining it with the trip back to Minnesota.

Prepare for college. I got accepted into VCC in Ely. I went to their college prep days before I left. It seemed right at the time. I would start classes at their Fall 2009 semester. Then I started thinking about it more. And then it all started to weigh down on me and didn’t feel like the right thing anymore. So I have pulled out. At the time of this writing I intend to go to vet tech school in Fall 2010. I will probably take a break from full-time sled dog handling at that point and just play with my own dogs. We’ll see what transpires.

Hang out with my friends. DEFINITELY did that! And here lies part of where the Summer turned out differently.

It was what I didn’t plan. And the thoughts came about after hanging out with my friends in situations entirely unlike the quiet of the Minnesota wilderness.

On this blog I write about my mushing life. I write about dogs and sleds and snow and puppies. I don’t usually write about the other side(s) of my life that don’t exactly involve sled dogs. And since sled dogs are so firmly entrenched in who I am, it’s sometimes easy to forget that that isn’t ALL of who I am. Sometimes even I forget.

But then I remember. A friend of mine will bring something up that is so seemingly apart from the mushing life that it’s not even funny. And yet, I will totally relate to it. I am comfortable in two different places, in two different roles. As if I were two completely different people.

And so I have been trying to bring those two facets of myself together. So far it has been a challenge. From reading this blog you might not know that I want to get involved in filmmaking or that I am a YouTube junkie or that I can happily wander around Wal-Mart wearing a metallic silver scarf or that I can quote Monty Python until the cows come home.

So one of the things I have figured out this Summer is that I am a musher and I am also a geek/nerd.

But think, for a moment, about my choice in music. If I were to set my playlist on random it would probably come up something like this:

Moody Blues, Rolling Stones, Enya, Big & Rich, Sixpence None The Richer, Dropkick Murpheys, Star Pilot On Channel K, Weird Al Yankovick, Deep Purple, The Beatles, Pierce Pettis, Dixie Chicks, Nickleback, The Killers, Allison Kraus, The Police, The Cars, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, Cake…

Just to name a few. Completely different music, artists and styles yet I like them all equally. Obviously I don’t feel the same when I listen to Enya as I do when I listen to Dropkick Murpheys. But I am the same person and I love both.

And as my love of music is a broad spectrum, so is my personality. There are some artists I especially love and I tend to listen to their music more and have more of their music in my collection. So are there facets of my personality that I am especially interested in (mushing for instance) and that hold my focus. But that isn’t all of who I am.

I listen to Sixpence None The Richer. And I listen to Nickelback.

I run sled dogs under a starlit night. And I wear silver nail polish and watch sci-fi.

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Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 9:27pm Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 82 degrees F
Conditions: Mostly clear, humid
Forecast: Partly cloudy tonight, thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 70s

Wilson wants to go shopping! The above scene WAS NOT STAGED. I had left my purse on my bed and Willy was nosing around and somehow ended up like this! We’ve been breaking out in spontanious laughter ever since. Somebody please take the poor boy to the mall!

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Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 10:28 Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 77 degrees F (25 C)
Conditions: Humid, partly cloudy
Forecast: Mostly clear tonight and tomorrow. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s

Well, I am FINALLY getting around to posting the pictures of the newly-invented car-top scooter carrier. My Dad came up with this and so far it is working really well! We tried a bike rack on top of Shuttlecraft (that’s my red Subaru, of course) but it was way too short. So this is what we ended up doing.

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Location: Armuchee, GA
Time - 10:30pm Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 72 degrees F (22 C)
Conditions: Cloudy, raining
Forecast: Thunderstorms today and tomorrow. Highs in the 80s, lows in the 70s

Well, as those of you who follow the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon probably know, registration for the 2010 race opened at midnight on August first. This year, however, I did not find myself getting up at 1am to sign up since I won’t be running. MCK does have three teams in the race this year - all three of them in the 400-mile marathon. Blake and Jen will be running the main teams and Phil will be taking the puppy team.

Dave of Little Mountain Siberian Huskies, one of my handlers in the 2009 150-mile mid-distance, has signed up for next year’s 150! He has run the race once before, in 2008.

The entrants as of August 1st are as follows.

From: http://www.beargrease.com/

Marathon List

1. Nancy Johnson
2. Odin Jorgenson
3. Jason Barron
4. John Barron
5. Matt Groth
6. Martin Koenig
7. Bino Fowler
8. Roger Johnson
9. Nathan Schroeder
10. Colleen Wallin
11. Matt Rossi
12. Curt Perano
13. Billy Snodgrass
14. Michael Bestgen
15. Jamie Nelson
16. Mark Stamm
17. Tim Roley
18. Shawn McCarty
19. Peter McClelland
20. Bruce Langmaid
21. RIta Wehseler
22. Jennifer Freking
23. Blake Freking
24. Phil Morrison

Mid Distance List

1. Amanda Vogel
2. J. R. Anderson
3. Dave Lundberg
4. Steven Duren
5. Jerry Papke
6. Joann Fortier
7. Eva Kolodji
8. Eric Morris
9. Don Galloway
10. Galloway Team 2
11. Clarke Garry
12. Linda Hart
13. Ngarewa Houston-Cummings
14. Bob Wright
15. Klaus Nieder
16. Elizabeth Levitski
17. Robin Beall
18. Dave Turner

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