Dances with wolfs.... er... Natives

Alright all I must apologise for not blogging recently, it makes for large updates when it happens.

Kimberly and I are doing great! The weather has been very different lately... going from -40 with wind chill, to positave 10 in about 4 days. The snow fell again last monday, we recieved another couple inches over the week. The store is once again clean... Kimberly and I devoted some time to it last night after hours. We swept and mopped the floor, emptied the garbage cans, cleaned up some areas in the back of the store... Its really nice to have it back up and perdy looking. The ice is still ice, we have been told that after a heavy snow the ice will get submerged into the water, then refreeze, it was supposed to do that a couple times then it was going to be "safe" to walk on. I was told today by a good native friend that he wanted to take me across the river and take me hunting. Its really exciting to talk to him about it. He told me I should not talk to the other locals about it because the dont feel as open to "white people" as he does.

There was a Dogmushers fundraiser dance at the hall on friday night (12-1-06). I told people all day that we would most likely not show, I know that events like that are more of a party environment not so much a town meeting environment, and sure enough there was. There was alot of drinking going on durning the event. It was still nice to get out and see the town, the people, and hang out at the events. The biggest reason why we went was so that Kimberly could sign up for the passanger race... A passanger race is a race where there is a musher and you guessed it, a passanger riding in his sled. Kimberly got to ride with a really nice man. He asked us to come a bit early to his house so that he could get us comefortable with the sled, the dogs, and inform kimberly what her dutys were going to be during the race, basically he just told her that if they crash she needs to throw the anchor into the snow and stand on it so he can go straighten out the dogs without them running away. It was really an amazing site... Imagin about 25 dogs each with their own dog house, and about a 4 foot chain holding each of them to their own individual post in their own "property" (about 8' diameter circle). When the Musher got the HUGE bundle of harnesses out they ALL went TOTALLY CRAZY! ALL 25 of the dogs are sprinting in circles in their own little area... ALL 25 dogs barking and yelping... and MANY of them jumping up on their houses waiting on the ride. When they hooked them up they had the sled hooked up to a snow machine, that was done so that they could get the dogs hooked up without them running, it took about 10 minutes for 3 people to hook up the 10 dog team, and 1 by 1 as it was hooked up each one nearly scratched through the snow to the dirt by trying to leave, they were all fighting against the snow maching. Another reasont they hooked them up to the snow machine was because they didnt want them to get burnt out by the time they got to the starting line, so the snow machine held them back to prevent them from running full bore.

We finally got to the starting line, its a staggard race start, so i believe about every 2 minutes another team would leave. Kimberly was the 3rd team to leave. about 15 minutes after the last team left the first team came in, followed about 50 yards later by the 2nd team to leave. about 3-4 minutes later a team comes over the hill, it was Kimberlys, unfourtunatly shortly followed by the 4th team to leave (meaning that team made up the 2 minute staggared start just like the 2nd team did to the 1st). Her musher said he that was a horrible race, one of the worst, he had no idea his dogs would be that slow. He also told us that he knew he wasnt going to win unless basically the other teams fell off the edge of the earth, he looked at his calandar after telling us that, and told us that because of the construction he has not hardly been able to get his dogs out... He told us last year that he had 320 miles on his dogs by the 2nd of dec... He said hes gone about 24 miles on them this year so far, so they were ALL wild, not only that but they were all his small dogs untrained dogs, he knew he wasnt going to be able to get his big dogs trained out here so he sent them to fairbanks, im assuming to have them trained, but possibly just to put them in housing for the winter since he wasnt able to get them out. All in all it was a great opportunity, it was awesome to hang out with the people, and it was just fun to see. I have pictures ill work on getting up.