New Year's Eve bike ride - Trial run day 5

December 31, 2005

2005 is coming to a close and Pat and I met up at West Creek for one last ride. It was a perfect day, sunny and around 55º and not very windy. We pushed it a little bit for around a two hour ride. Pat, thanks for taking the picture. Thanks also for riding with me so much - I just found out I rode more miles in 2005 than I've ever ridden in one year.

It’s 33 days until the start of The Trip – trip planning will begin in earnest, or I should say more in earnest, early next week. I’ve got most of the supplies in place and it’s all just fine tuning now.

2005 has been a great year and I’m really looking forward to 2006. We’ll begin it tomorrow morning with our usual Sunday morning river walk. Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve Eve

December 30, 2005

I suppose there will be days like this on The Trip – maybe – days when not much is going on. It’s New Year’s Eve Eve, and the guy I work with on Friday mornings is out of town so all I’ve done is work around here. At least on the trip I'll be in a new place and seeing new things every day. But today has been a beautiful day, sunny and in the fifties and I’ve been productive. One of the things I’ve done is bring in the last of my woodpile – I’ll need to call my friend Boogie and ask him to bring me a new load. As of about fifteen minutes ago, there is no more firewood stacked behind my garage. But I’ve been having a lot of fires this year, and in early September, just about five months ago, my woodpile looked like this. And now there's not a stick.

Belated holiday get together

December 29, 2005

Today we got up real, real early and got to the river way before dawn and had a fantastic walk. From there it was back to the house, get ready and head up to Mom and Dad’s in the Shenandoah Valley for our full family holiday celebration. Mom, Dad, five kids, four significant others, five grandchildren, three dogs, tons of food, it was fabulous. Then back home and built a fire and I’m too tired to write.

Shane took a new picture of the dogs and me that I want to use for my personal profile. Notice, as always, Ivory lying on the ground observing while Nicky is up and ready to go.

But tonight I’m just going to add it to this post – I’ll work more tomorrow. It was an excellent holiday celebration. My nieces and brothers and sisters and in-laws and family are fantastic. Not to mention my dogs. I am an extremely fortunate person.

Yukon stuff

December 28, 2005

The Yukon Territory has around 31,000 residents; about 22,000 of them live in Whitehorse. The Yukon Territory is large enough to hold the states of California, Arizona, Delaware and West Virginia. By comparison, the combined population of those states is 40,000,000. Think about that for a minute.

This is a map of the Yukon Quest trail:

Trial Run Day 2 - Fountain Lake

One of my friends I usually spend time with on Wednesdays was out of town this morning. So I took the car to the shop early, then went down to the river with another friend of mine. Where, unfortunately, I didn't have my camera and didn't take any pictures. But later I went to Fountain Lake at Byrd Park and managed to snap this shot. It's very, very warm for the end of December.

Trial run, by Fred

December 27, 2005

I am a Rehabilitation Counselor and so, by extension, are my two dogs Nicky and Ivory. All three of us became rehabilitation counselors through a combination of training, temperament and life experience. Today we worked with a friend of ours named Fred, who is an excellent person and is recovering from a serious brain injury. Fred is an amateur photographer and he’s learning to use a camera again. Fred took this picture of Ivory and Nicky today.

First day of winter!

Since one of our friends was out of town we had a little free time this morning so we made a quick trip to the river. It was only 25º when we got out of the car at around 8:45 but it was a lovely morning and we had a great walk. Here are a couple more pictures of Ivory and Nicky at Pony Pasture:

Okay... new version, up and running

After a fashion, anyway. I'm republishing a couple of pictures I lost earlier - one of Ivory and Nicky at the river in the snow, one of Ivory and Nicky and my cat Annie at home. If you click on the pictures, they get a lot bigger.

The NEW first post

Just FYI - I began this blog a couple of weeks ago under a different title. I decided to change the title before it got too big, so I just took everything off it (there were only four short posts) and put it over here. On to the second post.

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blogspotInit(); Get your wagon unstuck

Thursday, December 08, 2005

To the river...

We leave eight weeks from today for The Trip. Ivory and Nicky and I went down to the river early this morning for a walk and to test out some of our cold weather gear. And to see what it felt like to use my tiny little camera while I was wearing gloves!

This morning when I looked at the weather forecast for Richmond at 6:30 EST, the temperature was 24º F. I looked at the temperature for Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, our destination for the trip. They're on Pacific time, so it was 3:30 AM - and the temperature was 39º! So we're getting used to the cold while we're here. Although I know it's going to be a whole lot colder for a whole lot longer up there.

I'm including a picture of the dogs from this morning. They're handsome guys and incredibly well behaved - but they don't pose for pictures very well!

Monday, November 28, 2005

Info about the Yukon Quest

This is the home page for the Yukon Quest:
Yukon Quest

Experimenting

Monday, November 28, 2005

I'm learning to blog. I'm also working on my web site. And if you're wondering about "Get your wagon unstuck," it's from a little maxim I heard somewhere and try to live by - "God will help you get your wagon unstuck, but only if you push it."

I'm also going to get a picture of my dogs in here soon. Today.

Ivory, Nicky, Annie

November, 2005

Sunday, November 27, 2005

The first post

It's 1030 PM (2230) EST on Saturday, November 26, 2005 - the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. And this is the first post of my blog as I prepare to depart with my dogs for Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory in northwest Canada on February 2, 2006. We're going to volunteer at the 2006 Yukon Quest 1,000-mile International Sled Dog Race. Anyway, I'll add more later. We're just getting started. Feel free to contact us any time. yukonmutts@comcast.net

I'll add more when I figure out what I'm doing with this thing. That is, with this blog.

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