The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is still a month and a half away, but the mid-distance racing season started earlier this month.  Some of these races are qualifiers for the Iditarod, and many of the top mushers run them to warm up and shake down their teams.  Prize money for w inning a shorter race, of course, helps keep the dogs fed, and pays entry fees for other races.  The dogs love to run, and my experience of mushers suggests that they're pretty much addicted to the trail and the competition.

Lance Mackey in 2006

As I've been looking over the lists of entrants for this year's races, a lot of familiar family names have shown up.  For some mushing families, dog rearing, training and racing is a way of life.  Lance Mackey's father, Dick, was one of the founders of the Iditarod and an early winner.  A few years later, Lance's eldest brother Rick won the Iditarod.  Lance has had some respectable finishes in the Iditarod, and has won the Yukon Quest twice.  This year, Lance won the inaugural Cantwell Classic 200 race, and his son Cain finished fourth in the Junior Cantwell Classic.

When I first came to Alaska in the 'seventies, Roxy Wright was a star sprint musher.  A decade ago, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Mush with PRIDE (providing responsible information on a dog's environment).  For several years, some of the highlights of the Iditarod for me have been Roxy's reports from the trail as she follows her son Ramy Brooks all the way from Anchorage to Nome.

Dan Seavey was another of those who helped Joe Redington, Sr. start the Iditarod.  His son Mitch has won the race, and three of Mitch's sons have completed the run to Nome.  The Redingtons are another multi-generational mushing family.

Denali National Park Ranger and current Iditarod Champion Jeff King has three daughters who raise and train dogs and let their father race them.  The eldest, Cali, has run the Iditarod herself.

Today is the start of the Kuskokwim 300.  Two father and son pairs will be competing.  Mike Williams, Sr., above, is one of my favorite mushers and one of few Alaska Natives who continues running the Iditarod since the preparation and competition have become too expensive for most village dwellers.  Mike finds the sponsors somehow, and always makes it known that he is, "mushing for sobriety," in support of the Sobriety Movement.  This year his son Mike Junior is competing against him (and a full roster of other mushing greats) in the Kusko.

My neighbor, four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser, who wins awards for his exemplary dog care on the trail and at  Happy Trails Kennels, and who supports a number of worthy local efforts including Battle of the Books, named his two sons after checkpoints on the Iditarod Trail.  This year, Nicolai is away at college and his younger brother Rohn, above, is competing against their dad in the Kusko.  Rohn finished second in the Junior Iditarod in 2005 and 2006.

Martin is... well, "nice guy" sorta says it but doesn't begin to encompass the man.  In 2005 he won "Most Inspirational Musher" for running the Iditarod with a bandaged hand after having cut off a finger in a table saw accident in the week before the race.  He wasn't an American citizen when he started winning the Iditarod, but at one of his wins he was met in Nome by an INS representative for his naturalization ceremony.  His race sponsors include our ISP and the veterinarian who takes care of his dogs and our dog and cats.

During a big forest fire in the 'nineties, he got into some brief and minor
legal trouble for commandeering a fireboat on Big Lake when he found it
just floating there at the dock doing nothing.  He and some friends made good use
of it and saved some property around the lake.  One day a couple of years ago, I ran into Martin while we were both shopping at the Salvation Army Store.  One of the clerks told him someone had donated one of his Iditarod trading cards, and he enhanced its value for Sally Ann by autographing it.  Gotta love the guy.

So, here's the current dog racing news:

Allen Moore of Two Rivers, Alaska won the Copper Basin 300, crossing the finish line in Glennallen at 9:16 PM on Monday, January 15. He finished the race in 58 hours and 58 minutes. His average speed on the trail was 7.7 miles per hour.

As I said, the Kuskokwim 300 starts in Bethel today, in about three and a half hours.   Rohn Buser drew the #1 starting position, with Ramy Brooks, Jeff King and Aliy Zirkle (below) out behind him in that order.  Rohn's dad drew the last start, #19.

The Yukon Quest begins in Whitehorse on February 10 with 31 mushers.   To date 18 registered Iditarod mushers have withdrawn this year, leaving that field at 91 with 42 days to go until the start.

 

Greyfox blogged today about hitting a moose.  Reading over my shoulder, Doug said, "Greyfox has entered the digital age... has a crisis and blogs about it before the adrenaline wears off."

The wood seller didn't call Wednesday night as his wife had promised.  His daughter called Thursday morning.  I ordered two cords of green birch and dry spruce -- which means that they are cutting live birch trees or salvaging those that have been bulldozed for building sites, and are salvaging beetle-killed spruce trees.  Our first cord has been promised for Jan. 24, the second one around the end of the month.

Doug thinks we have enough wood to last, but none of it is easily accessible and some is too long for the stove.  He will have to dig around in the snow to find stray pieces from the edges of the woodpile.  If we use all that up, there are some downed trees he can cut up with the bow saw.

The wood seller won't take a check or credit card, so I had to go to the credit union and withdraw cash.  There was nothing unexpected in that.  Wherever possible, people around here deal in cash.  I had books to return to the library anyway, have been consuming them at a rate of more than one a day, so Doug and I went to Willow yesterday.

We loaded the hatch with jugs and buckets, and stopped at the spring on the way back.  Heavy traffic there, someone getting water when we pulled up, someone else with just one jug who slipped in and filled hers while Doug was carrying two of ours up the trail, and someone else who was waiting when we pulled away. 

I got a picture of Flat Maddie at the waterhole.  I had captured one at Kashwitna Lake, even though overcast sky spoiled the view of Mount McKinley.  After the water stop, we stopped at the local camper park and got her picture with a flat moose.  Maddie wanted an Alaskan adventure, but it wasn't as interesting as it might have been at another time of year or if the weather had been sunnier this month.

Doug did all the work on the water run.  I'm still feeling shaky and weak, but other that and the hives, which are getting better, I'm feeling well.  The hives were the last straw for me, motivating me to clean up my diet and cut out the allergenic-addictive crap I'd been eating.  Actually, the thing that caused the hives was a new allergy for me:  sage.  It was in the stuffing for our Christmas turkey, which I shouldn't have eaten anyway because it was made from wheat bread.  To add to the effect of that, when the stuffing was gone I was sprinkling sage on my warmed-over turkey meals.  I hadn't had hives since I was a kid, when it was oranges that caused them.  Oh, well....

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

One of the comments on yesterday's entry convinced me, once again, that I hadn't been expressing myself fully or accurately.  I'll get that old business out of the way first.

First of all, my blood sugar is level and stable today.  Yesterday was day one, and I had suddenly gone from dangerously high-carb gluttonous addictive indulgence to a reasonably healthy diet.  My irritability and weepiness yesterday were mild compared to similar episodes of carb withdrawal I've gone through in the past.  I had slipped gradually into addictive eating, but caught it before it got to an extreme level.

I have no doubt that I will be able to stick with the low-carb cleansing program for the two weeks that it takes to kill off the yeast overgrowth I allowed to happen when I resumed eating wheat last fall.  For my blood sugar levels, the less carbs the better.  I have reactive hypoglycemia, insulin resistance.  When I eat high carb foods, I get into a spike-and-crash pattern. 

After this two-week Candida cleanse, I intend to be back on my sugar-free, wheat-free, gluten-free, low carb, high fiber, weird and healthy diet.  I had temporarily lapsed into the stinkin' "Is life without pizza (and turkey stuffing) really worth living?" thinkin'.  After enough of these experiences it doesn't take me long to realize that life without addictive/allergenic poison is more worth living than it is the way I end up feeling when I indulge. 

The trouble is that when I stick to the foods I'm not allergic to (and consequently not addicted to), I get to feeling so well that I begin to feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, like a typical addict in recovery.  Always, when we start feeling bulletproof, addicts tend to shoot ourselves in the foot just to prove it. 

Some of my fellow dope fiends in NA think that my addictions to wheat and sugar are mild and funny compared to their struggles with harder drugs.  The funny thing, to me, is that I kicked meth and barbiturates over thirty-five years ago and haven't relapsed.  My last alcohol relapse was over fourteen years ago, and abstinence from booze, meth and downers has been effortless.  It takes vigilance and self-control to resist the fragrant bakery aisles in the supermarket, though -- vigilance, self-control, and an occasional reminder that I'm not bulletproof.

Today I reached a woman who said her husband has some green birch and dry spruce for sale.  He's supposed to get back to me tonight.  Last year, I had asked him to cut my wood to a maximum length of 11 inches, and he thought he did okay giving me wood at an average length of 11 inches.  What that means is that for much of this winter we've had fire falling out of the stove when we open it.  I prefer being able to put the wood in front-to-back and avoid the fallout, but that's why we keep the ash bucket in front of the stove.  I'm not going to stress over it.

That's something else I meant to say, Pauline.  You're preaching to the choir when you tell me not to stress, that stuff will work out.  I know that.  EWOP:  everything works out perfectly -- I know this.  I just don't repeat it very often because everyone who knows me has already heard it ad nauseam.  When I said that if we didn't find any firewood, I wouldn't have the houseplants to worry about any more, I was looking on the bright side in a way, but really it was just a joke.

I set myself up for stress when I took on a bunch of tropical plants in a subarctic environment.  It's mild stress, admittedly.   The firewood search was no-stress, really.  The worst that could have happened was that I'd have to take the chainsaw up the road for an overhaul because it hasn't been run for a few years.  Then I would probably go get Charley (Doug's dad and one of my best friends) to come supervise and instruct Doug on the safe and effective use of a chainsaw, since I can no longer stand the vibration and exhaust fumes.  A visit with Charley is the opposite of stressful, as long as Greyfox isn't around.  The last time I really stressed about anything was during the first few months after Greyfox got clean and sober in 2003, when I kept wondering how long it would last.  I'm over that.

I used to be bipolar type II, hypomanic, mostly depressed.  Some of those depressive episodes got to the suicidal level.  Then I learned how to cycle from positive to neutral, and now I'm learning how to transcend all that dualistic positive/negative bullshit.  Life is joy.  Pain is part of life; suffering is optional.  No kidding, no joke -- yesterday was the roughest day I've had in years.  I set myself up for it by forgetting I'm not bulletproof and questioning whether healthy abstinence is preferable to sick addictive indulgence.  Even so, that "roughest day" was mostly neutral, just a few weepy moments when cat antics challenged me, and a couple of little irritable responses to Doug and the cats when they thwarted me.  I'm over it today... and my blood sugar is more stable than it has been in several months.

I hesitate even to mention the weather, what with California having lost so many crops and the middle states iced up and blacked out, but I won't hesitate very long. 

It is COLD.  That Arctic air mass that moved down over the lower 48 had been hanging on here for a couple of weeks with temps down in the mid-thirties subzero, before it moved on.  We had several days after that of mild temperatures, single and double digits above zero, before it cooled off again.  Last night it was twenty below here.

A convergence of factors drew me out of the house for a day during the mild spell.  I had promises to keep to Flat Maddie (a friend who arrived in the mail from Wisconsin last month), I had read everything on hand that held any interest for me, we were running out of cat food and kitty litter, and Greyfox had a bunch of groceries for me that were taking up space that he needed before the weekend gun show.

I made a stop at the library, several photo ops with Flat Maddie, had lunch with Greyfox and then shifted 25- and 50-pound bags at the warehouse store (by myself, of course -- he can't do heavy lifting) before returning to his place at dusk to load up the stuff that was taking up space in his car and cabin.  It was a day or two after that before I knew how much I'd hurt myself.  I hadn't been ready for that much activity, and I still have not recovered after four days of rest.

I'm beginning a Candida cleansing two weeks today, no fruit, beans, grains, starches or other high-carb foods, just eggs, fish, poultry and leafy greens.  Hypoglycemia is where I'm at today, irritable and weepy.  One of the kittens climbed the poly sheet over the front window, leaving claw holes in it that I will have to tape up when I'm done here.  When she came down, she knocked over a potted plant, another mess I'll need to clean up.  As I righted the plant, I was crying.  I don't usually cry over little stuff like that.  I'll just chalk it up to my weakened condition.

Doug told me yesterday that we have about a week's worth of firewood left, and I still have not found anyone around here with wood for sale.  If I don't find someone soon, at least I won't have those houseplants to worry about any more.  If it doesn't warm up soon, the wood we have won't even last a week.  There are some pieces in the yard now, too long for the stove, that he can cut with a hand saw, but that's going to be unpleasant verging on dangerous at these temperatures.

Right now, I need to go put more wood in the stove and try to motivate Doug to go back out and dig around to see if he can find more wood under the snow.  Later....

A week or two ago, Doug turned from whatever he had been writing and asked me, "Just what IS the precise definition of "flaky?"  I tossed out a few words such as unreliable and inconsistent, then said, "Look in the dictionary beside the word 'flaky' and you'll see a picture of me."  I guess it's the one word, besides "spacy," that has been applied to me more than any other.

I wasn't out of bed yet today when probably the best synonym for flaky popped into my mind:  erratic.  That's me, fershure.  Most of the time, I'm happy, joyous and free, at peace with myself, the world, and everyone in it.  Then, something will nudge me out of my state of hozho, and I feel like pouring the whole world, including myself, a big dose of

Other times, I'd just like to swallow a handful of

My mental focus has been chaotic lately, jumping all over the place even more than usual.  I have started two new blog entries, one with a psychosocial slant and the other more semantical in nature.  Unable to concentrate and focus on finishing either one of them or starting something new, yesterday I did some long-neglected revision on an old post.

I added some new pictures, tightened up the prose, and gave it a title since it predates that nifty xTools feature.  It is now called, "I dreamed I was half naked...".

Since I barely find enough time at the computer to write and post entries here, much less read what you've been writing, or do the XHTML and CSS work on the two new websites I'm supposed to be building, I decided to branch out in two new directions, to care2.com/susitnasue and to tribe.net, where I am Kathy Lynn.

None of those commitments, nor all of them together, is enough to keep this mind from flitting from one new focus to another.  For example, there's this:

In case you don't recognize it, this is the latest thing in floor plans for warehouses.  The engineers at University of Arkansas and Auburn University who designed it call it "fishbone."  They estimate it will save about 20% on pallet pickup time over the now-standard rectilinear shelving arrangement.  This is one of those things that I just looked at and thought, first, "yeah!" and next, "Why did it take this long to get it?" 

Now I'm wondering how long it will take before it catches on and takes over.  I can't see very many companies rearranging existing warehouses.  The legs on those steel pallet racks are set into the concrete floors.  It may take a while before even every new warehouse will be built this way, I suppose.

It's cold here, about twenty below zero Fahrenheit.  That's about thirty below zero Celsius.  Since I sat down here this morning, I've gotten up twice to stuff more firewood into the stove, and once more to remove my footwear and add a pair of wool socks inside the polar fleece socks, polar fleece booties and down-filled booties I was already wearing. 

Warm feet are happy feet, a joy, indeed!  I'm happy, but not because my feet are warm.  I'm not happy because of anything.  I'm just happy because I like being happy so I choose to feel joy -- for now, until I forget and once again slip out of hozho.

As if winter cold and deepening snow weren't enough to occupy whatever thoughts I have left over from my online activities and the news of the world, in just 53 more days -- GUESS WHAT!

Iditarod XXXV

One hundred and nine teams signed up and ten of them have already withdrawn, including children's book author Gary Paulsen from New Mexico and local musher Ted English.  Of the 99 still set to start on March 3, sixteen are women, eight entrants are from outside the U.S., and thirty-six are rookies, running the Last Great Race for the very first time.

One of the rookies is Hernan Maquieira from Argentina.  Last year, he was here during Iditarod handling dogs for Italian musher Fabrizio Lovati.  This year he will be running Lovati's puppy team.  Isn't he beautiful?  So is his wife.

Did you know that they have sled dog racing in South America?  It's true.  Hernan is a three-time winner of the Ushuaia Sled Dog Race, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

DON'T PUSH THIS BUTTON!

A couple of days ago, Greyfox posted his predictions for 2007.  Last weekend, when he told me of his intention, he suggested that we each post predictions for the new year.  My response was tentative.  I said that I generally don't make predictions, but I'd think about it.

Several weeks previously, the_bear had made a somewhat different request.  I had been telling him about my arrangement or "deal" with my Spirit Guides.  In brief, it's like this:  almost forty years ago, when my Third Eye first opened up, I had become obsessed with knowing what was going to happen.  In addition to the prophetic dreams I was having, I did predictive Tarot readings for myself every day.  Life as it played itself out then became filled with moments of deja vu.

I began to miss spontaneity and surprise.  It just felt weird, living that way, so in meditative consultation with the Guides who had been indulging my hunger for foresight, we reached a new agreement.  I would deal with each ordinary day as it came, and they would let me know if there was something really momentous, pivotal or critical just around the corner so I could be better prepared to deal with the big stuff and to grasp important opportunities.  After I told the_bear about that, he asked me to share with him whatever my guides might reveal about upcoming events. 

When I dropped the obsessive focus on future events, I turned my focus onto NOW, paying attention to what's going on right here where I am and to the full range of all my senses.  As I perceive what is, and detect the trends of where it is going, I reason about what might become from it.  All I have been getting from my Guides lately has been general confirmation that what I surmise, from my observations and the news I hear, is reasonable, logical, probable. 

What I can surmise from that is that earthquakes are likely, but planetary collisions with asteroids or big cometary debris are unlikely.  Continued war and ecological destruction are more likely than a sudden outbreak of peace and sanity.  The super-rich will continue to grow richer, while the merely wealthy and the striving middle class become more resentful of the super-rich, and the list of tools, toys, opportunities, necessities, and luxuries enjoyed by those classes, without which those of us in the lowest economic class must exist, will continue to expand.  Despite all that, for those of us who are awake and aware, there are ever-expanding opportunities for joy, growth, and attainment on the inner planes.

As I said above, I don't generally make predictions.  When I do readings for individuals, I concentrate on telling them what is going on now, particularly what they may be ignoring, denying or failing to notice.  When I'm addressing the whole world, about the whole world, it's a little hard to guess what my small audience of individual readers might or might not be denying, so I'm just telling it like it is in as much detail as I can.  Previously, I had used either a ten-card Tree of Life spread or a 21-card Gypsy spread for such readings, but today the Guides suggested that I focus more on our collective spiritual state, with the 9-card Cross and Triangle spread.  For it, I am using only the major arcana from The Enochian Tarot.

It lays out something like this:
[(R) indicates a card reversed]                       

We were without phone or net from about noon yesterday until almost dark today.  Doug walked to a neighbor yesterday afternoon to determine whether it was just ours or a general outage.  Theirs was out, too. 

The outage initially happened about the time that Greyfox usually calls me from the library or some other public phone in town.  He saves most of his cell phone minutes for after nine PM, because he has more of those off-peak minutes available.  I figured that he would have tried calling in the afternoon and, not getting a response, would give it up, with a plan to try again after nine.

After nine, I was pretty sure that he was frustrated and concerned over not being able to get through.  I sorta sense those things, being empathetic and all.  I sent him all the reassuring vibes I could, but he's not quite so empathetic.  I don't think he got my message.

Between ten and eleven last night, suddenly there was a bright spotlight shining in our front window.  Doug thought it might be phone repair.  It turned out to be Trooper Covey, doing a welfare check at Greyfox's request.  He wanted to know if everything was all right here, and said my husband was worried.  I said we were fine but the phones were out.

He suggested I use his cell phone to call Greyfox and let him know I was okay.  I did that although, being in a bit of a cell black hole here, the signal was breaking up even as I listened to it ringing before Greyfox picked up.  I got a chance to tell him that it was just phone problems and to listen to a choppy broken-up bit of his rant about trying to call the phone company and getting a voice mail menu.  It was his usual Luddite rant, so when the signal was lost altogether, I just gave Trooper Covey's phone back to him and thanked him for coming by.

 This afternoon, Doug went out again to see if any of the neighbors had phone service.  At the camper park he found a functioning phone and called for repair service.  They wouldn't accept the request from him because the account is in my name.  He came back, we turned on the car's engine block heater for an hour or so, and I drove up to the camper park, being in no shape for that walk in the cold and deep fresh snow.

In addition to requesting phone repair, I got Doug added as an "adult with access" to the account so he can take care of such things in the future.  We sat there a while with David, who runs the camper park, and talked about computers.  He did most of the talking, and knows so much about the subject that we enjoyed listening.

When we got home, I asked Doug to try one more time to see if he could get a dial tone from the test jack on the pole behind the house.  He did, it worked, and we were able to get the phones working inside the house with a bit of fiddling, so we called repair service and headed them off at the pass.  We don't know why our phones didn't come back on when everyone else's did, but if they had I'd have missed that interesting conversation with David, so I don't mind.

I want you to know that I appreciate all your wishes for my improved health after that latest entry, but especially HomerTheBrave for the sound advice to drink lots of water.  ...and I'm the one who is always advising people to, "drink lots of water," to deal with infections.  I suppose everyone can use a little help to remember what to do at those times when nothing seems to be working right.

It is New Year's Day, 2007.  That's the first time I've written the new year, must remember it's not 06 anymore.  Yesterday during one of several phone conversations, Greyfox suggested that one of us call the other around midnight for a "Happy..." greeting call.  He was going to go outside and set off the free fireworks he'd gotten through some come-on coupons sent out by Gorilla Fireworks, a huge complex of family-owned stands on both sides of the highway at his end of the Valley.  Those stands, outside of any town or city limits, serve all of the Matanuska and Susitna Valleys as well as Anchorage.  All the towns have anti-fireworks ordinances, covering both sale and use.  Our borough, I think, prohibits private fireworks displays without a permit, and often during summer bans them outright.  Since it doesn't quite get dark on the Fourth of July, most of us do most of our fireworks at New Years anyway, and nobody I know ever bothers with a permit.

 

Doug and I had acquired a load of fireworks, both free and discount-priced, over the past couple of years, that we hadn't yet set off.  We had been thinking about and discussing for several days making some noise and pretty colors for the new year.  That was a few days ago, when it was warmer outside, with temps in the teens and twenties above zero.  Yesterday the temp started to fall.  By 10 PM or so, when Doug went out to bring in firewood, it was a few degrees below zero.

I thought, very briefly, about getting high.  Alcohol was out of the question, even though there's some Everclear left in the old bottle I use occasionally as a solvent in circumstances where more toxic solvents aren't appropriate, such as on skin.  It's out of the question because, to me, getting intoxicated on alcohol is nothing at all like getting high.  I even went so far as to dig out the old stash can that had turned up in housecleaning a couple of years ago, long after I'd stopped growing and smoking dope and had given away, I thought, all the weed I'd had.  I opened the can, sniffed the skunky aroma, shut the can, smiled, tucked the can away, and went back to reading my book.  There are some drugs that I find easy to resist, but if someone had offered me a cookie or waved a warm cinnamon roll under my nose, I'd probably have gone off on a wheat and sugar binge.  Go figure.