February 9, 2000

Good Morning!

Things are really picking up around here. Iditarod is less then a month away and the work is building every day. Right now the pressing task is Food Drops - we are planning, acquiring, and packaging the approximately 2000lbs of food and gear needed to drive a dog team across Alaska. Everything needs to be ready to go to the shipping company on February 17th - no ands, ifs, or buts. We are hoping to have it all ready and in a freezer by early next week, so there is no danger of us missing the due date. I just need to find a freezer :)

Training on the dogs continues to go well. The dogs are strong and spunky! On Monday we did a 50 mile run and the dogs loped the last mile into the yard - that was sure nice to see! We are scaling back things a little now, shortening up the miles a little to keep the attitudes upbeat! The Goose Bay that we had planned on running last weekend was postponed for 2 weeks due to unseasonably warm weather. We are still going to run it, but we will just treat it as a fun weekend and not push the dogs at all. It should be a good time! Jamie Nelson and her crew arrived from Minnesota. Jamie has been helping me prepare for the Race since last year and it is sure nice to have her around again. I so much appreciate her help and advice, especially since she is busy getting her own team ready for Iditarod!

All for now!