Housekeeping - Bet

OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOY!!!!!!!!

The Musher is coming home and Richard is coming with her!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just got the word that they've packed up and are on the road home!!!!!!!

OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOY!!!!!!!!

OH... oops, I have some housekeeping to do before they get home!!!!!

Ok, first things first... I never got around to telling everybodies about booties!!!!  We had so many questions about booties and with all of the excitement... and then all of the pouting while waiting for the drop bags to get returned, I almost completely forgot to do a blog about booties!

Ok, so here goes.

Just to refresh your memories, our resident Bootie Minion Donna makes all of the Pretty Curly Tail racing booties and has been making the booties for 10 years now.

Donna dons her protective teachers gear

This year, Donna made approximately 1,300 booties.  That's a LOT of booties!  She also made all of the bandanas that the Pretty Curly Tails wear, and are given out as gifts to those who sponsor the Pretty Curly Tail Past, Future, and Present stars.

Donna is a teacher, so in between teaching, she makes the booties in batches like a production factory; cutting them all out, then sorting by size, sewing seams, then adding the velcro and stuffs... and things. 




Her husband and friends of Pretty Curly Tails help her turn and mark them, then they all get sorted and packaged by the checkpoint they are going to.  All in all, it can take a few months to make all of those booties.  She always tries to get them done by Thanksgiving and mailed out so they make it to North Wapiti in time for the Musher to take them to Alaska when they go train.

Pile of booties

Here are some different sized booties.  Notice that they are color coded to tell very tired Musher what size they are just by looking at them.

 And here are the Pretty Curly Tails wearing Donna F minions booties at the ceremonial start!

Ok, that's that about booties.  I hope that answered all of your questions.

The other thing I wanted to tell all of you about was the cool thing that happened to the Minions when they were on their way to Alaska!

As you probably know (if not, you should start at the beginning of the blog and read it all before reading any further) is that Musher Mark is a HUGEY HUGE rabid NASCAR fan.  Seriously... RABID fan!

The day we were to leave for the Canadian Challenge last year, one of those drive in circle races was on and ... well there was a lot of kicking and screaming going on.

 

Ok, so I think I've made it perfectly clear just how addicted Musher Mark is to this racing around in a circle thing. 

Well, the original plan was that Musher Mark was suppose to fly to Alaska for Iditarod race support, but some things fell through, and happened, and stuff and things, and he couldn't go... but if he had gone, he was going to fly to Alaska via Phoenix... yes, Canada to Arizona, to Alaska... I don't make the whole flight plans for planes, so don't look at me, but that's how it was scheduled.

So, the Minions and friends are on the plane thing in Charolotte, North Carolina waiting to take off, and a woman, baby, small child and a Yorkie dog get on board and sit in the bulkhead row, which means no place for the little Yorkie dog under the seat.  Bill and Polly (good friends of North Wapiti) offer to keep the Yorkie company in their seat space.  The woman's husband then boards and they all fly to Phoenix.

As it came time to start landing... it turns out that the husband is:

 Casey Mears, NASCAR Driver #13 (Geico)

Yep!  So being nice minions, they have something for Musher Mark that they gave to the Musher to bring home for him:

I bet it goes under his pillow.

Anyhooo, that's about it for the whole housekeeping thing.  I can't think of any other housekeeping things I need to take care of.  Now its just a matter of time for the Musher, Richard, and Pretty Curly Tails to come home, get settled in, massage my crampy toes, unpack, and get back into the routine of things.  Once that happens, the Musher will start her always amazing blog posts of the race, so stay tuned for all of that...

Yep, I'm pretty sure there isn't anything I've forgotten to take care of, but let me know if I can clear up any questions or stuffs... and things.  I'll be just hanging out on the cloud waiting.

- Bet