What a month February 2008 was, flew to Southern California for a week of training on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and have to admit I enjoyed the weather. At 60 above folks are walking around with coats and sweaters and I was thinking a t-shirt would be more in line for the temps 70’s;
I did get to visit with some family, my mom, brother, and nephew. Mom’s not doing to good, so it’s a good thing I have to go back in September and get to visit longer than I did this on trip. Well enough of that for now, I just hope she’s still around then …
I got back home Saturday night, Feb 8th and the temps were a bit cool to go riding at a chilly -25 below. It did get warmer the following week, fact is we broke some records for the highs, started out in the 30 above range and actually hit 41 above on the 20th, wow a new record high for the day, felt like spring. But it got back to normal this week and thank goodness for that, it’s just to darn early for spring melt. I want at least a couple more months of riding.
Saturday the 16th I volunteered to help at the finish of the Iron Dog. Talk about a lot of folks hanging out on the ice. It was a heck of race from all I heard. Todd Palin, husband of our wonderful Governor broke his arm in a crash and still rode for 400 mile to the finish. He was nicked named 1st Dude, but its now Tough Dude..
And talking about riding, on the 17th Feb we had our annual Sweetheart Run, down the Tanana from Fairbanks to Nenana, 120 miles RT on the river and as always an excellent trip. We started out with 24 sleds out of Compeaus and by time we made it to Nenana there was 33 sleds all told.
The ride down was a bit more interesting than usual. The temps were 32f above, excellent, just about sun tanning weather and with the sun reflecting off that ice you could of got a sunburn you’d never forget. Anyway, the interesting part started when one the guy’s in the back of group starting having trouble with his helmet and face mask icing up. So Paul running drag stopped to help and I stopped the rest of the group at about 13 miles down the river. Actually I always stop the ride at this point to make sure we haven’t lost anyone, so we waited for Paul to catch up, and waited, and waited, and waited. After 45 minutes Shane drove back to see where Paul was and after 15 minutes of Shane being gone I asked Jody and Steve to lead the rest of the group on down towards Nenana while Don and I went back to see what was what.
About a ½ mile back we run into Shane and he said that Paul was no where to be found, hum, but he did see what he thought was Paul’s tracks heading down a different track in the right direction, so OK, Paul knows the route and rides a lot in the flats, so we’ll catch up to him farther down river.
As Don, Shane, Dave and wife and I are heading back we get to a slough that goes into the Tanana Flats and guess what, yup, this is not the trail and from the tracks we saw it is the way Jody took the rest of group. Ok, so Don and I decided that before they get to far in the flat, which woulda coulda taken them past Nenana and all the way to Healy, assuming they didn’t run out of gas first, we’d better catch up to them and get them back on the right track.
Fortunately within 1/2 a mile here they come heading towards us and back to the river. After a little diverting through another slough and through some willows we hit the main channel and made it to the Monderosa for lunch, a bit late, but better late than never I say.
A good lunch, some gas and back to town as a group and on the same track of the river, no diversions, lost sweeps or any other mishaps, bummer, as long as no one gets hurt or truly lost, the diversions kind of keep it interesting.
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