It’s Never Easy!

In a few recent posts I have used the expression “It’s never easy!” On reflection, I thought it might be useful for me to explain a little more about that. So, here goes:

If you spend some time at the Kennel, the two expressions you will probably hear most often are “We’ve got a lot to do!” and “It’s never easy!” Both are equally ture. The former simply because of all the many demands of racing over 60 sled dogs, and the latter because, well, things just never are easy in the interior Alaskan winter.

To illustrate this point, I’ve dug up a little video clip that I shot on our way home from the Sheep Mountain Race a couple of weeks ago. Here is the situation:

We were all exhausted after the race, but we wanted to get home. So, we hit the road for the 6 hour trip at about 6pm, “planning” to be back at the Kennel by about midnight. By now, however, you’ve probably gotten the picture that “plans” aren’t much good around here.

I drove the first leg of the trip and pulled into a place for us to get some coffee and change drivers. As we were getting out of the truck we heard, “Hey Allen… Alliy!” It was the voice of a fellow dog musher who was also on her way back from the race and had stopped at the same place, but whose truck would now not start.

Okay, so one of the things I’ve noticed around here is that everyone really goes out of their way to help others. I’m sure this is partly because it is just their nature to “do the right thing”, but I think it is also because they know that a problem which might be an “inconvenience” for someone in most places can truly be “life threatening” in these harsh conditions. You just don’t leave people to fend for themselves, because it could easiy be you in their place. Whatever the reason, folks really do go out of their way to help others around here, and this is especially true of Aliy and Allen.

Thus, we proceeded to spend about an hour trying to jump the battery on her truck — along with everything else we could think of to try — but to no avail. Despite all of our exhaustion, the dark, the cold, etc., we were able to diagnose that her alternator had gone dead and there was nothing to do but have a new one sent out. So, making sure that she had enough food for her dogs and that she could spend the night at the place we stopped, her friend Gregg joined us for the rest of the trip into Fairbanks to make arrangements.

Since I had driven the first leg of the trip, I stretched out in the back of the truck and took a little nap. I woke up a bit later, probably because the truck had stopped moving and there was some lively debate going on in the front seat. I looked out the window to see a real blizzard going on around us and a car stuck in the snow ahead of us. The driver of the car came back and asked us if we had a shovel he could borrow to dig out his car and Aliy said “Sure!” then proceeded to give him the shovel we use to clean up after the dogs when we drop them.

Now, that shovel is a truly vital piece of equipment in my current line of work, so I made the remark that “I hope he gives us our shovel back!” Well, in our mutual exhaustion my dark humor struck everyone a little funny and we had a bit of a laugh. A few minutes later, however, the cab of our truck became very quiet as we realized that the shovel alone was not going to be sufficient for the guy to get his car unstuck.

As you will see in the video, Gregg and Aliy went to the rescue of the driver — and our shovel! — just before a plow truck came along to both clear the road ahead for us and to pull the stranded vehicle to safety. The audio track is not very clear, so I’ve added subtitles to most of the dialogue in hopes that you will be able to appreciate — and perhaps forgive — our exhaustion-induced dark humor. After all, the point is that we stopped to help they guy, not that we had a few laughs at his expense, right?

This episode had added another hour or so to our travel time, plus we then had to make an hour long detour to take Gregg where he needed to go in Fairbanks. Thus, our “planned” 6 hour trip home eventually took us about 10 hours and it was early morning by the time we finally pulled into the Kennel. Like we say around here, “It’s never easy!”