That was totally wicked!!!

For the past 6 years (basically since I've lived in PA on my own - meaning without my parents) I always drag myself out in the bitterly cold to watch the Canadian Sled Dog Challenge. One year I even went out to watch them come in and close the race. To me there's something really exciting and ...well...Canadian about watching them. Maybe it has to do with the fact that when I was 5 I jumped off my bunkbed and landed feet first onto a miniature wooden dog sled. The handle part at the back broke and stabbed into the sole of my foot. I don't know, but the whole idea of battling the frigid cold and terrain with just a pack of dogs and a sled is really exciting (something you'd NEVER see on Survivor). This is just something that you don't see in very many places. I feel proud that I can experience a little bit of it. Now that I have children of my own, I drag them out to watch too. So that's what we did today. Right after my bible study we came home to pack on the clothes and headed out to the Lil' Red to watch the dog sleds. The kids were totally excited until we got out there and waited in the freezing wind for the first sled to come. But they lasted longer than we thought they would and Matthias, altho' complaining that he was cold, kept making snow angels in the ditch all the way back to the van.

We were watching them at the turn off the main road to Pine Grove. The organizers did it differently this year, as they had them run around the Lil' Red Park. Which maybe had it's good points, I don't know, but what I do know is that where we were watching, the road was pure ice. We watched 7 sleds go by and 4 of them slowed right down to a stop to turn the corner and one tragically overturned and both the musher and the passenger were thrown from the sled. The musher seemed a little out of it and the passenger had a bleeding nose, but otherwise unscathed. Steve felt like a hero as he ran ahead to catch the runaway dogs. That's my man!

Then we drove out to Emma Lake (my parents are looking at cabins out there) and on the way back we passed a HUGE accident that invovled a semi-truck and an SUV. The front tires of the trailer on the truck were completely destroyed and the whole front of the SUV was bashed in. Steve said it looked like the SUV hit the semi, got sucked under and spun out. I hope everyone was alright. The crash was right beside where the dogs run, so that too, I hope they are all alright.

And that's been our day so far. At least Steve is feeling better!