In fact, I have not necessarily met too
many young people here at Lac Charland, nor does dog mushing leave you
particularly rich, but Stan and I DO have neighbors with the last names La
Jeunesse (the young) and La Fortune (the rich)!
So I made it! I arrived in Quebec on
Thursday, and just like when I flew through France last year on my way to
Benin, my brain overdosed a bit on all of the signs written and conversations
being spoken in French. I knew I was in the right country when I looked at the
TVs around the airport and they were all playing hockey (I am being serious,
not making a stereotypical joke) instead of the typical droning of CNN in US
airports.
Well, my little bubble of Canadian happiness
lasted all the way through the long customs line until I got to an agent and
was sent to secondary questioning in the immigration room. That is when things
got dicey. It went something like this:
Agent: What are you doing in Canada?
Me: Staying with a friend for the winter.
Agent: How old is your friend?
Me: Uh…..60 something?
Agent: How long have you known your friend?
Me: A year or so…
Agent: Have you met him in person?
Me: Well. No. But we skype!
That’s about the time that he took my
cellphone and proceeded to read everything-every text, every email, every
stupid little sticky note that I make to remember book titles and funny
thoughts-while I sat in the waiting room, thinking about what sort of body
language says “I-am-not-doing-anything-wrong-so-I-am-not-nervous-but-in-fact-you-are-starting-to-make-me-anxious-but-at-least-in-Canada-you-blatantly-read-people’s-emails-instead-of-sneakily-doing-it-like-my-country-does”.
That took a lot of thought, so the HALF HOUR that he spent reading really flew
by…Then he threatened to call my mom and dad (would they have loved that or
what!?), went through my bags, and then decided that I was actually too boring
of a person to detain any longer, so he let me go. Poor guy probably went home
and told his wife about the 20-year old girl who ran away from home to live
with an old guy she met on the internet. Super.
Anyway, Stan introduced me very quickly to
musher life after we drove two hours to his chalet and finally went to sleep at
midnight…5 hours later in fact. At dawn, I donned (ha, see how I did that?) my
first pair of long underwear and headed out with Stan to harness the first 10
dogs for our A-team (lest you get the wrong idea, I also put on other clothes).
Well, if you want to see mass hysteria, come to a dog kennel right before they
are about to run, at watering time, at feeding time…ok, basically if you want
to see mass hysteria, just come to a dog kennel period. Every day all 28 dogs
must be watered in the morning and fed at night…and it isn’t like a zoo where
you just turn on the hose and throw some meat in a cage, we are taking care of
athletes. Everything is measured, monitored, and repeated the same way each
day. It can take awhile, and could probably get mundane if you didn’t feel so
damn accomplished once all the tasks are done for the day.
Oh, and if the easiest way to convert
Celsius to Fahrenheit (something I am doing now given I have left one of the
five countries in the world that use Fahrenheit) is multiply it by two and add
32, the best way to figure out the amount of poop you pick up at a dog kennel,
take 28 and multiply it by however darn many times they feel like. I am going
to come back a poop expert though, because poop is a big time indicator of
health in a dog, so you never just pick up the poop, you give it a good once
over. In six months, if you ever need someone to spend some quality time with
your crap, I’m your gal. But only if it pertains to your health…I don’t look at
poop just for fun.
However, one of my favorite stories of the
first two days of musher life is a poop story. After the first run, Stan and I
were getting the dogs out of the harnesses and back in their spots in the
kennel, when Blue-the biggest dog in the kennel-who was still harnessed on the
line, decided to take a crap right there. We thanked him for his contribution
to the process of putting dogs back, and kept working on the other dogs. A few
minutes later, Stan asked me “Do you
know where Blue goes?” and I, not even trying to be cheeky said, “Well, I guess
wherever he stands.”
Of course, Stan meant where he goes in the kennel, not where he goes crap.
Well, it is a pretty fast learning curve
here at Miortuk, because in that first day, I learned both.
It's puppy time! Meet Yoda and Darth!
My camera died, but you can get a little taste of kennel crazy!
Today I went for a run through fall. It blew my mind.
For the honor and glory.
Which one is Balto?
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