#I need to out it on CCC But we’re supposed to keep it short and sweet... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blueeyesspitfire · 4 years

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The Tug Hill Challenge

The dogs and I had a hell of a weekend out in the forest! We attended the PSDC’s Tug Hill Challenge race, which is held about 20 minutes north in the Winona State Forest. Here’s the play by play, from what I can remember.

Friday

I took off work to give myself ample time to prepare our gear and the house for the weekend. My sister, Brianna, and her fiancé, Seth made their way up from New Jersey to help me out at the race, so that also meant picking up some groceries and making sure the guest room was tidy. There was also about 3” of snow on the driveway to clear, laundry to wash, and other weekend chores I wouldn’t have time for. Everything got done and we were ready for an anxious night of sleep around midnight.

Saturday

On day one, conditions were basically perfect for a race. I believe the truck temperature gauge read about -2°F as we made our way to CCC Camp, where the race was being held. I had prepared a giant thermos full of coffee, which I poured out into one of my Best Made camp mugs. Within a few minutes it was frozen solid, so that was a short-lived plan. Thankfully my gear did its job and I stayed mostly warm.

First up was the 8 AM driver’s meeting, where the club went over rules and what to expect out on the trail. I peaked around the room and saw lots of familiar faces, which is really one of the main reasons to attend these races. There aren’t many people doing this weird hobby, especially in the northeast, so it’s invigorating to have others around who are as passionate about the sport as I am. I’m especially grateful for the group of women mushers I’ve found, the support they give one another, and the caliber of care they provide their dogs. Truly an inspiring bunch and I’m honored to call them friends.

After the driver’s meeting, I collected my bib. We were number 30, first out the chute in the 6-dog class. My class (along with 8-dog and skijor) would run a 6.4 mile course each day of the race, the longest trail out of all the classes, but still considered a sprint distance. The class itself was broken up into three other classes: registered breed (purebred dogs with papers), all breed, and sportsman/woman (lower entry fee/no prize money). Five out of my six (Denali, Willow, Blitz, Hubble, and Laika) are registered purebred Siberian Huskies, but Knox is a rescue with no papers, so we ran in all breed. This has pros and cons—we’re up against the super speedy Eurohound mixes, which we really have no chance of beating. However, in this race, there were only three teams in the all breed, so we were guaranteed placement. In total, there were 15 entries between the three classes within 6-dog. A really awesome turnout!

Our chute time was 10:45 AM and it was in the teens, which tends to be my dogs’ favorite temperature. My “handlers” (Brianna and Seth), along with other mushers and spectating friends made sure we got to the starting chute right on time. First out meant we weren’t chasing anybody, but the dogs could definitely smell the previous class and were amped regardless.

The trail was hard and fast, and the dogs exploded out the chute. I had a professional team of hounds starting a minute behind me, and my first goal was to get the dogs through the first leg of trail (which culminates in a downhill into a sharp turn—right where spectators can see the action) before the other team caught us. It took longer than I anticipated for the hounds to reach us, and when they did, my gang handled the pass very well. The only thing they could’ve improved was moving to the right of the trail a bit more, but they all had good manners as the other dogs made their way by. After the pass, we chased the speedy team a bit, which definitely contributed to the dogs’ speed for the day. I looked down at our speedometer and the dogs were clocking 14-16 MPH for the first four or five miles, which is spectacular for them.

We got passed by another speedy team, and the dogs were fairly amped up until the last mile or so. We hit a wide trail that was exposed to the sun, and I could tell they were getting warm. Laika got her neckline wrapped around her leg, so I stopped to untangle her, which the team seemed to appreciate and took the opportunity to eat snow. I let them go slow, knowing the last bit of trail had some uphills that they’d need energy for.

By the last half mile, Knox was definitely running out of steam and Denali was trotting, which caused Laika to tangle in her tugline. I let the dogs pause in a shady spot and soaked up the moment with them, knowing in a few minutes they’d be running towards a crowded finish line.

Our first day finish wasn’t the cleanest, as Laika got spooked by the crowd. In her defense, there were kids spilling into the trail that shouldn’t have been there, which caused her to go over the center line and shove Knox over. Despite her shyness, we made it through, into the crowd, and back to the truck without any problems.

We completed the 6.4 mile trail in 27 minutes, 55 seconds on day one. This put us in 7th out of 15 teams, a very respectable run for the gang.

The rest of the day was a blur of helping other mushers, talking to friends who came to spectate, shoveling a hot dog into my face, and tending to the dogs. Later, we met up with a wonderful crew at the Ponderosa for dinner, and reveled in our successful runs.

Sunday

Stepping outside the morning of day two was like stepping into an entirely different season. Temperatures were already nearing 30 degrees before dawn, which would mean softer trail and slower dogs. My main concern was Knox. If he was sore from day one, or if temperatures were too warm for him to enjoy himself, I was prepared to drop him. Luckily, the day remained overcast and snowy, which kept things feeling fairly cold. Our chute time was 40 minutes earlier than the previous day, which helped us get out while things were still below freezing.

Knox seemed excited and didn’t show any signs of soreness, so he stayed on the team for day two. The only change I made was to swap Laika and Denali, since Laika is faster and could use the experience leading in a race. She’s also unlikely to tangle in lead with Willow. My only concern was whether she’d be confident enough to run through the crowded finish line.

We were the seventh team out this time, since our starting order was the order we placed on day one. The speedy hounds were down the trail long before us, and we were nestled among other mostly Siberian teams from what I could tell. My strategy for day two was to keep the dogs at a slower pace, not wanting them to get too warm or to expel all their energy too early. They still went fast—my speedometer read about 12-14 MPH—but I didn’t let them go all out. We caught up to the team ahead of us a few miles in, and I decided not to try and overtake them. We’d have to maintain a faster speed to stay ahead of them, and I figured the dogs would benefit from a team to chase.

Midway through the race, another team came up and passed us, which the dogs handled perfectly. Laika kept the team pinned to the right of the trail, which gave the other team plenty of room to get by us. We watched the two teams ahead leap frog each other a few times, but we didn’t get close enough to pass them at any point. They also appeared to get in a small tangle, so we kept a healthy distance to avoid adding to the problem.

The last leg of the trail went similarly to the previous day. The snow was softer and the uphills were tough, but Laika and Willow kept us moving forward. Again, I paused a few times to take in our surroundings and to thank the dogs for being perfect. Knox and Denali, despite turning nine later this year, kept up with the youngsters. Blitz and Willow were flawless. Laika, though nervous, shines in harness. Hubble, who I worried about being reactive with other dogs, watched three teams pass, and even stop alongside us briefly, without batting an eye. They did exactly what they were supposed to do and I couldn’t be happier with their performance.

Little Laika powered through her shyness and brought us into the finish line with Willow, 31 minutes and 27 seconds after we started. In total, we ran 12.8 miles in 59 minutes, 22 seconds and placed 8th out of 15 teams. We received third in all breed and even a bit of prize money (basically earning back our entry fee). But it’s not about money or the ranking, it’s about putting my trust in these dogs, their heritage, and our training.

My goal this weekend was to give the dogs race experience, both on the trail and at the truck. I hoped for clean runs and finishing each day in under 40 minutes, which we managed to smash. Compared to other teams comprised of purebred Siberians, we held our own. I can’t wait to see what next season brings and what we’ll be accomplishing a year from now.

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docholligay · 6 years

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CCC

This is OLD OLD stuff. I’m.....not entirely sure why I stopped cracking at it, it’s a little weak, but it has good bones. I can see where I’m going with it. Ah well, it’s about 2,300 warning taht I literally stop mid sentence

Censhi Combat Camp had always been Mina’s domain, stupid spelling and all. A week in the woods, away from it all, whether anyone else liked it or not. War games, one on one combat work, sparring, all that and some s’mores too. And it made a certain amount of logical sense—she was leader, and certainly if anyone knew how to polish her troops like chrome, it would be her.

But while she was willing to give Mina a certain amount of leeway in her methods, Rei was certain that, in some slight twist of destiny, she could have been leader. Number one, instead of number two. And, perhaps (not even truly perhaps, in her mind, but certainly) she would have been better at it than Mina.

Mina laughed when she asked to run CCC that year, but she’d agreed with a wave of her hand, and an insincere wish of good luck.

And now they were gathered in the woods.

“As the second in command,” Rei boomed, somehow making the word ‘second’ feel smaller than the rest of the sentence, “I’ve come up with an activity for us all to improve ourselves. I told all of you to bring a notebook and a pen.” she looked hard out at her audience, until Usagi clicked her donut pen on to assure Rei that she had, in fact, brought it, and that seemed enough a salute to her genius to allow Rei to continue. “Good. I want you to write—“

“Is it a poem about our feelings?” Mina called from her seat next to the fire pit.

Rei shook her head, her jet black hair casting decisive lines. “No, it’s—“

“There once was a girl named Michiru.” She grinned and tucked her hands behind her head.

“Mina.” Rei stared at her as if she could open up the floor beneath her.

“Whose butch swore her loyalty was true.”

“Mina.”

“But she laughed, ‘How absurd, I don’t know what you heard, I joined not for the war but to fuc—‘“

“MINA!!” She took her notebook, elegantly leatherbound, with her name in gold leaf on the cover and painstakingly chosen for the occasion, and, before she could think, threw it as hard as she could at Mina’s head. It was doubly disappointing when Mina caught it right in front of her face.

“Nice toss, but I think that’s a walk in any country.”

Rei ignored her and tossed her hair behind her head, ignoring the snickering coming up from the girls. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, her fists slowly unclenching.

“What we’re going to do,” she spoke slowly but firmly, “Is list our weaknesses,” she opened her eyes, refreshed, at looked out at the other girls, “your faults, your frailties, your failings, reasons you’re not a very good senshi, or a person even! There’s so much for us to improve.”

Mina sighed and buried her head in her palms. “Sheesh, Reinaldo.”

Rei ignored her and continued on. “I want you to think REALLY hard about what makes you a personal liability to the group. We’ll make our lists in our notebook, and then we’ll go over them together.” She put her hands on her hips proudly. “This will make us all stronger!”

The girls all looked back at her with a mild look of horror, save for Mina, who was walking to the cooler, and Michiru, who was studiously filing her nails.

“Okay, good!” she beamed in her obvious success. “Now everyone take your notebooks, and go sit for some quiet reflection.”

They grumbled, a bit, but they obeyed, and Rei grinned proudly as she walked around the campsite, her own notebook in hand. Mako sat cross-legged on top of the picnic table, Ami tucked inside the tent, Haruka sat out in the field of wildflowers, and Michiru sat neatly at the edge of a rock. It appeared she was using a watercolor palette. Oh well, she could write in watercolor, probably.

*****

She held up an elegant cream notebook. “Michiru, this is a painting of Haruka bent over her notebook in the wildflowers.” She looked seriously at Michiru, who shrugged.

Mina called from her space by the fire pit. “And somehow I feel like that’s a valid answer for her!”

Rei looked back at the tenderly rendered picture, and back out at Michiru, “I mean that’s not really—how are you supposed to—“she looked back at the notebook, every strand of Haruka’s hair delicately detailed. “I mean, THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT.”

Michiru shook her head softly. “My apologies, Lieutenant Commander Mars, I must have misunderstood the instruction.”

Rei put her hands on her hips, still clutching Michiru’s notebook. “Oh, you did not. Fine.” She tossed the notebook over her shoulder and picked up the next one, a glittering bright orange. “Ass is very distracting to Sailor Mars in batt—MINA.” She glowed a hot red, and even she was not sure if it was from anger or embarrassment.

“I feel like my ass is a real liability to the team! How can you possibly shoot straight—not that you do anything straight, mind—but I mean really, how, when you’re staring at this magnificent finely-carved marble?”

“Next.” Rei remarked flatly, picking up a notebook covered in donuts. “Sometimes, I,” she looked back out at the girls, “Oh look, SOMEONE took improving themselves seriously,” she cleared her throat and continued, “Sometimes, I take too much time to think over a situation, and lose the opportunity of a moment.” She looked at Usagi and shook the notebook at her. “You copied off Ami? Did you REALLY THINK I WOULD FALL FOR THIS, USAGI?”

Usagi grabbed the notebook from Rei’s hands and scrawled hurriedly. Cries when Rei is mean.

“Usagi!”

Usagi grabbed the red leatherbound notebook and wrote inside. Is mean.

There was a chuckle from the fire pit, and the sound of a beer cracking open. Mina was kicked back in her chair, one toe touching the ground.

Rei marched over to her. “And what are YOU doing?”

Mina took a drink. “Enjoying an ASTOUNDING amount of job security.”

Rei kicked over her chair and swiped the beer out of her hand grumpily. “Nobody is taking this seriously! I am just trying to improve all of you!”

Mina dusted herself off. “Who votes to keep ‘is mean’ on Rei’s list?”

Rei was astounded to see that the Senshi could all agree on one thing after all. See, her activities were getting somewhere. She picked up another notebook.

“I don’t think before I go sometimes.” She looked out at Haruka, who kicked at the ground with her foot. “Is that the only thing on your list? Really Haruka? I mean, it’s true, you don’t think, but there are so many more things I can think of that—“

“Rei.” Michiru spoke for the first time, and locked eyes with her, and the girls held their breath as neither of them moved or spoke.

Rei was strong, but not stronger than Michiru’s protection, and she acquiesced. “Anyway, at least you put down a real answer.”

Haruka stood up and kicked the chair behind her, throwing it a few feet to the dirt and very narrowly missing Mina, who did not so much as flinch. “This is fucking stupid anyway.” She pulled on her sweater despite the sun of the day, and pulled a beer out of the cooler as she walked away into the woods.

Michiru rose quietly. “Agreed.” She slipped off into the woods without another word.

Rei clapped her hands together. “Okay, so who’s ready to make ideas for improvement!?”

The girls sat silently, a tapestry of different looks on their faces: Boredom, sadness, frustration, and Mina, grinning in the back.

“Think you’ve lost ‘em, fireball.”

***

It was quiet at the campsite, after the hubbub of today. Mako was cooking something that smelled of cinnamon and citrus in the big cast iron pot, after a rich dinner. Michiru, Rei, and Pluto were off doing something…scrying, it might have been, something particular to their gifts, and for once, Mina approved of Rei’s tactic. The Seers each only had a piece of the puzzle, and they had to work together to build a picture. They had to. Lives depended on it.

She poked through the field, not thinking about much in the evening light, when a dash of white caught her eye. She picked it up, a crumpled piece of paper with cartoon teddy bears on the border, a list covering it, the writing harder and darker as it went down the list.

· Doesn’t hear very good

Runs into stuff without thinking

· Says shit I don’t mean

· Eats too much sugar

· Smokes (sometimes)

· Too loud

· Too skinny

· Doesn’t pay attention

· Stubborn

· Stupid

· Failure · Murderer

“Ah, bud,” she sighed heavily, “Rei I sure as shit hope you put ‘needs to cultivate people skills’ on your list.” She had noted Haruka’s absence at dinner, but that hardly mattered—Michiru had a campsite for the two of them off a ways, well-stocked with a canvas tent and a real bed, gourmet food and wine. It was about as rough as Michiru could bear to get, and it was nicer than some people’s apartments.

Mina tucked the note into her shorts and ambled over toward Haruka and Michiru’s campsite. It had been an almost certain fact that Haruka would take this thing too personally. Her and Ami both.

“I mean, technically you’re only an attempted murderer.”

“Do you think I’m a total fuck-up, Mina?”

“I mean, no more than the rest of us.”

Haruka snorted, and Mina patted her leg. “No, I’m serious! We’re all a little fucked, but you’re not a bad person, Haruka, I know bad people. Bad people do not sit by the creek and feed minnows and cry.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Bad people do not sit by the creek and feed minnows and have an extreme allergic reaction or whatever we’re calling this.” She popped a marshmallow into her mouth. “More importantly, bad people don’t make lists of why they’re bad and get upset about it. And you’re not stupid. And you’re not a failure, and you gotta stop telling yourself that.” Haruka turned away toward the creek, and Mina grabbed her face and turned it to hers. “Listen. Whatever lie you were told when you were a kid, it’s not true. It’s not true at all.”

Haruka swallowed hard, and Mina hugged her tightly, until Haruka let herself relax

“We gotta find a better outlet for your frustrations, you damn near nailed me with that chair.”

“Sorry.”

“You know, if you ever decided to share your feelings with the class…none of the girls would make fun of you, or anything.”

Haruka shrugged. “What’s the point, they already hate me. Everyone does, except Michiru.” She looked off. “I can’t be their friend, so I may as well be someone who can protect them.”

“What am I, a pile of pig assholes?”

Haruka laughed. “Okay, everyone else.”

Mina put her hand on Haruka’s shoulder. “After this many years, have you considered that you don’t have to be some big unbreakable rock of a human being? It doesn’t look good on you.” Haruka shrugged again. “Ruka, you think it’s what people want from you, but it’s not.

She shrugged again, and threw another marshmallow to the minnows

***

“Rei, you gotta remember this is a people job.”

“Everyone is just being DIFFICULT, on PURPOSE, while I am TRYING TO HELP.” Rei was incensed. No one paid attention to her plans, the ones she’d worked so hard to make, and everyone was making a mockery of it, and not being serious, and now Mina was lecturing her about what she needed to change, which was never meant to be a serious part of the exercise.

“Okay, but,” Mina shrugged dramatically, “Did you really learn anything new today? Did you need a list to know that Haruka jumps in too fast and Ami jumps in too slow? That Usagi doesn’t even know what she’s doing wrong? That Michiru doesn’t care? You should have known all this!”

“I just thought—“ Rei mounted her own defense, wondering when playful Mina had gone and serious, intense Mina had entered without her noticing.

But Mina was on a tear now. “I mean, so let’s look at Mako, she wrote down ‘sometimes forgets to pull her punch when she’s sparring with Haruka.’ Mako doesn’t forget shit, what this really says is, ‘I hold a grudge in a way that prevents teamwork.’ Which I knew. Which I’ve been working on by trying to build rapport between her and the lesbians. Rei, you can’t just tell people, ‘this is what’s wrong with you, fix it.’ People are more complicated than that.”

“God,” Rei crossed her arms and her brow furrowed, “Sorry I hurt Haruka’s feelings, Mina, I know she’s your friend, but—“

“Not even remotely about that! But let’s take Haruka. This is the EXACT wrong activity for her. She’s sensitive, and it hurts her feelings, and when she gets her feelings hurt, or she’s scared, she turns into an asshole. It’s also the wrong activity for Michiru, because, Rei, Michiru, does not give a fuck. Not one. If you ever figure out how to motivate her outside of dangling Haruka over a tank of man-eating sharks, let me know.” She clapped her hands together in front of Rei’s face to punctuate each word. “You have. To pay. Attention.”

Rei was whirling now, defensive and angry. “So EVERYTHING I do is wrong, and EVERYTHING you do is right.”

“I’m not saying that, goddamn Rei, I’m trying to teach you how to be leader!”

“Why? What about your precious job security?”

“BECAUSE I MIGHT DIE, REI.” Her voiced echoed through the trees, and then the forest became very still, holding its breath in respect to the cruel reality of the shadow that hung over top of them. “I might die. And then you’re it. And you have to know how to deal with them, or they’ll scatter, and fall, and we’ll all die, and Usagi too.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Ami doesn’t like to be yelled at. Haruka responds to praise. Mako and that’s where I stopped writing this.

#doc's cleanout

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