Mushing with Rick

Its been a ton of fun hanging out with the Holt family the last couple days. Today Tiff and I visited and spent time with the boys. Rick had to go to work. Rohnan and I made chocolate chip cookies, and Keegan was working on adding some audio to a stop motion animation he had made.

This evening Rick and I took his dogs out mushing. He was kind enough to set me up with my own team for the evening. I had 7 dogs lead by Mits, and Rick had about 10 dogs.

Rick also let me borrow his nice headlamp. It really can put out some light. It also has a box that you wear inside your coat on your chest. It has a big button on it that turns it on and off. All you need to do is hit your chest and it activates the light.

you can see the little reflectors on the dogs harnesses behind me. We went out on a 20 mile run. It was amazing. The stars were out all over the sky. We were swiftly gliding our way through forests of black spruce and dropping down onto sloughs and racing across rivers. At one point we had stopped for a second and I had set “the hook” so the dogs wouldn’t take off until I was ready. I reached down to pull the hook and I bumped the button in my chest and the lamp went out. One thing about the headlamp is if its been running for a while it heats up, so when it gets turned off you need to let it cool down before you turn it on again or you might blow out the bulb. So I got to ride for a few minutes without any lights on. The stars were just beautiful. The dogs were just cruising down the trail and I was able to stand back on the runners and just enjoy the experience.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/02/mush.MOV 640 490]

It was a great way to end the day. By the time we got done feeding the dogs when we got back, it was about 1:30 in the morning. Time for some sleep. 🙂 I hope that I will get the chance to do this again in the future. A great experience.

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