At Mile 101 was when Sam and I did our death hike. I have posted at length about how much that sucked in my Facebook notes so all I will say is that it SUCKED. TONS.
After that, we picked up Josh and headed on for Central. I feel like I spent thirty seconds there. Josh and I had planned to have a few drinks at the Roadhouse where all the mushers were watching the Super Bowl, but we realized Hans Gatt and Gerry willomitzer would be in Circle that night, so I hopped in Gerry's handler Didier Moggia's truck and off I went for Circle.
Didier was quite funny. We got talking about B.C., where I'm from and he asked me if Blackberry was a man or a woman in his french accent. Very funny. He is a horse man, I guess.
It was about 6 p.m., and I realized I should get some sleep now or I wouldn't get any. Didier promised he would wake me up when Gerry got in around 3 a.m. I woke up a few hours later to a face staring back to me from about four feet away and realized the gym had filled up. It was rather creepy. Sometime in the middle of the night Sam and Josh came in. I was happy to have some familiar faces amongst the German snoring when I woke up for the umpteenth time that night. I had strung together some carpets to sleep on and they had spread apart. The gym floor was cold, but for some reason I was so comfortable after the hike and just needed some sleep. I think I slept till about 6 a.m., but I wouldn't get all excited and say it was a full 12 hours. With 20 or so media people pounding in and out of the gym it was more like six.
Circle was very small. The next day we hiked out to Cochrane's Cabin. Again, refer to Josh's blog! Very fun, especially the snow easy chairs while we waited for Sam to get his camera stuff he left at the cabin.
After that we headed back to Circle again and spent our second night there, drinking wine slushies and discussing hilarious news stories we have covered till about midnight. I told Josh all about Trevor the Dog (not that I covered it, but the story is ridiculous) and he told me about the story he wrote about the disgruntled Taco Bell patron who threw a taco in the face of a manager and got charged for it.
The next day the flight was sketchy. I'd never been in a small "air craft" before (thanks Uncle Bob) and he was doing barrel-roll turns to "help" us get photos. And by help, I mean encourage my vomitting. Having survived a childhood of unexplained stomach flus that turned out to be migraine in my late teens, I am a champ at keeping myself from puking, but this was my hardest challenge yet.
The flight was beautiful, from what I did get to see.
Coming into Eagle, Alaska.
Just to the left of that photo is where Josh and I sat drinking the next day above the overflow.
Eagle was so beautiful. I wish I could describe it to you in a way that in any way gave it justice. It is a tiny community of maybe 200 people on the banks of the Yukon River. It is sleepy and quiet, with just a general store and a group of cabins for a hotel. It's where cement trucks go to die for some reason. With not a single piece of sidewalk or paved road that I could tell from above the snow, their presence there was unknown. There aren't even enough houses with cement foundations to justify the 20 or more trucks rusting in the waist deep snow. Surely one truck could have done all the work that Eagle requires cement-wise.
Many of the houses are quaint little cabins. Some are colourful and stand out a bit, with yards full of snow machines. There are very few vehicles around. The ones that are there are mostly pick-ups and old rusted out vans. The vans are used to transport people and things to and from the tiny airstrip. The trucks do the same.
At night there aren't any street lights. The checkpoint was lit up by musher's and volunteer's head lamps. The field where the dogs were bedded was covered in deep ruts. I stumbled around on the snow a bit, trying to find Josh a few times.
The checkpoint was in a tiny one room school house, with an unheated back room with two outhouses and bunks for the mushers. The school's eight or so students milled around, ousted from the building for the duration of the Quest's stop.
One kid had a bloody nose. Apparently he had been fooling around and smashed his face on something. The teacher was making an example of the poor little guy, to prove that fucking around misbehaving does nothing good for you.
It was packed, but there were tons of mushers expected in so we set up our computers there. One official told us we were sitting at the mushers table, and we were forced to move. Then he told us we were at the vets table, and we moved again. When we settled, we were told we were at a public table and we might be fine there. Too many rules.
We finally retired to our base camp at the library where the media, including crazy Peter Camper. he was rad. I snuck away once I finished to have a crazy hot shower in the shower house outside our cabins.
I have never had a shower that felt that incredibly good. It was buring hot. I stayed as long as I could in there to wash up the first three or four days of the Quest. So relaxing.
After that I snuck back to the library, but with nothing really to do I was bothering everyone. I hater to be ignored, so I decided it was bed time. I asked Josh to wake me up at 9 a.m. the next morning.
He tried, but failed. Pounding on my door four times between the hours of 9 and 10 didn't do it. I finally woke up at 11 a.m., and headed out to see what was up. I met Josh and got an update of what was up at the checkpoint. The verdict was absolutely nothing. My bottle of wine left over from Circle was calling to us. Josh said he was going to see if he could grab a six pack, and then head down to the Yukon River.
I'll continue this after Josh's blog tomorrow! I want to see what he writes about the Yukon River adventure.
Love,
Annalee
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