The Adventure Final 5

I think I've got this all figured out now. Sylvie-Ann, Jason and I started out watching pre-Olympics crap, drinking cheap champagne, and headed back to the Downtown, where we made friends, before heading to "the Pit". There we drank a bit, and never ran into Sam and Josh. We called it a night early because we decided it was best considering the mushers we wanted to talk to would be up earlier. I still had a story or two to submit, and Jason needed a better shot for the paper.

The next morning I was up early (not as early as poor Josh), and headed to the checkpoint insearch of Hans Gatt to get that interview I really needed. There was a mid-race mushers meeting in the afternoon and attendance was manditory. I found Gatt before hand and got to talk to him. He gave me a great interview after having a real night's rest on a hotel bed. The meeting was pretty damn boring, but all the mushers were there. Us reporters were kind of salivating trying to plan our move once they were done. John Mitchell, the Canadian trail coordinator was just briefing them on the Canadian side of the trail, which they had hit officially awhile ago before Dawson.

Generally the U.S. trail is rougher, with former musher John Shandelmeier in charge and the Canadian side is a lot smoother. The Canadian Rangers usually take care of it, but this year just the head Ranger, Mitchell took charge. I had interview Mitchell before I left. He was a really nice guy. He gave me a ton of information and he has a slow voice that is great for note-taking.

So the meeting was let out early, the mushers retired and so did the reporters - to the bar. Josh and Sam had their laptops and were finishing stories, I was done but had nothing to do so was trying to get on the sketchy internet to no avail. Sam needed whatever signal he could get so I abliged and drank in silence.

And by silence, I mean every minute or so I'd ask Josh, "ARE YOU DONE YET?!", or I'd whimper, while keeping a sharp eye on the progress of his beer and ensuring to order him another if it got too low. Once in awhile I'd just straight-up poke him. It's a good thing Josh is an awesome writer, because that must have been one hell of a distraction.

Anyway. He finally got done, and by that time my poutine had arrived at the table. I had to get a poutine, because I had spent the last 8 days in the U.S. I needed to reclaim my Canadian heritage - in the form of fried smothered in gravy. We were sitting with a bunch of dog handlers and musher Peter Fleck's dad. When they say my poutine I was ridiculed to no end. Although Peter's dad asked me how I ate those and looked like I did. I was flattered. I let him think I live off of poutines, as all good Canadians do, right?

It was party time, and a bunch of the handlers had come ready to do the toe shot. A creepy old man that resembles a pirate brings out a wooden chest, and inside are certificates, funny hats which you must wear, and the shriveled green toe, bedded in a glass jar full of salt. You can pick whatever shot you want, but it has to be at least 40 per cent. I believe the traditional way to do it is with whiskey. The toe has to touch your lips.

The night progressed from a $70 bar tab at the Downtown Hotel (for just me), to Diamond Tooth Gertie's, the exravagant, gigantic and beautiful bar that Dawson is probably most famous for. All of the staff dress up as if it were still the gold rush, and the gambling hall sprawls over two storeys with a stage and dance floor big enough to welcome, well, I don't know...Metallica! Maybe not. But still, what I'm getting at is that it is HUGE. There was a cool band playing too.

Diamond Tooth Gertie's.

The night ended with Josh and I hanging out and talking until he had to go do his radio interview at just after 6 a.m. I seriously think Josh is a robot or something, because he manages to function well on very little sleep.

Sylvie-Ann, Josh and Me at the Pit.

I felt bad for him for a second and then ZZZZZZZZZZ. It was a Saturday, and my deadline wasn't until Monday at 1:30 p.m., so I had no reason to get up. I slept in until like 1.

I don't have much recollection of this day. I think I gathered a few interviews despite my deadline being two days away, and put them in the bank for Monday. Then that night I was still pretty hungover. The Olympic opening ceremonies were on, but Josh and Sam were busy working so I retired to my hotel room in my pjs, ready to hit the hay, while watching the ceremonies and Gordon Campbell drunkenly wagging his B.C. flag around.

Then as the ceremonies were coming to a close, I heard a knock on my hotel room door. I opened it to find Sylvie-Ann, and she easily convinced me that I should get drunk. So I hopped in the shower, flooded the floor to the bathroom again and made myself pretty. The two of us sat at the Downtown bar and drank on the comfy couches for awhile, until we ran into Sam and Josh at some point. I think Jason was staying in that night. The 36-hour layover was coming to an end and he had to drive the next morning. Better him than me though.

We went to the Pit, where Josh and I had an extremely ridiculous and wonderful journalism experience at the same time. In a dark corner sat Gerry Willomitzer and William Kledhein (excuse the spelling, I can't remember it exactly). Anyways, Kledhein is a mushing legend. I'm pretty sure he competed in the first ever Quest, and last year he returned for his last one before selling off all his dogs and officially retiring, but it seems you can take the dogs away from a musher, but never a musher away from the dogs....err....whatever. It makes sense. Gerry had lost his position in the race considerable since holding a strong second place into Circle. They were obviously talking strategy, and Josh and I just had to get in. We were drunk, and we imposed. They let us sit with them. They were also liquored and we had a long discussion with them about all thing Quest, that turned into us complaining about the media relations, and them telling us how they wish meida would be allowed to cover the Quest, and how much they appreciate what we already do.

Best $70 I've ever spent. Kind of.

It was awesome. So again, the night ended with Josh and I hanging out and talking. This time we dipped our feet in the hot tub in the courtyard of our hotel. We immediately noticed a drunk guy passed out with a drink in hand, teetering in a lawnchair in the courtyard. Being kindred spirits, we both thought at the exact same time, "WE HAVE TO DRAW ON HIS FACE." So we discussed at length how we would do it. I left Josh in charge of the drunk guy, he was not supposed to wake him up, and I trotted off to get my precious Urban Decay teal blue eyeliner, because it was all I had.

The best piece of art ever.

At $20 a stick, I am usually not willing to use it to draw on people's faces, but this was just too perfect of a situation. So I grabbed it and came back to the courtyard to find - Josh chatting it up with the drunk guy. YOU HAD ONE JOB JOSH!! So the night ended, and poor Josh once again headed off to his radio interview with like an hour of sleep at most. I wonder if the listeners of KUAC noticed. I bet they did.

Sam, Sylvie-Ann, Me and Josh at the Pit.

More from Dawson later!

The Adventure Final 4

I kind of ended my Yukon Quest series because Josh stopped doing his, and I was waiting for him to catch up, but enough with that, here is part 4!

Previously:

Gert entertained us with dirty jokes the entire way. We pointed out mushers and enjoyed the view. I cheered as we crossed over the thick line in the forest that indicates the U.S./Canada border. 

We landed in Dawson safe and sound, and little did we know, the real adventure hadn't even started yet. 

The Dawson Airport is probably the tiniest international airport in Canada that still welcomes Boeing aircraft. It has a tiny little building, one airstrip capable of landing Air North's fleet, and one border guard, who didn't seem to care where we'd come from. 

We waited for our ride. We were all staying at the same hotel, which was great, It turns out we were literally staying feet away. My hope was that when Josh scurried off to the dog yard he'd wake me up on hs way, but that plan had failed in Eagle. While waiting we chatted with locals who told us they had been waiting on the banks of the Yukon River, and hadn't seen any mushers go by yet. Perfect. We had been worried about missing them coming in. 

Sam dealt with customs for all of us. Like I said - it wasn't exactly a secure border crossing. He grabbed Josh and my passport, and handed them to the lady and answered the standard border crossing questions as group leader. Do you have alcohol with you? No. No you have any plants with you? No. And so on. 

When our ride came it was decided that it would be best if we took off straight to the checkpoint. We got our driver to take our luggage straight to the room for us, which worked out great, and sprinted to the checkpoint to find - no mushers. Good!

We had a few minutes to regroup and check on the progress of Hans Gatt, who was expected to be first. A few of the GPS trackers had malfunctioned and needed to be reset by this point, so there was still a little mystery as to wether Gatt would infact be the lucky winner of the four or so ounces of gold the first musher into Dawson gets. 

I ran hectically around the checkpoint looking for Jason, the other Star reporter who was expected to meet up with me. I finally ran into him and handed off the camera equipment - which I would dearly miss. 

About a half an hour into our time in beautiful Dawson City, someone snowmachining down the Yukon River had spotted Gatt, and everyone ran out prematurely only to stand around in the cold to no results. Eventually Gatt did show up. The light had faded and he was in one hell of a bad mood, but I would have been too. 

In Dawson the CBC camera crew from Whitehorse had come up to cover it, and they have more nerve than a sore tooth. After Gatt got caught up in overflow, jumble ice and every Yukon Quest-related horror you could imagine, he arrived in Dawson to have a yippy reporter shove a microphone in his face. Josh and I held back, knowing Gatt better by this point. Sure enough, Gatt declined the interview, and CBC managed to ruin the News-Miner and the Whitehorse Star's coverage. Thanks guys. 

But the moral of the story here is, that after hanging back, Josh and I both got exclusive interviews the next day. Take that CBC, and Pushy McPusherson reporter. 

After Gatt headed off to the dog yard, Josh decided he would run over and try to get the interview he desperately needed to catch his 12 a.m. deadline, and his 6:45 a.m. radio unterview (I did not envy Josh's Quest experience, by any means). Due to a series of unfortunate events, Josh didn't make it there. He'll have to explain those in his own blog, but he returned in a mood much like Gatt's. He was frustrated and under the impression that he had missed Lance Mackey arriving in Dawson. We informed him that Mackey had in fact not arrived yet, and he calmed down considerably, but still stewed in the corner for awhile. 

It was around this time that Jason and I decided going to the world-famous Downtown Hotel bar in Dawson was a good idea. Mackey was a minimum of two hours out at this point, and there wasn't much point in us sitting around waiting. Gatt had a 36-hour layover, he was heading for bed and obviously not interested in talking. So we headed to the bar - home of the infamous Sour Toe Cocktail - and downed a few drinks. I went over some useless Yukon Quest facts I had collected with him and told him about my experience so far. We returned to the checkpoint a few hours later a little buzzed but still capable of doing our jobs. I was certainly more relaxed. 

Mackey arrived finally to his usual celebrity red-carpet welcome, but the snow-covered main street of Dawson was far from a red carpet and he wasn't exactly dressed to impress. Mackey was frozen into his parka with the hood up; icicles hanging from his mustache and eyelashes. He too had hit the jumble ice and overflow, but Mackey knew the importance of the media and gave us a quick few quotes as he was checked in. Hugh Neff wasn't far behind with a dog in the basket. After we got our interview from the always happy to talk Neff, we all went off our separate ways to finish our stories. I believe Josh and Sam headed to the Downtown for their first drinks of the night. I went to my hotel and put the final touches on my stories, while Jason went to his and sent photos to Vince in Whitehorse. 

I had a much-needed shower and finally got to put some damn make-up on! I had decided bringing my hair stuff was totally ridiculous so I made due with flat - but straight, clean and shiny! - hair. I finally wandered back to the Downtown bar to find Sam sending his photos. Josh had stayed at the checkpoint or hotel or something. I didn't care at that point - all I wanted was towash the day down witha  delicious vodka, soda, lime. 

Love,

Annalee.

Dear RCMP

I'm going to start this by saying flat out, that I do not care whether weed is decriminalized or not. I could seriously care less. As a person that does not smoke weed though, I am getting really fucking sick of how liberally this "crime" is committed in public, while our law enforcers do nothing to stop it.

There has been a lot of criticism of the RCMP recently in the news, and people are crying for them to step up and earn the public respect again. In my opinion the issue of marijuana would be a pretty damn good place to start. On 4/20, thousands of pot enthusiasts staged protests at legislature buildings and at parliament on Ottawa. They turned up, and at 4:20 p.m. a cloud of weed smoke rose up from the crowd - as the gathered RCMP watched.

This frustrated me. In a society where we are watching our RCMP's credibility sink lower and lower, they watched a group of people do something totally illegal, and did absolutely nothing about it. Like I have said, I have no opinion on what happens with decriminalization, but the way I see it, is if something is illegal, shouldn't the police do something about it when they see people committing the offence?

This is what I have always believed our police officers are supposed to do. Our elected officials make the laws and decide what is legal and illegal, and our police officers enforce those. But when it comes to weed, the RCMP does absolutely nothing. If they are not willing to act on a law that lawmakers have not overturned, then why do we have it? It makes the case for decriminalization right there. When a society as a whole decides not to act on a law, but keep it in place, it makes the rest of them loose credibility.

So here's what I think - either enforce it, or get rid of it. I'm sick of watching RCMP officers do nothing when they are looking for a way to get back in the public's good graces.It is time to fix things for yourselves, and act on the laws that you have been asked to enforce for our society.

Also, perhaps the best possible way to get back in the public's good books, is to start respecting the laws you are supposed to enforce yourselves.

From a Canadian wanting a real law enforcement.

And as a side bar - this is actually why I wanted to write this in the first place - I am sick of little girls posting pictures of themselves smoking weed in Facebook. Again, IT IS ILLEGAL, and it is becoming increasingly more apparent that Facebook is a very public forum, and those pictures are not just for your friends to see, no matter how tight you keep your security settings. Eventually, you will grow up past 17 and decide that you want to get a real job. It is easy for your future employer to search up your Facebook profile, find those pictures and cross you off that dream-job list.

Be responsible, children.

Love,
Annalee.