Long day, fun day!

Today started early from New Hazelton. We were on the road from 6:40am- for me, that was without a shower and without breakfast. I had one of Bill's yummy oranges and some of Bill's jerky in the car. I'm lucky that Bill's family set him up with some good food!

We drove around 2 hours, where we hooked up with the Team Sirius cars near Medzian junction. We then took the optional 16 mile sidetrip to see the Bear Glacier. There was a beautiful view of the glacier over a snow covered lake. Although we started out the morning ahead of most of the competitors, this sidetrip put us near the back of the pack. We still had plenty of time, and the organizers allowed us (by plan) to start the TSD section either on time, or 30 minutes late.

Photo: Following Team Sirius WRX to Bear Glacier

Photo: Doug and Bill at Bear Glacier


We stopped at Mama Z's restaurant in Dease Lake before starting the 10 mile TSD section. While at Mama Z's, we met a typically friendly black labrador. Being in Dease Lake started to bring back good memories for Bill of his year 2000 trip up this way on his motorcycle, with his Dad.
Photo: Friendly Doggy.

We scored 15 points on the TSD over three controls. I think we should have done better, but I'll blame Bill. Ok, not really. I'll blame my spreadsheet, or my driving too. Heck... 15 points is pretty good, so I guess I'll shut up now.

Right after the TSD, we came upon the Team Sirius cars at the side of the road. They were waiting for us and the Arychuk's behind us so that we could transit together. After a short snowball fight, where I successfully avoided a well thrown snowball by jumping waist deep into a snow bank (like a complete idiot), we came up with a fun plan: Wait for the scoring officials to come along and ambush them with snowballs. I'd like it to be clear (to the officials who regularly read our blog), that this plan came from Car 17's Jennifer. In fact, Bill and I only eventually succombed to peer pressure and threw a few snowballs so that it looked good on video. Oh yeah- There's video of the fun ambush. Maybe that will get posted tomorrow because it's not on my camera. Hey, maybe THAT's why we "scored" 15 points on the TSD. :)

A little later on the transit, Bill and I both noticed movement on the road about .5 miles ahead. We initially thought it was people, then dogs, then maybe... Caribou!!! Bill snapped a picture just as they scrambled into the snow on the side of the road. Very cool siting. Bill wanted me to write "Doug whacked the little one with the truck and now we're eating Caribou. No damage to the truck." Ok, but that didn't happen, so I'm not going to write that.
Photo: Caribou! (We think)

Bill and I lead the parade for a while. If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes!

A bit later on the transit (hey, this was a LONG transit!), we reached a place called "Bell 2". This very cool place is a base for Helicopter skiiers. There are some beautiful mountains and if I was a skiier, this would be the place that I'd want to be dropped from a helicopter. Of course, with my current skill level, you might as well drop me from the helicopter on one of those round plastic sledding discs buttered up with Pam cooking spray. Either way, I'm tumbling down the hill in an ugly way. But, I digress. Fun thing about Bell 2 was this: They were supposed to have gas. Most of the cars on the Alcan carry around 16 gallon gas tanks. With all the gear folks are carrying and roof racks, gas mileage suffers. But, the gas pumps at Bell 2 were frozen. So, there was a LOT of trepidation amongst our competitors about running out of gas. Most emptied their spare gas into the tank and continued from there.

Overall, the roads today were in good shape. A good snow pack covering was there for most of the day. Toward the evening it warmed up a bit and the roads were nearly clear. We kept the truck in 2WD all day and only had a small amount of minor sliding in the snowpack.
Photo: Typical transit road today.

This seems like a good place to note that we filled our truck just once in 760 miles. This meant that we had more time to use the toilet and giggle at everyone else filling up in the cold. For those interested, we averaged 16.4 MPG today, which is great- We budgeted for an average of 12 MPG overall.

We averaged 52.2 MPH total and 60 MPH moving average. Bill said that I'm not allowed to publish our maximum speed.

Tomorrow looks to be really fun. We start with a 8 mile TSD, and then go to our first ice slalom. We're both really looking forward to the ice slalom. This should be a great photo/video opportunity. It will be tough to be competitive in the truck, but we hope to surprise a few people!