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Our weather has been beyond miserable for the past few days. The rain has been almost incessant, only quitting for a few hours here and there. The temperature has hovered right around freezing or even below. Most of Monday the temperature stayed at 29 degrees F (-1 C), cold enough so that the inch or so on the ground didn't melt despite the water being poured on it. The reason for this, of course, is that the temperature overhead has stayed warm enough for rain and the raindrops don't have time to turn to sleet or ice on their way to the ground.

The poor dogs have been huddling in their houses trying to keep dry--except, of course, whenever I come out to feed them, and then they look like the prime attraction at Marineworld as they splash through the puddles. There's been no way to run them. There's not nearly enough snow for sleds, and the icy ground and oceans of water make it far too slippery to try the four wheeler. I still haven't done any training worth mentioning this fall, but I should be able to catch up once things settle down, as they inevitably will.

There has been plenty of snow out on the Petersville Road about 25 highway miles from my place. Last year a number of mushers, including me, trucked out there during November when we had little or no snow elsewhere in south- central Alaska. I'm seriously considering trucking a dozen dogs out there for some small-team work on sleds. This early in the season, I don't want to run any more dogs than I can easily control. Six-dog teams should be just about right, especially considering the runs won't be more than three to five miles initially. If I can keep things consistent, we could be up to 20 miles on 8- and 10-dog teams within a few weeks.

It's not the ideal way to train dogs, since most mushers would prefer to build the dogs' strength on ATVs before the snow falls. But there's not much I can do about it, so I may give it a shot. It's instructive to remember that the old-timers (meaning before about 20 years ago) didn't have four-wheelers. They'd use various wheeled contraptions like old stripped-down automobile chassis to get some pre-snow work, sometimes hooking up twenty or more dogs, depending on the weight of the rig. More than a few teams have been run by simply hooking them up to the front bumper of a dog truck. In anyc ase, many of the old-timers still didn't start serious training until there was snow on the ground. For all that, they still put together some fairly creditable teams.

I had to go into Anchorage today to finish up one of the graduate courses I need to renew my teaching certificate next year. (The course, by the way, was called "Creating Web Pages" and I took it so I could start my own page this year. Who says required education needs to be non-productive?) Anyhow, on the way in I stopped to get gas at Willow just as DeeDee Jonrowe's dog truck was pulling out for Hatcher Pass, about 15 miles east of there, where there's supposed to be a foot and a half of new snow. She had dogs and sleds and seemed to be extremely happy at the prospect of finally getting to go play in the snow. I was green with envy and wished I could be running my dogs all day, too, but I've got to make sure I can keep making enough money for dog food and heating oil this winter. I can only imagine where I'd be if I could spend as much time with my dogs as she and some of the other professional mushers can. Maybe someday....

I also got some not-so-good news via e-mail yesterday. My prospective handler from the Czech Republic couldn't get his visa, so he can't come to Alaska this winter. This leaves me scrambling to try to find somebody else. If I can't get a handler, it will be very difficult for me to run the Iditarod. At best, I'll only be able to adequately train sixteen or so dogs, which doesn't leave much room for injuries or other problems. At worst, I won't have time to properly train and take care of all of the dogs, and I'll run myself into the ground trying to make it all work.

That's what I did before the 1998 race, when I tried doing it all myself--and I had twenty fewer dogs on the lot then than I do now. In retrospect, I should never have tried to run that year, but by February I felt I'd put so much into it I had to try. I was a frazzled wreck by start day because I'd been working so hard I didn't realize I'd let a bad cold turn into walking pneumonia. It only got worse and I made some very bad decisions out on the trail because I wasn't thinking straight. I made it 800 miles, but it took me until July of that year (and two months of heavy antibiotics) to finally shake the pneumonia.

We'll see what turns up this year. I'd really like to go on the Millennium Camping Trip, but I've learned I have some limits beyond which I'd better not push. The last thing I want to do is blow my chances to make a competitive run to Nome in 2001. But it's a long way to February, and a lot of things can happen between now and then.

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