Fur RONDY!!

Big news, everyone!

Today was the official start of the long Anchorage tradition called Fur Rendezvous (Fur Rondy for short).  You'll have to excuse my use of wikipedia for source references here, but as I understand it, Fur Rondy started back in the 1930s as a way to excite the 3000-person community in mid-February, when it feels like winter will never end.  It was tied to fur swap meets that used to happen in the city.

Now Fur Rondy is a GIANT festival that occurs for 2 weeks, ending with the start of the Iditarod.  The festival basically takes over downtown, and it includes fun events like: a carnival, running with reindeer, a fur bikini contest, blanket tosses, and the ceremonial start to the Iditarod.

Fur Rondy also means the infamous Anchorage hot dog guy makes a brief winter showing, before he hides again until spring time (when he's out in full force for the tourists).  This is the place to go for both reindeer sausage and kosher (yes, that's right . . . KOSHER!) hot dogs.

Today there was much celebrating in the streets, so some of the clerks left the office and ventured down 4th Avenue for the beginning of the sled dog races.

These races are a bit different than the Iditarod.  They occur over 3 days, with the dogs running 25 miles per day (pretty short for sled dog races).  So these dogs are trained for speed rather than endurance.  They're called sprinter dogs.

Anchorage goes around and puts a ton of snow down on the streets.  This becomes the track for the dogs.  It's really weird to see all these streets that have been (somewhat) plowed all winter suddenly covered with snow.  But it makes for some pretty fast runs for the dogs:

The police get to drive around on snowmachines making sure the tracks are clear and that everything is running smoothly.

We spent some time down at the street watching the races.  We also got to realize just how dangerous this sport is.  In the time we were there, we saw 2 pretty big crashes.  In the first instance, the dogs decided they didn't want to run on the track, and instead decided to make a wide left onto another street directly into traffic.  The musher, trying to control the dogs, fell and grabbed onto the sleds.  But because there's no way to really stop the dogs aside from voice commands once they're going, he ended up getting dragged a few feet before handlers could stop the dogs.  He was ok, and back on track a few minutes later, but it was pretty scary.  You won't be able to see the video of the fall (I stopped the camera), but if you watch this video you'll see the dogs make the turn off the track at the very end:

We also watched a second guy fall off the sled pretty much right at the start.  Even though he was no longer directing them, the dogs just kept running.  They really love to run.  A group of 3 handlers about 100 feet away finally tackled the dogs (literally jumped onto the reins) and stopped them.  They composed themselves and kept going.   But watching these accidents, you come to realize how dangerous the sport is, how fast these dogs go, how little control people have over their actions aside from voice commands, and how scary that could be on an 1100 mile race out in the open cold.

Anyway, we'll keep updating with more Fur Rondy as events progress.  Tonight we're going to a funny melodrama (if you don't know what a melodrama is, think this:

A View From The North: Sheep Mountain Weekend

Hi, Folks:

First of all, we sometimes like to remind ourselves that we live here:

As one of Steve's clerks put it, it's so amazingly beautiful and dramatic that you sometimes want to say: "Hey, Mountains . . . Tone it down a bit, would you?"  At which point the mountains respond: "Sure thing, but not before I do one more amazing thing with the sun that you have never seen before.  Ba-bam!"

This weekend we packed our bags and headed about 2 hours north of Anchorage to the Sheep Mountain area.  The area is surrounded by two separate mountain ranges that come close to each other, but never actually touch.  It's quite the impressive place.  We went with a number of Alaska court clerks and some of their significant others.

The cabin was a dry cabin, meaning that it didn't have any running water.  We had to walk down to the lodge to use the restroom.  But the place also included a hot tub and sauna, which made for some amazing relaxation evenings.  It also had this Airstream trailer outside, which we have learned from Pawn Stars is worth a bit of money.

We spent a great deal of time cross-country skiing.  The trails by the cabins were all groomed and made for some pretty awesome ups and downs.

We also got to ski by an abandoned air strip, where we messed around for a little bit.  Elena decided to leave her mark:

The snow was really thick, but powdery.  You can see how much they've gotten by the coverage of the bench here:

One of the clerks is also a bit of a hunter.  He brought along his gun and shot a few rabbits for later consumption.  We were going to put a photo of him skinning the rabbit here, but decided it was a bit too graphic for this PG blog.

Anyway, as you can see from the first picture in this post, the views were simply stunning.  Here's another shot once the clouds started rolling in:

The weekend also called for celebrations with drinks and board games.  We had a ton of fun, and learned how quickly water can freeze into ice cubes if left outside.  We also learned that you can get ice for drinks quickly by simply breaking off chunks of it.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend.  The views were stunning, the skiing amazing, the laughter ongoing, and the company fantastic.  We really enjoyed getting to spend some more time with Alex, Ana, Peter, Rebecca, Claire, Suzanne, Jimmy, and Elena.  We're looking forward to spending more time with them in the near-future on more adventures.  Until then, keep on skiing!

Mush! Gee! Haw! Whoa!

Hi, Everyone:

Before moving to Alaska, Tammy's long lasting goal was to be a sled dog musher in the Iditarod.  Ok, not really.  But she did want to spend some time trying out mushing.  Needless to say, when groupon.com put up a coupon for a sled dog ride earlier this week, we jumped at the chance.

So today we geared up and headed out for a ride with Dario Martinez, a nine time Iditarod veteran.  He hooked up a team of Iditarod dogs, and we were out:

There were 4 of us on the tour, so Dario hooked up 2 sleds.  2 people got to sit in the front sled, which he stood on the back of to direct the dogs.  Then the front sled pulled the back sled, which had one seat.  The final person would stand on the back of the back sled.

Here's the view from the front of the sled.  We learned lots of awesome information, including that the word to turn right is "Gee" and the word to turn left is "Haw."  We also got cool bits of information about the Iditarod, including that it is an 1100 mile race where the teams will go for 6 hours on and 6 hours off.  Apparently the dogs are also most comfortable at -20 degrees, so our current 10 degrees was a bit warm for them.  They had to keep stopping to eat snow to cool down.

Here we are in the front sled enjoying the ride.

We also took some pictures from the back sled.  The guy standing is Dario.  He's leading the dogs by voice commands only; they are not hooked up to any sort of reins or anything like that.  So the dogs are pretty much in control, subject to a brake on the back of the sled.  It's a really cool experience and these dogs are also really smart.  You can also tell that they LOVE to pull these sleds.  The dogs would whine and bark every time we took a break.  They kept pulling, clearly wanting to keep going.  And when we got to the kennel, the dogs who were not hooked up started whining because they wanted to go.

Dario told us these dogs have been bred over the years to love pulling.  It's in their blood.  So the mushers job is to basically calm them down and keep them in control, because otherwise they would pull forever.

We also learned that while on the Iditarod each dog will consume 10,000-12,000 calories.  As comparison, Michael Phelps was eating approx. 8,000 calories during the olympics; and he is approximately 4 times their size.  It's quite amazing that these dogs can consume that much.

We also got to see some of the dogs Dario is currently breeding.  Here were the most recent puppies!

And here's Steve standing on the back of the last sled.

It was an awesome experience and for anyone in Alaska we highly recommend Dario at Chugach Express.    You can see video of Dario taking the Today Show crew around on his sleds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4isFT2C8CY&feature=player_embedded

Keep warm!  We're heading into 30 degree weather next week, so we'll be keeping warm soon enough!

P.S. There's a new poll on the sidebar of the blog!  Check it out!

Spotted Again.

Hi, Everyone:

I don't know if this is getting old, but we had another moose spotting and given the title of this blog we thought we needed to blog about it.  This one has an interesting story to it though.  To give you some background:

The front door of our apartment is located on a street, but the garage and back door come off of an alley.  Once you park your car in the alley, you walk up a path to our back stairs, which leads to our apartment.

This walk is probably about 100 feet.  Ordinarily it's no big deal.  So, as usual, Tammy came home from work earlier this week, walked up the path to our apartment, and came up the stairs.  When she got to the top, though, she heard some rustling noises behind her.  Nervous, she turned around and saw this:

Yes, the moose had been approximately 1 foot off of the path on which she had just walked.  We're not sure if it magically came in behind her or if she walked by it completely oblivious.  But the bottom line is, this moose was close.

Thankfully, by the time she realized this she was safe at the top of the stairs.  Now we should break here to say that moose are not really aggressive.  They can be if you annoy them.  But mainly they just want you to leave them alone so they can eat.  So she wasn't in any real threat of danger.  But you also don't want to be that close to an untamed animal that is the size of a horse.  You just don't know what it will do.

Anyway, we ran inside and grabbed a camera.  Pretty soon thereafter the moose decided it was done eating, and just hunkered off down the path.

It then jumped the fence and went into another yard to play.

Moose spotted.

Cross-Country Ski Weekend!

Hi, Everyone:

It has been quite an amazing week of cross-country skiing.  Last weekend we hit the trails with a number of Steve's co-clerks, including John and Michael who were fresh to the sport.  It hadn't snowed in quite some time, so the trails were a bit slick.  But Michael was flying and John did an awesome job making it up and down some pretty big hills!

Along the way we saw our old friend, Mr. Moose.

Then on Wed night we got about 2-3'' of snow.  We took our skis and went back out to the trails on Thurs night to take advantage of it.  This was probably the best cross-country skiing we had thus far.  We went to a large park about 15 minutes outside of Anchorage that has miles and miles of ski trails.  A lot of the trails are lit at night, so we were able to see.  It was about 25-30 degrees, so it was warm enough to comfortably ski, and the snow was somewhat wet and thus really good for skiing.

On Friday the sun was shining bright and it was a beautiful, warm day.  (Sidenote: we have been gaining about 6 min of sunlight per day, so we are seeing much more sun.  It's now bright, bright, bright from about 9a - 5:30p. Real hours of sunlight coming back!  Pretty soon we'll be falling the other direction . . . all sun, no night).

Steve and his co-clerk Rebecca wanted to take advantage of the beautiful sun, so we played hooky from work around 2:30p and went back to the trails.

It was incredibly beautiful:

Here's Rebecca!

The clearness also opened up awesome views of Denali (Mt. McKinley):

Then yesterday Tammy had a conference, so Steve rented some skate skis and tried it out.  The difference between classic cross-country skiing and skate cross-country skiing can be seen here:

Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXk0vo2HsbA
Skate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGZlZkCwyk

Skate skiing is crazy intense.  It works your upper body and lower body, and takes a huge amount of force to propel you forward.  It was one of the best workouts Steve has ever had.

Now we're going to John's to watch the superbowl with some of Steve's other co-clerks.  In honor of Neha (and Charles Woodson), Go Pack Go!