We now sit at home.  Hoping we can make a race.  Things are not that easy.  Health issues with myself and timing for Rachel makes all the difference on where we go and when we go.  There was a race we could go to and that was Ft. St. James.  This was a long drive south of us.  They had mass starts and that worried me a bit.  Thinking that if it works out okay we should be able to race and have clean runs there.  IF we did it would be a good lead in for the worlds.  Well not perfect but better than nothing.  I felt this would be important for Rachel and the team.  The drive was way longer than what I wanted to drive but we are used to that.  For the most part the dogs are also used to it as well.  Time would tell if it was too much.
   Rachel myself and her boyfriend drove to Ft. St. James.  I have a bed in the back of the truck so I spend allot of time laying down.  Matt did allot of driving and is an awesome help.  So we got down there and it was hot.  It was very hot and we had three females dogs in the truck in season. This was causing lots of problems amongst the boys. 
   When we got there Sam Perrino was nice enough to give us the use of his house and an awesome bed to sleep in.  Sam was also Race Marshal for the race.  IT was great to see him and his family.  Have not seen him and his family since the Yukon Quest when he was up in the Yukon to run it.

   Day one was pretty warm. It hovered around -3 to 0 degrees.  The six dog was Rachels first race.  About half way around the sun went behind the clouds and you could feel the difference in the temp. IT got suddenly colder.  Rachel got out in her heat first without any problems and had a clean run the whole way around.  It was a good run.  The four dog took all day before they ran it.  IT got hotter and the dogs were watered in the morning and we could not get them to drink again?  When it was time for them to run it was really warm.  Rachel put together a team of left overs from her six dog team and used some leaders she hoped would pull her around the course.  Rachel took off in her four dog heat and was out first. No problem she stayed in the lead but on the way home her leader would stop and roll in the snow and bite snow??  We have never seen this before but he was hot and didn't get enough to drink before his run? LOL it was kinda funny but Rachel wasn't very happy by his actions. We knew after that day we needed to water them later and hope the race could move along a bit faster to get to the race before they needed to drink again.
   Day Two. It was allot warmer today. Really warm first thing in the morning when we got up.   We watered her six dog team in the morning but didn't water her four dog team. She switched a leader in her four dog team as well.  Her six dog team went out just as good on day two as day one.  Rachel was out in the lead and held the lead the whole way round.  Her four dog team was watered closer to her race.  She put up a different leader and had a great start and awesome finish.  No problems with this team today. 
   Over all Rachel won the six dog by four and a half minutes over Dave's STREEPER TEAM. Rachel and her team also won the four dog race beating Dave's STREEPER TEAM.  it was close after having so many stops after day one.  AWESOME Job Rachel and dogs.
  Now we had to leave very quickly and get home.  This was my concern now is getting up to North pole Alaska for a training run.  It was a very quick run up north back home.  We dropped off the dogs in season loaded up a few more and took off for the IFSS race.
    I was quite concerned about the team after racing so hard in the heat.  I think it took allot out of the team. The question now would be,  Will  the team recover in time for the IFSS races?  We needed to give them good rest and have them as prepared as possible.  We also wanted to train when we got there and time only allowed us to train on a Weds and start racing again on a Friday.  This isn't ideal by any stretch and I knew that.  In my mind to get them out racing and to go have fun during Rachel/s last year was more important than having things fall into place perfectly so that is what we did we went out and did some racing and had a fun trip to FT. ST. James.  We really enjoyed our time there.  Great people and great race.