restarting

Although the local weather service won't declare this last week an official cold snap (it has not, apparently, been cold enough or long enough) the temperature at the cabin hasn't risen above -30 since last Friday. It has been creeping up this evening, though, an I am hopeful that Christmas week will see sustained temperatures sitting above -20. I'm on the other side of my awful illness, but sniffles and low energy are rippling in its wake. The dogs, in the mean time, have not run in ten days. They have had extra scoops of lard in their food, and extra chicken chunks in their water to fuel them against the cold. They have crowded into the cabin in the evenings to dry out the frost on their coats. They have had extra hay in their houses and elk bones to gnaw. But the sled has remained under the cabin, and they are restless.

Today, at thirty five below, Peter and I strapped the sled to the car and drove it up to David Klumb's shop, where he will spend part of his weekend adding a flip-up drag mat. He built the sled over ten years ago, and when we pulled it inside he was surprised to see it in such good shape.

There was a loose bolt on one of the runners, nearly gone, which he immediately pointed out to me. I had never thought to look for loose bolts under the snow and ice that has built up around the stanchion bases ... but in a few more weeks, I might have lost a runner to this oversight. He pointed out a few other odds & ends, running his hands over the thawing sled with not a little bit of nostalgia. He explained that the foot-boards - black nobby rubber mats drilled into the runners for traction - were a type that he didn't make, anymore. Racers didn't want them, because they were too heavy (he showed us the newer, lighter version that come standard with his sleds now.) and expensive "... but these old footboards have probably appreciated 75 or 80% since I built this sled ... you can't say that about many things ... much less things on a dog sled!"

I guess even in sled-building, they just don't make 'em like they used to.

Mr. Klumb's impressive salt & pepper beard make it nearly impossible to guess his age, but he has been building sleds since I was six years old. It took us while to find him, as he wasn't in the shop when we arrived. In the process of looking we saw the outside of his spectacular self-built, three story house on the hill north of our neighborhood, his dog yard with a very nice looking pack of Alaskan huskies who raised quite a protest about our presence in their territory, and his shop with walls of vintage photographs of sleds and dogs from all over the north country as well as several (giant!!) freight sleds in production. When we finally did track him down (he had been, apparently, in another cranny of the immense shop in a futile battle with his computer and utterly deaf to our calls) he gave the sled a once over, showed us some of his other projects and sent us on our way.

I'm working a 48 hour shift this weekend. I'll pick the sled up on Monday. With a new, safer drag mat, warmer temperatures & a fully recovered dog driver, we'll hit the trails again and start making up for the time we lost.