Welcome Home Checker JaDee

one more day

JaDee is staying one more day. Here is his e-mail from this morning. His sister EmRee is wanting him to put together a fireside for the youth of Lovell WY when we go there in June. Since our brother in law, Travis is the Young Men's President We think that can be arranged.

See how dangerous it is to be away, Honey! Your sister and wife are conspiring together against you.

But I guess that is because we are so darn proud of you!

How are you and the kids really doing? Let me know. I am not really
worried about work. Dale is out until later this week I think Thursday.
Anyway he was way excited. If the weather is bad they may not fly us out
anyway. Let me know how you are really doing. You can give me a call in
the morning if you would like to talk about it.

Tucker is coming to Anchorage for some tests on the 7th of April I suppose. Anyway I am going to invite him to dinner or something. Do not even know if it is a possibility, but I need to invite. Can I just tell you that it has been
years since I have dealt with a touching culture.

All and all I think I am doing OK( personal space and all) Well I love you and will write later.

Love


JaDee
Kaltag - 2009 Iditarod
Checkpoint Communications

Kaltag Comms - Fat, Dumb & Happy!

And here is tonight's update....

Well it was a good choice to stay another day. The wind is blowing with gusts above 40 mph. Sustained above 20MPH. We have a bunch of Dogs going to come in tonight between 10pm and 2am. they have to come into the wind for the 70 miles. Any way things are good. We just had a plane turn around and not land. I would not get on a small plane today. We are all being safe and a large plane may come and get all of the dogs and me tomorrow. No need to stay longer as there will not be any more mushers coming in for a while. After today there are only 13 left to come through and way spread out. Anyway love you and will write again when I get a chance.


JaDee
Kaltag - 2009 Iditarod
Checkpoint Communications
Kaltag Comms - Just a Nice Blustery Spring Day!

PS EmRee asked if I was spellchecking his e-mails....that would be affirmative. Anyone who knows JaDee knows he does not spell well, at all.

Yay Honey!!!

It was a busy day on the trail. I finally got an e-mail form him. It is -20 up in Kaltag!!

Hi dear,
Well it was about 11:00PM last night and "Tucker" the Village elder
in charge of Checking in the Mushers took the clip board that he was holding
and handed it to me and said now you are the checker. Yea I have been doing
my job and checking in and out every musher here. So I have the signatures
of all of the top mushers.

About noon the wind wiped up to 20 mph. The day
started at -20 and warmed up to a lot worse. I have done everything from
driving a sled to walking a team out to making sure one waited his full 8
hours. I have gotten tons of pictures but it is so cold that the battery
only lasts a few hours. But the professional cameras batteries were dying
also.

There have been a lot of very nice people and some that are jest
trying to get out. My picture is on the iditarod.com pictures for today. ( go about halfway down the thumbnails in the left hand column).
We worked with 5 dropped dogs today. Some dogs look really well and others
are tired. I now believe that it is all the dogs and not the drivers.

I cooked Salmon last night. I could not remember the recipe so I made one up
and every body seem to like it. One guy said complements and I am hard to
please. They are all sad that I am leaving tomorrow, but I tell them that I
have to pay rent.

It has been cool to talk to all of the vets. That is the
one thing I never realized is how many vets volunteer.

Well I love you and I
am a little tired. My shift is over at Midnight and the rest of the mushers
for the night will be in by then. I will work until my plane takes me out
of hear. Every body is amazed that you helped me get here and having only
been here since December. Well I love you. I might get another chance to
write you but I do not know.

Love


JaDee
Kaltag - 2009 Iditarod

Iditarod at Kaltag day 2

I got 3 e-mails from JaDee this morning. He made it to Kaltag and is gearing up for the first mushers to arrive tonight!

Nicole,
We are here in Kaltag safe and sound. We have a ton of food and are very warm. We have a phone number so you can call me. I can not call out long distance. Anyway we are talking to the locals and Scott is cooking dinner. Hamburger helper. I will write more later or in the morning. Love you and talk to you later. The #'s are below.
JaDee



Good morning

Well we aren't exactly roughing it. I had a bed to sleep in last night. It is still very dark outside. The people that I have met seem very friendly. This is the e-mail that I will use from now on because the Juno is slow and I forgot to log off and I do not know if you are able to use it if I am logged on. Any way I hope this finds you well. The first Mushers are almost to Eagle Island. That is about a 5 to 6 hour run from here. So I guess it depends on the amount of rest that they decide to take. I doubt much as there are only 3 tents there and they do not have a lot of heat. We have a nice heated community center for them to stay in. Scott is nice and we have gotten along pretty well. Our last flight of food will make it in today if the weather is nice. The little plane was pretty fun to fly in. We saw the trail from above. We sat and chatted with Tucker and Peter until 10:30 last night. They are pretty funny. I will probably take a shower and get ready for the day. The Yukon river is pretty big. It should be a pretty fun and exciting day today. Well take care and tell the kids that I love them. Until later.

JaDee
Kaltag - 2009 Iditarod


Well I have a little more time. It looks like the first mushers will be here tonight and most of the day tomorrow. It should get pretty busy. You can e-mail me back at this address if you want to. It is pretty crazy out here. I am charging my camera battery right now so that I will be able to take a lot of pictures of the dogs and mushers. Anyway I hope you are having a good time with the kids and they are not driving you crazy. If we got a babysitter maybe you and I could do KALTAG next year together. It would be like camping to you. I am sure there will be a lot more people coming in latter on today and tomorrow. Well I am off to take more pictures.

Love you.

JaDee

JaDee on the trail day 1

As you know JaDee flew out on a little prop plane to his post on the Iditarod. They flew into the "larger" post of Unalakleet .and were going to change planes but weather kept them in Unalakleet last night. Here is the e-mail I got this morning from JaDee:

Well I slept on the basketball floor last night. It is an old domed Quonset hut that they converted into a gym. Everybody else stayed upstairs and I figured if I had the room take it while I had it. I was the only one down there. Carter and Ethan, one of the people that I have meet is a captain of a commercial salmon fishing boat. She is really nice. She has sold fish to the captain of one of the boats off of the Most Dangerous Catch. Kind of funny huh. Well I have a lot of pictures.

Well Nicole I have found Rustic AK. I should have brought you here first and then our house would appear as a modern marvel. Well we had pizza at the only restaurant in town. $36 for a large. All of the satellites point down. I can't wait until you go to Nome.

Any way I will sign off for now. I might fly out if the weather is good. There is a checkpoint that is ahead of us that is not set up yet. Eagle Island has 6' of snow and you sink once you get off of the plane. They have 3 tents and no food for the dogs or mushers yet. So I may be here another day until they get that one set up. Olivia I got to fly in a little airplane I got a lot of good pictures out of the window.

Well I hope you are doing well. Love you all

And he's off!

We have had a fun spring break in spite of the lack of spring weather. Monday we had dinner with friends. Suzie and Bruce have 3 married kids in Eagle River and invited us to join them all for dinner with their kids and grandkids. It was great to have a bunch of kids running around with light sabers and we had a great Family Home Evening lesson with them.

Yesterday we went ice skating and sledding with Suzie's daughter in law, Julie, and her 3 kids. She has 2 boys and girl that match up with my kids exactly. They each had a friend and played sharks and minnows down the sledding hill. It involved a lot of tackling each other and was a ton of fun. Later we sent Carter and his new friend to their house while Ethan and his new friend cam to our house. They laughed themselves silly and had a great time.

Last night we had our friends the Mowers over. They have 4 kids Ethan's age and younger. They just got back from Hawaii and we had to hear all about their trip. We played a rousing game of Snorta (click the link for the last time I mentioned Snorta on the ole blog...its way at the end) with everybody and it was down to Catherine and her husband Matt. We laughed as the spousal competition really came forth as they quacked and oinked their way to the bitter end!

And today JaDee flew out to Katltag. He is most excited. He will only be able to e-mail me until Monday. Hopefully all will go well. He took the camera and we will have them up as soon as he gets back, maybe he will even be a guest poster on the ole blog!

I am off with the kids to the Imaginarium tomorrow. It is a science museum here in Anchorage with hands on stuff for the kids. We have unpacked about 8 big boxes of toys and found homes for most of them. My floor is mopped for the week and we are relatively on top of the laundry!

Life is good.

Iditarod 101

We got to see the start of the "Last Great Race." Turns out it is a ceremonial start where the mushers get to carry their family or other people from Anchorage to Eagle River. Then the real start is today up in Willow. JaDee went down early in the morning to get assigned to his team as a dog handler. A dog handler holds the dogs in the harness when they are hooked up to the sled, but still waiting to take off. They run along side the dogs, holding the harness to the start line. JaDee was with team 14 of 69.


The musher's name was Gary. He lives in the middle of nowhere here in AK. He had 18 dogs with him that will run the Iditarod at various legs. He has, however 50 dogs total at home. 50 dogs! That is a lot of food and a lot of poop! Many of the mushers are from Alaska but there were teams from Nebraska and Washington that I saw as well.


One musher only runs white dogs. His team is all white. He is apparently a famous musher and JaDee saw him and his team, but since we are new fans of the sport he was not aware of the enormity of the sighting. There were alot of big name mushers but you would never guess it. Most of the truck used to haul the teams are old pickups with homemade plywood kennels built onto the bed. The only "professional" looking equipment was the team that the National Guard ran. They were all color coordinated Red White and Blue trucks and kennels. Turns out a retired musher named Mackey trains the dogs for them. Mackey's family goes back 3 generations of mushers who have won the Iditarod. So while we are proud of country's representation out there on the trail, they are the spoiled ones.


Sled dogs are NOT huskies!!! They are this mongrel mix of husky, German shepherd, and a bunch of other things that keep them small and quick with floppy ears.


Anyway, check out the pictures and wish JaDee good luck in Kaltag!


The starting line at 4th and D St

As they go rushing by us

A musher prepares his sled



The dogs are anxious to get going. that is why they need a handler. Once they are hooked to the sled they just want to run. And the barking!! There were 69 teams. Each team has an average of 10 dogs hooked up at a time. That is 700 dogs!! But, they only bark when they are hooked up. In their kennels they are quiet and when they start to pull they are quiet. Pretty amazing.




Olivia met the "Rondy" Princesses. The Iditarod has roots with the fur rendezvous that was also held at this time. Rondy Festival has been going on all week, much like Peach Days, but in the winter!

After the last team we went out on 4th St at the start.

The snow has to be trucked on to 4th street until they can get out to open snow. That really won't be until they pass Eagle River 8 miles away. They will follow the groomed trails for skiers until then.

Clean up. Notice the fur sign. 4th St is home of the furriers. There are fur shops up and down 4th. And not a PETA protester in sight.

Here is the National Guard kennel and their team we got to see hook up. No one else looked this nice. That kennel is 2 "stories" tall and is double sided. Meaning the dogs are rear to rear with another dog on the other side of the wall. This kennel holds 20 dogs, ten on each side. Most of the teams have kennels designed just like this, but made out of plywood in the shop back home.

The guard even had matching jackets. We also saw Eukanuba and another sponsored team that had matching jackets for this start too.

JaDee the dog handler. That was his backstage pass!

Close up of dogs

A handler hooking up a dog. After he was hooked she did not let go of the rope and another person helped hook the next dog. It took as many as 10 people to hook up and handle a team depending on how the musher wanted his dogs handled.

There is the 2 story National guard kennel

And he is off!

Carter and Ethan has a team rushes by at the start

Do you know where Kaltag is?

Me either. But JaDee, that little devil who lives under a lucky star, gets to spend 5 days here next week as a volunteer on the Iditarod trail!

I am going to be watching British Dramas from Netflix and hanging out with the hooligans on Spring Break.

Wish I was in Hawaii...Barb...lets go!

Some more facts about Kaltag:

There are 117 males and 90 females.

It is 653 miles from Anchorage.

The nearest hospital is 274 miles away.

There are 26 students at the Kaltag; 3 of which are seniors.

They do have a small airport. And apparently a snowmobile or 2. But they call them "snow machines" in Alaska. I want to get a coat for the boy running in the bottom right of this shot.

All photos courtesy of this website that I had to search and search for: http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/photos/comm_photos.cfm?comm=Kaltag

Another of JaDee's dreams come true

JaDee has been a youth leader in the Church for 11 of the last 12.5 years of marriage. This means every Tuesday night (or Wednesday depending on the ward's schedule), several Friday nights for camp outs (which then mean Saturdays too), one week a year for Scout camp, Sunday morning meetings and the occasional Sunday night Fireside, JaDee was gone.

He loved it. Tiresome as it sometimes was, by his own admission, however, more so tiresome for me, JaDee loved it. Of course he did. What 20 something into his 30 somethings "man" wouldn't want to do this (the quotes are to make us think of the maturity level of that age of the human male- come to think of it we could almost always put quotes around that word regardless of the "man's" age)! Spending time reliving/continuing adolescent pass times such as ice blocking, fire starting, snowball fighting, hiking, and basketball playing is not such a hard thing to ask.

But while still involved in all these activities as a recent member of the Bishopric in our old ward, he had to leave behind a lot of the adolescent stuff and be the adult. There were many more meetings, responsibilities, and examples to set. Thus JaDee longingly looked at 2 callings in the ward as the most perfect way to "retire" from being in the bishopric: Nursery leader or 2nd councilor in the Sunday School presidency.

Well last week his wish came true, almost. JaDee was called to be 1st councilor in the Sunday School presidency. Oh the joy of a Sunday only calling! Oh the joy of not having to attend any of the meetings a president of Sunday School gets to go to. Oh the joy of still being able to teach the youth on Sunday but not have to plan an activity in the middle of the week. JaDee was ecstatic.

All of his dreams are coming true.