How I spent my winter vacation.

Even though everybody claims to enjoy the holiday season, when it comes right down to it, they are all stress cases with a short fuse and a list of things to do that is longer than the paper it's written on. That is why, when we found out that we wouldn't be having everybody come to our house for the holidays, Jenn and I decided to pack up a few dogs and go on a dogsled/visit-her-family trip. Originally, we were just going to take a dozen dogs, our sleds and gifts and such and make Lindsay our anchor point for the week. Originally. Try to find a dogsitter who is willing to stay at your house over the holidays. In the end, we just said what the hell -- we'll take 'em all. As the day of departure drew ever closer, I finished putting the sides on the trailer, packing the necessary gear and food. Jenn had emailed the Haliburton Forest to see if we'd be able to run our teams there since it was not too far from where we planned to stay. The nice people at Winterdance Dogsled adventures or whatever the heck it's called summoned up all their holiday spirit and said "no." The reason given was because they had 'problems with other dogteams in the past'. I can understand how this would happen, too, because the Haliburton Forest encompasses a paltry several thousand square hectares: far too little a space to run dog teams in. Thanks, Winterdance. I hope we can return the favour.

It was a week before Christmas, a Tuesday, and it was the day that we were to have our truck looked at and the brakes done when I got a phone call at work from Jenn. As she was pulling out of the driveway to go to the truck appointment, our engine blew a sparkplug out of the block. Normal? Not unless you drive a Ford with the Triton V-8 made between 2001 and 2004 - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Jenn asked me if I thought it was safe to drive the truck the 40-some kilometers to town. "Go slow, I guess." I said. Jenn limped the truck in to the dealership and received the first bit of bad news: this happens to this engine all the time (same plug, even) and the repair isn't cheap. The repair involves removing the head, re-machining the threads for the plug, inserting a spacer because in re-machining the threads, the hole is too big now, putting the head back on (complete with new gasket and oil) and then putting the plug back in. Jenn was understandably shocked at this news since the very same thing happened to us last year and we were helped out by a local mechanic in Verner who took twenty minutes and used only a new plug. We were on the road with change from thirty dollars. This time, however, we were looking at about $2,500 worth of work, just to re-install the plug; the brakes hadn't even been done yet. The worst part about it all though was that the head mechanic didn't think the truck would be ready for Friday, the day we were supposed to leave. And if it wasn't ready Friday, chances were good that no mechanics would be working on it Saturday, Sunday, Christmas eve day and certainly not Christmas. Our plans to spend the holidays dogsledding around the Kawarthas and taking our nieces and nephew out for rides were over.

Understandably, Jenn was crushed. She went to work that night with eyes red from crying and when it was discovered the reason for this, her friends got together and rented us a truck, which made Jenn cry even more. It was such an incredibly generous thing to do and Jenn kept saying "they don't know what they've done; they think that they've just rented us a truck." But it was more than that; it wasn't just a rental of a truck. They had given us the ability to spend the holidays with family and our dogs -- the two things that Jenn most wanted.

It turned out that we didn't need the rental of a truck. The mechanics at Ford stayed late and worked overtime to get our truck ready by late Friday evening. We were packed on the road by 10h30 Saturday morning.

When all of our travelling was done for Saturday, we were in Lindsay for 0h30 Saturday night/Sunday morning. We'd visited a friend and made an appearance at a family dinner, but for the most part, we were on the road that day. It's an odd feeling, driving through downtown Brampton with a truck and trailer load of dogs and dogsleds strapped to the roof. You certainly don't have to look hard for your truck in a parking lot.

We spent the next two days running the dogs around a farm field on a trail we put in ourselves, with the help of our lead dog, Risk. We ran in the rain because it seemed sort of foolish to have brought our entire kennel down only to be sidelined by poor weather. Perfect conditions does not a hardy musher make. Risk was flawless: she was faced with an open farm field about forty acres in size and she took directions well enough to put in a figure eight trail that used two different fields.

Then, as if downtown Brampton wasn't enough, we loaded all the dogs up and drove down to Oshawa for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We parked the dogs on a subdivision street and, when we dropped them to feed them or pee, took up a lane and a half. Yep, we certainly turned some heads in Oshawa. We even had the across the street neighbour taking pictures of us and a cop stopped by 'just to chat'.

On Christmas day, after all the presents had been opened, we set up in the small park across the street from Jenn's sister's house and let the neighbourhood kids take turns on the dogsled with Dora and the ever-tolerant Ruby.

We packed up early that night and headed back to Sudbury at around 21h30, arriving at our house in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

It certainly was a busy trip, and one that nearly didn't happen but for the thoughtfulness and hard work of some people.

I'd like to tell you that I have lots of pictures of the whole thing, but I don't. Jenn was given an awesome new digital camera for a gift and she was so excited that she had the memory card full within the hour. We couldn't download the pictures (and make room for more pictures) until we got home.

Triangle and Baby, our two 'puppies' running around the back yard in Oshawa

Hunter, skating on our driveway. It rained enough to make it a literal skating rink.

The obligatory pose for the camera in my new Skookum Brand Anorak. (!)