greenland

I’m pretty sure there was nothing stealthy about my dog sledging. What with my self-inflicted injuries, my part-time dogs, and a general lack of any idea or the tiniest clue about what I was doing, I was anything but stealthy.

I was, however, relatively stubborn.

Just ask Jane – or, rather, don’t ask Jane. My stubbornness often gets the better of me – at least, with certain projects.

Dog sledging wasn’t a project per se, but I had invested so much time and energy into it, it just had to work.

Sledging at night was one way of forcing myself to get better, without anyone seeing me.

While that might sound stealthy and stubborn, the truth is the trip went far better than planned. We sledged further than anticipated, and by the time we turned around, we had run out of light.

So… stealthy, stubborn, but incredibly satisfactory. 🙂

Oh, and the black eye had turned a lovely yellow!

Chris

A picture speaks a thousand words, and all that. I’ve got nothing to add. 🙂

Chris

My kids asked this a lot, and by kids I mean the teenagers in my English classes at school. It seems that every time I went out on the ice with the dogs I learned something new, and hurt myself something wicked at the same time.

I think that’s where the learning came in. If it doesn’t kill you… and all that. 😉

So, what I did this time was try to use the dog whip to strike the ice to one side of the dogs to get them to turn. It’s so much easier to get Maratse or Petra to do it. And, if we just agree that I am not Indiana Jones (although, I really want to be!), this was the result.

I never struck the dogs with the whip. I never intended to, and I never needed to. They took one look at what I did to myself with the whip, and decided to pull the sledge.

So we got there in the end, although it nearly cost me an eye.

Chris

And the day just got sillier from there.

Chris

It’s good to have friends. It’s even better if your friends are nuts.

Lars is definitely nuts, but then I still agreed to spend the night in the backyard. And it was a school night!

Step 1: pick a spot with a view (top photo).

Step 2: start digging.

Step 3: settle in for the night.

It was in the high minus 20s through the night, but about zero degrees inside the snow cave.

Tune in tomorrow to find out if we survived the night.

Chris