Reasons for November

There's a poem called "Reasons to Survive November" that you can listen to here, which inspired me some years ago to write a poem called "Reasons for November" about my own battle with the terrible eleventh month of the year.  The end of Daylight Savings this year came out of the blue for me, but then I think it does every year, too.  I blink, and all of a sudden it's really, really dark and cold out there.  I have a light box at work that I try to use all winter, but it's been so busy there lately that I've been forgetting to turn it on.  Which is all to say, it's been a while since I posted.

But never fear!  I haven't been hibernating the days away, as much as I would have liked to.  An exciting new development here at Wayward Huskies is the purchase of a fat bike:

The car you see in the back is to be sold to pay for the bike.  Anyone need a front-wheel drive Corolla with battery issues and fantastic winter tires?

Why have such a ridiculous-looking bicycle, you ask.  Well, let me explain.  Those fat-fat tires are great for floating on top of snow, and also on top of not-yet-very-snowy trails.  Up until now, I've been riding my LHT with studded tires in the wintertime, but that involved a lot of sweating and cursing in anything but packed snow.  With this, I'm able to just coast over it all like a dream--the wide tires make it very stable.  Also, it's great for bikejoring:

Bikejoring is a great way to work on commands, and Beenie did fantastic.  We met a few other dogs on the trail, and once he stopped to say hi to a really fluffy buggy, and another time he just went right on-by a two-dog skijoring team.  He did so great that I decided to bring him inside to sleep.  I left him alone for about five minutes, though, and I think he wanted to learn how to build birdhouses:

When I told him that books are for reading and not for chewing on, he felt very bad:

In addition to snow-biking, I've been doing some maintenance.  For example, I came home from work one day and found Delroy with no collar.  All that was left was an O-ring and this:

I believe that Cricket ate the rest of his collar, but I never did find evidence of that; of course, it may be that collars are highly-digestible.  Also, the s-hooks I'd used to attach everyone's tags were not up to the challenge of a Wayward Husky, and almost everyone's name tag had fallen off, leaving just a sad, lonely rabies tag.  Guy's s-hook had snapped clean in half at one point--I never did find his tags.  So when the new name tags I'd ordered came in the mail, I took everyone's collar off:

Then I got my tools together, including bigger s-hooks:

And I made one of these for everyone:

Ta-da!

The four oval tags are the puppies' from the Borough rabies clinic.  Ghost Dog's is the blue flowery one; she got her vaccine separately, at the Raven Vet.  So, some time with the s-hook tool later, and we were all set:

I had fixed Guy's collar some time before, which is why his isn't in this picture.

So I was doing stuff in November, but just as with the start of any winter here in Fairbanks, every little thing was so hard to do, and I could barely keep up the bare minimum.  On the plus side, it did snow quite a bit.  However, that meant shoveling the driveway:

We have a long driveway, and you can see the shovel on the left-hand side.  I'm only about a fifth done.  While I was out here, though, I saw a team cross the road on the trail, a six-dog team pulling a sled, and it planted an evil seed in my mind.  Of course, it got dark while I was doing my chores, though I did manage to organize the tarp garage:

And then I thought, it's pretty warm, there's a fair bit of snow, and mushing on the trail is apparently possible.  Maybe I'll go for a run.

At first, I decided to take just four of the dogs, as that would be plenty of power for a first run.  But as I was setting up the gangline, all six were so excited and I thought, I'll take them all.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it was a pretty white-knuckle ride, and I'm glad that they were a little out of shape.  We tore out of the yard, and I banged my knee when the sled knocked into the tire I'd used to line out the leaders.  But no one else was out, and we sped along like a barely-in-control missile.  It wasn't until we were headed back home that I could let go of the handlebar enough to snap a spooky picture:

That's the moon at the top of the photo, three nights past full.  But below is the raison d'être of Sally's Home for Wayward Huskies.  Terrifying as this first run was, it was also terribly exhilarating, and the dogs and I had fun, despite the fact that it's still November: