Tom's trip from Sault St. Marie, Mi to Toke, Ak SITREP#8 (9)

TO ALL:

This will be a short one. We are in Russell, Manitoba in a ski lodge with a million teens. What a zoo.

The drive from Rolla went fine. Today the sky was leaden with snow flurries driving across the highways. Still, driving went very good. We drove along the sledders as they took the ditches. All of us made over 270 miles today.

The sledders are a bawdy bunch with a lot of "sexist" jokes. We we got word that the ND Wildlife Resources guides were female, all joked and laughed. Well, these two females rode at such speeds that our rocket pilots could'nt keep up and were promptly put in place. Their habit of "thumbs up" for OK to go with the pack all in formation changed to thumbs down.

Speaking of females, when I refueled in Mintios, Manitoba, a female pump girl did the work and washed my windshields. We didn't get this kind of treatment since the 60's in the U.S.

Everyone here is hughly disappointed about the Canadian hockey loss to the US. We went through custome in about 10 minutes with the customs guy asking me if I was a criminal. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

As we neared Russell, the snow was coming down in pretty hard. Driving across the prairie is still easy and fun.

The prairie in Manatoba is very like ND with a large snowpack across the fields.l

We went by the Turtle mountains and they indeed look like turtles sitting on a dish.

Tomorrow it's on to Priestpress Sask - a ride of about 150 miles so we will start out quite late - 7:00am.

My four riders that I support are starting to bond after a number of angry barbs. They are now sledding as a team and look great as they skim the snow.

So much for now, Take care......Tom