Good things and bad things. The golf cart we use for training is having brake problems. The brake shoes are done for and getting new ones is not that easy, it turns out. No parts stores nearby have anything for golf carts at all, so we tried ordering some. First of all, they are extremely expensive, considering that they are only brake pads, and are a lot smaller than something for like a car, say. Fifty bucks per wheel, and the set is only the shoes, no springs or anything. Then we were told that all we need to know for ordering is that the cart is a G9, which would be good, because we have no idea what year it is or anything because we can't find a serial number or model number or any numbers on the cart, which might have to do with all the severe abuse and dirt that accumulates with the abuse that the cart takes for its job of being pulled by teams of dogs for eight years or so. Turns out you do need to know a bit more info than that, like that apparently its older than a 1994, because the part that we received was not the correct part.
So, naturally, because we were getting really impatient with the situation, and didn't want to wait for another part to be reordered and sent, we tried once more to find something that would work locally, as one of the auto parts store clerks had suggested that it might be possible to match the shoes for a four wheeler, if we brought the old shoes in. Turns out that we could have found the shoes that we had ordered locally, as they did match four wheeler shoes, and it would have cost half as much, but obviously that did us no good. Of course, none of those shoes matched the ones we actually needed. But the guy at the store had one more suggestion for a place we could try, so we went there next. He had nothing that was a perfect match, but he did have some that looked like they'd work with some minor tweaking, and they were very inexpensive, so we bought one set to try. Jeremy was able to get them to work, but it was only one wheel. We decided that we were pretty sure that we had been using the cart for at least a couple weeks with only one brake working (the cart only has brakes on the two back wheels), so thought that we'd be able to use it with the one done, and we were anxious because we knew that some friends of ours were running two teams up in Bruce Crossing the next morning ( which was last Friday), so we became too ambitious and went up to join them. The hookup:
Turns out this was the best part of the whole run! We quickly realized that we had made a big mistake. It didn't take very long and the brakes stopped working almost entirely. We ended up having to unhook almost half the teams tug lines in order to have even a tiny bit of control. Thank goodness we have good, understanding and helpful musher friends who really saved our butts! Thanks entirely to them, we were able to cut our run short and made it back to the truck with no real injuries (one dog had a rub sore one his rear haunch from the gang line after we had unhooked his tug). The other two teams were able to continue their run a few more miles, but we felt horrible for having messed up everyones run, but they were nice about it and made us feel better about it. But again, our apologies to them for such a lapse in judgement. We should never have assumed the cart was ready, and are not running again until the other brake has been replaced as well. The new parts are here and waiting to be put in, which has not happened because during this week, we got our first snow! We have a couple inches on the ground, melting as I type this. The cart has taken a back burner this week, mostly because once there is a couple inches of snow we can't use the cart anymore. The tires and clearance do not work well in the snow. The tires have no tread on them really, and it slides all over and then the brakes do nothing either, so once the snow is here to stay, we have to wait until there is enough of it to run the sleds on it, which means we need a couple inches of base underneath so the runners of the sled are not sliding on the ground. Hopefully by the beginning of December. We should be able to use the cart if the snow keeps melting like it is today, once the brakes are finished, so hopefully training will resume soon.
In other news, we managed to re home one of the Alaskan Huskies, Meg.
She decided last season that she didn't want to do any pulling, just run along with the team, so she has not been training this year and we decided that it would be in everyones best interest to find her a new family for her to be a part of. We listed her on Craigs List and quickly found her a nice family with 30 acres and children for her to play with. So she left last night. Now we are down to 28 dogs, including the 2 new dogs and the pups. We do still have one or two more dogs that we'd like to see go to new families, and will be happy if we manage to find them loving new homes, but they are loved here, too. They will not be race dogs, but we have been wanting to give rides and think they would do fine there, if they are still here. If anyone reading is interested, check the U.P. Craigslist for pets in Ironwood.
