January 18th-20th, 2002
To celebrate Beatrice's 23rd birthday and to make Hester happy before she's off to Australia, we went to Huntsville, 5-hour-drive north of Guelph. At one point, the weather was so bad that we couldn't see anything at all, and ended up driving 30km/hr on the highway!!! (But when we came back it was clear and drove at 100km/hr...what a difference.) That night we could listen to waitress' lovely b-day song for Beatrice and could eat a cake for free at a restaurant...The next day we went for a walk in Arrowhead provincial park, where we went totally crazy and practiced our karate in the snow and burried Hester. We also went tubing; sliding down a hill spinning and screeming. The third day we went dog sledding for the first time, and it was nothing like what we had expected. Letting the dogs do all the work and you relax...no, didn't work that way. One person sits on a sled, relaxed(?), and another person stands behind, controling the brake so the sled doesn't run over the dogs when it's downhill, and run, push, and cheer the dogs by shouting "hike!!!" when uphill. Yes, it was a very good exercise. But it was better than just being a "customer" on the sled, not doing any work. Of course we had a blast and was punchy, but exhausted...Beatrice had to drive back 5 hours and Hester had to keep an eye on the map while Mizuki took a nap in the back seat...