Would you believe that in the seven months (yes, just seven months!) since we first started this project a staggering 76,731 page views have taken place in the forum alone. Unlike open websites every one has been about our project!
There have been a total of 4,301 posts in 221 topics and, on average, 360 page views take place every day.
It might also surprise you to know that an average of 20 posts take place every day.
The one interesting stat I don't have at hand is how many hours in total have been spent online working on The Book, but I can reveal that just under 1,000 hours (933) have been dedicated by the top ten contributors alone! That's the equivalent 25 full-time working weeks so far.
And this is just the Forum so work offline researching, writing, editing or in the Wikis isn't included in these numbers!
What a truly splendid effort and little wonder that such a brilliant manuscript is being created.
Just another 8 1/2 months to go!
Pete
Friday, March 20, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Springtime in Alaska and its 40 below
For our followers enjoyment, I want to point out two yearly winter events in Alaska that test the mettle of man and machine and man and dog. Man is used here as a generic term for human. I’m not aware of any women winning the Iron Dog; but two women are famous, at least in Alaska, for their Iditarod Sled Dog race wins – Libby Riddles won in 1985 crossing the Bearing Straits into Nome in a blizzard other mushers chose to sit out and Susan Butcher followed Libby with four straight wins.
The first major winter event is the Tesoro Iron Dog, originally known as the Iron Dog Iditarod, an off-road snowmobile race across Alaska. It normally starts on a Sunday in mid-February and, at 1,971 miles (3,172 km), it is the longest snowmobile race in the world. The 2008 event featured a record forty teams competing for a $100,000 purse, with $25,000 awarded to the winners and attracted worldwide attention when 4-time winner Todd Palin's wife, Sarah, campaigned for vice presidency of the United States.
The race route now follows parts of the Iditarod Trail, the route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts at Big Lake and follows the main trail and its connecting trails until it hits the Yukon River at Ruby. It follows the river to Kaltag before it heads to the Norton Sound on the Bering Sea at Unalakleet, Alaska and it follows the coast until Nome. Then it returns back along the same path in the reverse order to Ruby, where it diverges off its original path by following the Yukon River and its tributary the Tanana River until the competitors finish in Fairbanks. The current course record of 37 hours, 19 minutes is held by the winners of the 2009 Tesoro Iron Dog; Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad.
Races are typically run in temperatures well below freezing, and -20°F (-30°C) to -50°F (-45°C) air temperatures are common without taking wind chill into effect. Some drivers apply duct tape to their faces to protect against frostbite. The machines are equipped with tall windshields for protection from the cold.
Drivers compete in two-driver, two-sled teams for their safety since they travel through remote areas of Alaska and teams are required to take three six-hour breaks between Nome and Tanana. They also take a 42-hour break in Nome to recuperate before they start making their return. Sleds are impounded during the break, ensuring that they rest since they are not able to work on their sleds. The race never had a fatality in its first 25 years, although there have been close calls.
In the 2009 race, Todd Palin, Alaska’s First Dude, sustained an accident that left his machine’s skis bent perpendicular to each other following impact with a barrel hidden under fresh snow. The snowmachine immediately stopped but Todd flew about 70 feet, probably saved from serious injury due to the race requirement for body armor to be worn.
As originally published in the Fairbanks News Miner on February 14, 2009, "Riding a pair of Polaris Dragons, Minnick, 29, and Nick Olstad, 23, held on to win the Iron Dog in record time, edging the Ski-Doo team of Aklestad and Tyson Johnson by just 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
Their time of 37 hours, 19 minutes and 8 seconds across the 1,971-mile trail shattered the previous course record of 38:07:57."
They also edged out Arctic Cat riders who had won the race since 2001.
Next, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race had its ceremonial start this year on Saturday, March 7, 2009, in Anchorage, Alaska, with mushers and their dogs going on short runs through the city.
The grueling 1,150-mile trek to Nome begins in earnest on Sunday with 67 mushers and more than 1,000 dogs competing, but controversy is already mounting.
The recession has hit the famous race, with entrance fees rising as the purse declines to $610,000 from $935,000 last year. Fewer mushers are competing this year, with some saying the expense of training in tough economic times caused them to sit out.
Two-time champion Lance Mackey is vying to win his third consecutive race. Only two others have achieved such a feat. (Lance lives with "a dozen non-competing canines -- chihuahuas, Jack Russell terriers and pomeranians," according to an article in USA Today.)
Animal rights groups such as PETA protest the Iditarod, saying it's "marked by cruelty, injuries, and death." This year PETA is mounting a campaign to urge sponsors to withdraw support from the event. The Humane Society of the United States takes a different view. The group doesn't object to competitive mushing so long as the welfare of the dogs is not endangered but opposes the Iditarod in its current form. Three dogs died in the race last year.
What would the dogs say if they could talk? I think the Iditarod would be on the bucket list of any mushing husky. These dogs train year-round for the competition. They are athletes of the highest nature and they live and breathe to race. That is evident from the canine excitement of yipping and tugging at their harnesses as the teams move into the chute to start the race on 4th Avenue in downtown Anchorage. Many humans participate in team handling to keep the excited canines in check and I would venture to say these dogs are more pampered than my own German Shepherd house mates.
During the fall preparation for this race, dog booties, the tough cloth boots that protect the dogs' feet on long runs and in races, are either ordered from one of a handful of companies, or they are sewn. Dog coats and wrist wraps are also prepared.
Each musher also calculates his/her own dog food diet but most feed a premium power-packed dog food with added options of lamb trimmings, poultry skins, hamburger, moose or salmon steaks, occasionally corn oil, and for some, seal oil or mink mixture, in addition to vitamin, mineral, and probiotic supplements. The musher aims for a food that is about 2500 calories per pound. Water is important too, and although the food is usually fed frozen and raw, snow may be melted for making a stew.
High performance snacks for the dogs are carried on the sled, but it’s not possible to carry two weeks worth of food for 16 huskies. Mushers must prepare the food a couple of weeks ahead of time, in pre-measured bags, and send it out to the eighteen checkpoints set up along the Iditarod trail.
These wiry little canine athletes can work up enormous appetites while averaging more than a hundred miles a day in front of a sled, in subzero temperatures, but tasty nutrition will be waiting for them at each rest stop.
The beginning of this race, in 1967, was to highlight the courage and endurance of the dog mushers and their teams who raced against time to bring serum to Nome during catastrophic diphtheria outbreak in December 1924. The sickness was initially diagnosed as tonsillitis in a two-year-old Nome boy, with several deaths occurring prior to the diagnosis of diphtheria and the discovery that the serum in Nome was outdated. Nome was quarantined and U.S. Public Health Service started a search for the needed vaccine and a way to get it to Nome. The only planes available were open cockpit biplanes whose pilots were not in Alaska at the time and, with temperatures driven to -85 degrees F (-65 C), several dog teams and their drivers undertook the trip to Nome with the life saving serum. The musher who arrived in Nome, with exhaustion and frostbite himself, was Gunnar Kaasen with his lead dog, Balto (now of Disney fame), who led the team through blowing snow so bad Gunnar could barely see the wheel dogs closest to the sled.
There are web sites that follow this trek from checkpoint to checkpoint and the winners for this year's race should be in Nome about March 16.
Glenda
The first major winter event is the Tesoro Iron Dog, originally known as the Iron Dog Iditarod, an off-road snowmobile race across Alaska. It normally starts on a Sunday in mid-February and, at 1,971 miles (3,172 km), it is the longest snowmobile race in the world. The 2008 event featured a record forty teams competing for a $100,000 purse, with $25,000 awarded to the winners and attracted worldwide attention when 4-time winner Todd Palin's wife, Sarah, campaigned for vice presidency of the United States.
The race route now follows parts of the Iditarod Trail, the route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts at Big Lake and follows the main trail and its connecting trails until it hits the Yukon River at Ruby. It follows the river to Kaltag before it heads to the Norton Sound on the Bering Sea at Unalakleet, Alaska and it follows the coast until Nome. Then it returns back along the same path in the reverse order to Ruby, where it diverges off its original path by following the Yukon River and its tributary the Tanana River until the competitors finish in Fairbanks. The current course record of 37 hours, 19 minutes is held by the winners of the 2009 Tesoro Iron Dog; Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad.
Races are typically run in temperatures well below freezing, and -20°F (-30°C) to -50°F (-45°C) air temperatures are common without taking wind chill into effect. Some drivers apply duct tape to their faces to protect against frostbite. The machines are equipped with tall windshields for protection from the cold.
Drivers compete in two-driver, two-sled teams for their safety since they travel through remote areas of Alaska and teams are required to take three six-hour breaks between Nome and Tanana. They also take a 42-hour break in Nome to recuperate before they start making their return. Sleds are impounded during the break, ensuring that they rest since they are not able to work on their sleds. The race never had a fatality in its first 25 years, although there have been close calls.
In the 2009 race, Todd Palin, Alaska’s First Dude, sustained an accident that left his machine’s skis bent perpendicular to each other following impact with a barrel hidden under fresh snow. The snowmachine immediately stopped but Todd flew about 70 feet, probably saved from serious injury due to the race requirement for body armor to be worn.
As originally published in the Fairbanks News Miner on February 14, 2009, "Riding a pair of Polaris Dragons, Minnick, 29, and Nick Olstad, 23, held on to win the Iron Dog in record time, edging the Ski-Doo team of Aklestad and Tyson Johnson by just 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
Their time of 37 hours, 19 minutes and 8 seconds across the 1,971-mile trail shattered the previous course record of 38:07:57."
They also edged out Arctic Cat riders who had won the race since 2001.
Next, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race had its ceremonial start this year on Saturday, March 7, 2009, in Anchorage, Alaska, with mushers and their dogs going on short runs through the city.
The grueling 1,150-mile trek to Nome begins in earnest on Sunday with 67 mushers and more than 1,000 dogs competing, but controversy is already mounting.
The recession has hit the famous race, with entrance fees rising as the purse declines to $610,000 from $935,000 last year. Fewer mushers are competing this year, with some saying the expense of training in tough economic times caused them to sit out.
Two-time champion Lance Mackey is vying to win his third consecutive race. Only two others have achieved such a feat. (Lance lives with "a dozen non-competing canines -- chihuahuas, Jack Russell terriers and pomeranians," according to an article in USA Today.)
Animal rights groups such as PETA protest the Iditarod, saying it's "marked by cruelty, injuries, and death." This year PETA is mounting a campaign to urge sponsors to withdraw support from the event. The Humane Society of the United States takes a different view. The group doesn't object to competitive mushing so long as the welfare of the dogs is not endangered but opposes the Iditarod in its current form. Three dogs died in the race last year.
What would the dogs say if they could talk? I think the Iditarod would be on the bucket list of any mushing husky. These dogs train year-round for the competition. They are athletes of the highest nature and they live and breathe to race. That is evident from the canine excitement of yipping and tugging at their harnesses as the teams move into the chute to start the race on 4th Avenue in downtown Anchorage. Many humans participate in team handling to keep the excited canines in check and I would venture to say these dogs are more pampered than my own German Shepherd house mates.
During the fall preparation for this race, dog booties, the tough cloth boots that protect the dogs' feet on long runs and in races, are either ordered from one of a handful of companies, or they are sewn. Dog coats and wrist wraps are also prepared.
Each musher also calculates his/her own dog food diet but most feed a premium power-packed dog food with added options of lamb trimmings, poultry skins, hamburger, moose or salmon steaks, occasionally corn oil, and for some, seal oil or mink mixture, in addition to vitamin, mineral, and probiotic supplements. The musher aims for a food that is about 2500 calories per pound. Water is important too, and although the food is usually fed frozen and raw, snow may be melted for making a stew.
High performance snacks for the dogs are carried on the sled, but it’s not possible to carry two weeks worth of food for 16 huskies. Mushers must prepare the food a couple of weeks ahead of time, in pre-measured bags, and send it out to the eighteen checkpoints set up along the Iditarod trail.
These wiry little canine athletes can work up enormous appetites while averaging more than a hundred miles a day in front of a sled, in subzero temperatures, but tasty nutrition will be waiting for them at each rest stop.
The beginning of this race, in 1967, was to highlight the courage and endurance of the dog mushers and their teams who raced against time to bring serum to Nome during catastrophic diphtheria outbreak in December 1924. The sickness was initially diagnosed as tonsillitis in a two-year-old Nome boy, with several deaths occurring prior to the diagnosis of diphtheria and the discovery that the serum in Nome was outdated. Nome was quarantined and U.S. Public Health Service started a search for the needed vaccine and a way to get it to Nome. The only planes available were open cockpit biplanes whose pilots were not in Alaska at the time and, with temperatures driven to -85 degrees F (-65 C), several dog teams and their drivers undertook the trip to Nome with the life saving serum. The musher who arrived in Nome, with exhaustion and frostbite himself, was Gunnar Kaasen with his lead dog, Balto (now of Disney fame), who led the team through blowing snow so bad Gunnar could barely see the wheel dogs closest to the sled.
There are web sites that follow this trek from checkpoint to checkpoint and the winners for this year's race should be in Nome about March 16.
Glenda
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Spring in Guernsey
In the tiny corner of this wonderful planet where I live, Spring is just around the corner and with it comes renewed optimism. The season when things really start to grow and our book is no exception.
February saw the most significant progress yet on our novel as all the writing team are gelling and working around the clock. The chapters are coming together and during March a lot more than green shoots will be sprouting in our literary garden.
The past weeks have not been without challenges however and it would be wrong to gloss over some of the huge personal issues our writing team have also had to deal with. One of our writers from Penang in Malaysia lost her father only weeks after her son passed away and another writer from Canada is bravely fighting cancer. In Colorado, a writer's mum has also been diagnosed with cancer. We were relieved to learn that Australia's bush fires kept clear of our writers 'down under' and so far no eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska, although it still threatens our writer there and the repeated earthquakes must be a constant source of anxiety.
This is a team of strong as well as talented individuals who are putting extraordinary energy into this book. It will be a classic novel!
Pete
February saw the most significant progress yet on our novel as all the writing team are gelling and working around the clock. The chapters are coming together and during March a lot more than green shoots will be sprouting in our literary garden.
The past weeks have not been without challenges however and it would be wrong to gloss over some of the huge personal issues our writing team have also had to deal with. One of our writers from Penang in Malaysia lost her father only weeks after her son passed away and another writer from Canada is bravely fighting cancer. In Colorado, a writer's mum has also been diagnosed with cancer. We were relieved to learn that Australia's bush fires kept clear of our writers 'down under' and so far no eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska, although it still threatens our writer there and the repeated earthquakes must be a constant source of anxiety.
This is a team of strong as well as talented individuals who are putting extraordinary energy into this book. It will be a classic novel!
Pete
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