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The 2008 Beargrease Marathon Race - Part 1
I pulled over to the side of the road so we could put on our jackets and grab blankets out of the backseat to throw on our laps. We decided to stop at the next place we could find to eat dinner and we'd try to get the window up, somehow. A few months earlier when the problem first began I'd watched as my friend Scott pried off the door panel to spray WD40 on the window motor. That had temporarily fixed the window back then, so I hoped the same trick would work now.
© 2008 Jaye Foucher But prying off a door panel just isn't quite as easy as Scott made it look. Although Anastasia and I tried everything to get that thing off, 20 minutes and a cracked door panel later I decided to give up on the plan. So we dug out some warm hats and zippered up our jackets, wrapped blankets around our legs, turned the seat heaters on and blasted the heater in the truck, and decided to tough it out. As the temperatures dropped into the single digits and kept dropping, we got progressively colder. Every time we stopped for gas or a bathroom break or to drop dogs we dug out more gear and clothing. We tried at one point taping a large heavy duty contractor's bag to the window with duct tape - discovering in the process that duct tape loses its stickiness below zero - but the bag only lasted about 5 miles before it started to blow off, and freezing was actually preferable to the deafening noise of the bag flapping in the wind at 75 mph. I began to grow sleepy around 11 pm and decided to let Anastasia drive for a few hours. Up until this point I had assumed that I was getting the brunt of the cold and wind since it was the driver's window that was open. But as soon as we swapped seats and took off again I realized it was in fact the passenger side of the truck that was colder, and regretted not swapping earlier to give Anastasia a slight break from the intense cold. By midnight the temperature had reached a number I've never witnessed before: 25 below zero. We had chemical handwarmers stuffed in our boots and our mittens. Conversation between us had become limited only to the very basics, as our entire energies were needed to concentrate on staying warm. I kept dozing off, but my numbing toes would wake me up again very quickly. We were now in a very remote area of Canada and I couldn't remember the last time we had seen any signs of civilization. No lights, no houses, no telephone poles, no signs - just endless miles of a pitch-dark, 2 lane road through a wilderness of trees. "How much gas do we have left?" I asked. "Less than a quarter of a tank." Since I had forgotten to bring my road atlas along and all we had were mapquest directions, it was impossible to tell how far it was to the next town and potential gas station. As the miles went on and the gas gauge continued to drop, with no signs of lights or civilization in the distance, I began to get really nervous. What would happen if we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, at 25 below zero? Had the window been up we could have stayed warm enough in the truck by bundling up in our sleeping bags. But with the window open, getting stuck out there was a very scary thought. After what seemed like an eternity we started to see some road signs announcing a town ahead. We rolled into Mattawa around 1:00 am with an almost empty tank of gas and a sigh of relief. But every gas station in town was closed. And the one and only hotel we saw was also closed up for the night, with noone on duty to check us in. Out of desperation we pulled up to the police station. The cop on duty who met us at the door greeted us with, "Out of gas?" Apparantly a common problem at 1 am in these parts. He directed us to a motel just a mile outside of town that was open all night, where we checked into a room. We were extremely grateful for a few hours out of the bitter cold to warm up and we just couldn't crank that heat up high enough! We woke only a few hours later at 6 am to go drop and feed dogs and to get back on the road. The temperature was still around 25 below zero, and while caring for the dogs my fingers were turning instantly numb. I had to keep running back in the room every few minutes to warm up and to use my inhaler, since that kind of cold causes an instant asthma attack. I wondered if one ever got used to this kind of cold? It worried me that I was having such problems with it, seeing as how I wanted to go to Alaska in a few years to run the Iditarod. After filling up at the now open gas station, we hit the road again. This time we dressed for the cold better in long underwear and multiple layers. I had also dug out my warmer boots, arctic parka, fur hat and warm musher mitts to wear. As the morning went on we gleefully announced the rising temperatures to each other. "Hey look, it's up to negative fifteen now!" "Wow, negative six! Heat wave!" | |
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