Good morning all,
For those of you who are like me the next ten days or so, the first thing I do in the morning( even before my coffee) is check where the man is. Then I get a cup of coffee and study his times as well as everyone else's.  So waking up today I expected to see that Warren was in Finger Lake, a wonderful start to the day to see that he was in 2nd place in Finger as well to see that he is right on his schedule with a run time of 5:39. While the placing of anyone before all the madatory 24 hour layovers happen really is not indicative of where the race will go, it is sure good to see and I am sure if makes Warren feel good about things. He will be running his own race no matter what else is going on around him. That  does not mean they he won't be  watching where everyone else is and what they are doing. It means he won't change his strategy once someone else pulls the snowhook to leave earlier than he had planned. Warren has spent countless hours studying the trail maps, previous run/rest times for himself and for all the past champions to develop his race strategy. So I will keep you updated as to how he is matching the schedule that was left for me. Obviously alot of factors, weather in particular can change the schedule. I am hopingto hear from Warren from the trail this year as we have an Alaskan cell phone now. We have finally stepped into the 21st technology with many years with no cell phone, now we have one in Canada, one in Montana( after last years exorbitant bills on the Canadian one calling Canada) and now one in Ak.

Annie and I only have four dogs left with us on the truck, Hula, Oyster, Ozzy and Iza.  Warren was in a good position having a hard time to pick the final 16 out of the 20 we had on the truck. Most of his reasoning for the final decisions were that Hula, having recently finished her heat cycle was a bit underweight for where we like our dogs to start the race, The other three, Oyster and Ozzy both 2( brother Onyx is out with Warren now) and Iza ,2 as well,(brother Mogur out with Warren now) all have a skin allergy- from straw we believe- that caused them to loose the hair on the back of their legs and a bit on the underbelly. While we are treating the condition and the hair is growing back, it is obviously not an ideal way to start the race particularly if there are cold temperatures out there. While we both wished that they could go to gain the experience, they are all young and there will be much more racing for them. We will be able to put them all out in John and Mari's dog yard too which will be nice. No need to set up our own dog yard in the trees like usual with so few dogs. Tom Thurston's handler Craig is staying here as well and he only has 5 extra dogs so we will be taking turns with putting our dogs out and back in the truck as everyone's scheule dictates. He is a really nice guy we are looking forward to getting to know.
All for now, Annie and I are headed into Wasilla first thing to run some errands.
Warren is planning to rest 5 and a half hours in Finger Lake so everone can take a break from checking his status for a few hours. 
More later, K