I am trying to put Working Sled Dog Excellent tittles on my dogs. It requires 100 trail miles documented and verified. Since I am pretty much always alone, verification is a major stumbling block. Thus when I saw a Nikon GPS, shock, water and dust proof camera yesterday, I became so excited I bought it. (Thank you for the Valentine Dave.) Supposedly I can get a GPS location on each picture; get a map of where I traveled and get time over distance. Cool Huh? Today I took it for a spin. Luckily I also checked Google Earth for landmarks before heading to the mountains so I knew when I had reached the required 2.5 mile turn around point. Actually the reason for the check was because I did not make it through the 257 page manual and wasn't quite sure I understood how to take a picture let alone do the GPS thing.
The Waldo Road is popular with snowmobiles. The conditions were cement hard, snowmobile tracks with widely varying depth. In other words, really tough to control a sled. Some of the tracks were a foot or more deeper than ones that they cris-crossed. The dogs were really excited and ran fast while I held on and tried to take pictures. (Think standing on 1.5" wide boards while on the back of a bucking bull and holding a cell phone size camera in the gloved hand that should be holding onto the steering bow.) We climbed 550 feet in 2.5 miles. The dogs were going so well, we continued on a good 1.5 miles. I didn't have a clue as to what I was taking pictures of or the camera settings. All I could do was lift the camera with my gloved hand during what looked to be a smooth spot and shoot. Of course my gloved hand changed settings with each picture.Then we turned around. I am required to take a picture at the furthest point - well it didn't happen. I set the claw brake in anticipation of having to untangle the dogs once I got them and the sled headed back. They made their first ever, smooth, come-about and were off. The sled ran over the claw brake and it became lodged under a runner. The drag did not phase the dogs. I finally got them stopped but had to get off the sled to free the brake - you guessed it. Another frontal drag for me. Good thing the camera is shock and water proof. I fell on it. Oh yea, the manual says to wipe off the lense with a soft, dry, clean cloth once exposed to water - sure.
I thought I had taken several pictures of the dogs with Diamond Peak but this is the only one on the camera. The dogs were headed downhill with solid footing. We flew. I was just hanging on and occasionally snapping away with my huge gloved hand. And oh yea, snow on the lens.
Van in sight. The dogs are pulling even faster if possible. I am standing with both feet on the brake. There is a steep berm between me and the van. I really did not want to fly over it.
The end.
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