Dog Crates: please let us know if you find any ones that are reasonable. Shipping 12 dogs back at $ 50 a dog = $600. If the crates are $130 apiece, that would be about $1500 in dog crates per person. I will be taking 12 dogs. If Gil or Michelle have found some reasonable crates, please let me know.

Shipping Dogs back from Nome: I am planning to ship 12 dogs back from Nome. Unless Phil builds some dog boxes I will need to use crates.

Sled and Snowmachine: I will need to measure it when I dig it out of storage in a week or so. It’s a Gatt Long Distance sled. We are looking at buying an newish snow machine so I don’t have any dimensions yet.

The Dogs: Our team is signed up for the ACE race, the Solstice 100, the Knik 100 and 200, the Copper Basin 300, the Quest 300, and the Goosebay 150 so we are obviously doing a lot of training. I won’t know which dogs I am taking until fairly late in the game, but we are training 30 dogs so there are plenty for me to choose from.

WHAT WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL: I’d like to see a list of group expenses and a list of what we are individually responsible for so I can budget for this. For example, is gas for the snowmachines a group expense? What about shipping of our stuff out to the villages? Is lodging and straw a group expense etc., etc. I find this portal very difficult to use so I will be sending around a list via e-mail of items I’ve thought about as expenses and perhaps Michelle, Robert, Stephanie or Phil want to put them on a list for us as to what is a group and what is a personal expense. Be aware that the shipping can be quite expensive; it’s about $1300 for Iditarod. I do not remember what I paid in the Serum Run.

Item Safety: It is critical to have a responsible person house our things in the villages so our food, straw, and other items are there when we arrive. Most of the villages no longer have VSPOs so we need to identify a person to do this (teacher, superintendant, clergy etc.). I’m not sure who is working on this.

Straw: I am figuring one bale for every two days or 9 bales per musher. If you think we can get away with less (1 bales for every three days) let me know. Anybody want to comment on this before I get the prices from Cold Spot?