More on BikeJoring

Now that the base of snow we have is pretty well packed down, it’s time to get the dogs back in shape. Not that they are doing that bad, I am pretty convinced Harley could spend six months on the couch eating bacon and still out run me on the bike. Bubbie, however is a different story. Ganging them together (as in the above picture) results in Harley going full out and at some point dragging Quinn and me along. He seems to do better getting dragged by her, because he at least makes the effort to stay with her even if he isn’t going to pull.

This weekend however, I decided to take Joe for a ride on the slough since he just recently got his 29er together and I wanted him to explore additional options to getting his butt handed to him on the mushing trail shop rides by Pugsley wielding trail shredding bastards (I love you guys!). It should be noted that I am currently attempting to join their ranks. However, I am still “not there” yet and I was content to ride my very nice fat tire, but not that fat, bike. To keep things fair, I gave my “good” dog to Joe. She is much smarter about snow machines, a more consistent puller, and all around awesome except for her fear of ice crossings. Since Joe was rocking his studs, I figured this wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t, in fact the ride consisted of no problems (which makes the story kind of not entertaining). The only thing interesting was that unstrapped to Harley, Quinn decided at the turn around point that he was done pulling. There are many possible reasons for this, he could have been tired and out of shape, he may be smart enough to know that we were halfway and reasonably concluded that it should be my turn to pull him back (sadly our harness and line setup precluded this as an option, or I might have tried it), or perhaps in the blistering 30 degree weather he had simply overheated. Whatever the case, he trotted contentedly along beside me for the whole way back. I had to take up the slack in the line so it didn’t end up wrapped around my crankset. In the end I think Joe got a nice recovery ride (after we were all demolished on Friday’s shop ride) and into to BikeJoring, Harley got a workout, Quinn, got as much exercise as he was willing to handle, and I got a bit of a ride in as well.