2013年1月6日星期日

Snow and cold make for a great dog sled racing season

It’s shaping up to be a real Maine winter this year and few people are happier than the organizer’s of the state’s three distance sled dog racing events.

Volunteer committees behind the Irving Woodlands-Mad Bomber Eagle Lake 100-mile race, set for Jan. 19; the Plum Creek Wilderness 100-mile race in Greenville on Feb. 2; and the Can Am Crown 250-mile race in Fort Kent on March 2; are all reporting excellent trails and conditions for dogs, mushers and spectators.

“The race is looking awesome,” Amy Dugan, one of the organizers behind the Greenville race, said last week. “The conditions are just fantastic right now [and] we must have a good 3 feet of snow on the trails.”

Cold temperatures in late November followed by a slight warm up, then a solid freeze has created a near-perfect base for running dogs.

And over the past several weeks Mother Nature has done her part in covering that base with fresh snow from Portland to Fort Kent.

“That early snowfall and cold temperatures have created excellent trail conditions for this year’s race,” Tenley Bennett, co-organizer of the Eagle Lake race said. “Most of the snow we’ve received this season has been quite dry [and] combine that, when packed, with cold temperatures and it sets up for a hard and fast trail.”

That’s good news for races like the ones in Eagle Lake and Greenville which have been forced to cancel or drastically re-route trails in recent years due to lack of snow.

In Greenville, crews are busily grooming trails and preparing the race’s new start location near the Trailside Restaurant, meaning mushers no longer face up to five miles on the fickle ice conditions of Moosehead Lake.

“We are thrilled not to be worrying about the lake this year,” Dugan said.

The three races routinely draw scores of mushers with their teams from across the country and Canada and hundreds of spectators to their respective regions.

“The Wilderness Race offers a lot of places for spectators to see the teams traveling,” Dugan said. “This is somewhat unique in sled dog racing.”

Mushers run their teams along trails managed by the Appalachian Mountain Club and lodges at Little Lyford and Gorman Chairback in addition to the West Branch Pond Camps offer warm places for fans to cheer on the drivers and dogs, Dugan said.

“Things really are looking just great,” Beurmond Banville, president of the Can Am Crown Board of Directors up in Fort Kent, said. “We’ve had some guys out on the trails doing preliminary work as far back as a month ago.”

Great conditions also help get the mushers pumped up and ready, Banville added.

“This really gets the mushers going,” he said. “A good bunch of snow means they can get out and train the teams and start thinking about racing.”

“I am planning on doing all three of these races this year,” Foucher said. “It’s been a Godsend that we have had two big snowfalls where I live already. Without that snow, I’m not sure my team would have been ready for the first race in Eagle Lake.”

Mushers preparing for distance races like the three in Maine routinely put more than 1,000 training miles on their teams. When there is no snow,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. mushers will run their dogs using wheeled carts or all-terrain-vehicles. This year they were able to do so on dog sled long before the start of the first race.

“Conditions around where I live — the Sugarloaf region — are absolutely perfect right now,” Foucher said. “I mean, they seriously do not get better than this [with] about 2? to 3 feet of snow, and it’s a wonderful snow, [and] the temperatures have been ideal as well, in the 20s or lower.”

“This is a huge boost to to any race organization to have this much snow at this time and not having to be concerned about if the race is a going to happen or not,” she said. “I am sure everyone on every race committee is jumping for joy.”

On Microsoft Relevant Products/Services's sprawling,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, rustic campus,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. this home is a maze of futuristic rooms, a digital kitchen and interactive walls. Recipes are projected onto the kitchen counter, children can play video games from a table's surface, and bedrooms have interactive wall posters that can be changed daily, based on the occupant's mood.

No one lives there, but it is a template for the future.The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, Indeed, many houses throughout the USA already have hints of Microsoft's model home. Might this be a working blueprint for better things, of a life that just decades ago seemed possible only in the world of science fiction?

What once seemed conceivable only on The Jetsons is a real prospect in the next few years. If you've heard these utopian and futuristic promises before, only to be disappointed, this story is for you. Because as Americans embrace 2013 and the new year that is upon us, know this: The future of American homes is now.

The rise of intelligent devices, ongoing breakthroughs in robotics,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers cloud computing and other newfangled technology promise to usher in a new phase in luxuriant and wired home living. Hyperbole of years past has quickly melted away as a pantheon of tech titans -- ranging from Apple and Google to Samsung and Microsoft -- vie for home-field advantage. Home increasingly is where billions of dollars are expected to be spent on technology as consumers nest in their living rooms and bedrooms on smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.

Elements of the future home -- smart TVs and newfangled sound systems -- will be on display this week at the sprawling International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Since The Jetsons' animated TV show -- which touted a life-size in-home robot, a computerized kitchen and flying cars -- automated homes have been a staple in American culture, from TV's Futurama and the big screen's I, Robot and Blade Runner to the pages of Wired magazine.

没有评论:

发表评论