From my view of the 2013 Copper Dog race.
I spent Friday morning doing vet checks with Dr. Ladd. Here's what was good....
All of the vets and vet assistants were friendly, professional, and outstanding all the way around. They explained what they wanted to the volunteers with patience and were just nice to work with. The mushers were amazing, and our team was thanked by every single person we met. I was touched by the level of concern that all of the mushers showed to their dogs, and some of the discussions with the vets were extremely educational. (It had never occurred to me that there would be a problem keeping weight ON a dog-- says the owner of a slightly chubby house dog :).
The people at the bank were extremely interested and very very helpful and spent the entire morning being an excellent public relations arm of Copper Dog-- and the Copper Country in general. Having the merchandise at the bank was a really good idea (and I saw more than 1 bank customer over buying a hat or tee shirt :)
What wasn't good:
Parking. Brett, the parking lot General, did an excellent job, and kept things moving very well, but in fact, the lot is way too small for some of those rigs, and some of the people have … issues... driving them in a tight space. It would be most helpful if we could “borrow” the Sacred Heart lot next year, especially for some of the really long rigs, so the drivers don't have to maneuver them into small spaces.
There was often a line for the one bathroom the bank has... nothing major, but maybe a port-a-pottie at the bank?
And our team had a request from the daughter of one the mushers (who is 6 years old) that next year we mark the long race with pink, because if we're going to color on her dogs, she'd prefer pink to green.
Friday night as “Assistant Doug”.
I'd done “Musher Parking” the 1st year and it was madness-- to the point that I wouldn't volunteer for it again. This year I was amazed at the ease and control of the “madness”. The maps, the radios, the team members in charge of different spaces.. all really excellent ideas. Other than a few “glitches” with teams who need to be parked near other teams for whatever reason, it was head and shoulders above what I'd seen before. And other than a few serious ice issues I don't know that it could be done any better.
The start-- The good. Plenty of volunteers, excellent communications, all of the mushers that I talked with had all the volunteers they needed and then some. The volunteers were good, most had the training and stamina to keep up with the teams, and I only saw 1 of the CD40 teams get away from their volunteers and decide they were going to start early... And a lot of the staff at the start jumped to grab... so it wasn't a case of an unexpected start :)
The Rotary volunteers were really excellent in keeping people off the course, and in clearing people out. If we can get more of them next year, that would be REALLY GOOD. (I think we'll see a lot more volunteers from Rotary next year, they were all having a really good time and were very excited at being able to help).
The bad:
People with pets. We need to put big BRIGHT signs up all over town that say “NO PETS” . Really. Because some people will not listen to anyone. I know one guy was told by 5 different people, from the Rotary volunteer, to Abbey, to Doug to take his dog home. And I think all that accomplished was that he moved the dog down the block. I saw the Rotary volunteers stopping at least 15 people coming in with dogs.
Bathrooms: We need port-a-potties on both sides of the road with signs or else businesses who are willing to let people use their bathrooms with signs. Cafe Rosetta had a line for the toilets in their place... and not many of those people actually buying. And we had a lot of people trying to get around the start area to get over to “the bathroom.”
Residents: We're blocking quite a bit of resident parking. We need to communicate with them a little better, and to maybe find them somewhere else to park so they aren't trying to run over dogs or the snow road.
Ice: I know there's not much we can do, but we should try to make the village aware that the sidewalks and roads were really slippery and I saw a lot of people, including a couple in handicap parking, go down.
Spectator parking: Signs!! and maybe we could borrow the lots out by Pats/Shopko and the information center and the Church and have buses running? Community action has a bus they might “lend” us, and that'll help with congestion downtown.
From my mother, who took my niece (age 6) and nephews (age 6 and 9) down for the start, for the first time:
“Who would have thought that dogs running could be that cool? The little kids were very entertained, they all got their pictures taken with the Tech mascot. The sidewalks were really slippery. Tell that guy at Kessel thank you for having the handicap parking, but his lot was really really slippery. And you needed more bathrooms. The guy doing the announcing was really good, too. Funny and educational. And whoever had the ladder up by Kessel, someone is going to get electrocuted there. Don't do that. Or guard the ladder. There were a bunch of kids trying to climb it.” and “Not enough places for little kids to get warm. The coffee shops were packed, and that place with all the pictures (Ziyad Gallery) had too many glass things to take kids into.”
Eagle Harbor start on Saturday morning:
The good. Easy to find the volunteer signup and such. Jason's pep talk was good (and short). The fire was nice, while we were waiting for things to start. And of course, the mushers were grateful and specific in what they needed, making volunteering a pleasure. The mushers who stayed with host families that we talked to had only good things to say, and many of the host families were at the start getting their pictures taken with “their” musher. Those host families are really good PR for the race and the area.
The not good.
Only 1 person in charge of assigning the volunteers for the mushers. We were getting a bib number from Brad, then getting down the street and being reassigned by Kim... or we'd find the team we were assigned already had a bunch of volunteers. This was way too chaotic. Pick a person to be in charge of assigning volunteers to mushers and stick with that person, don't re-assign volunteer teams. It was working out that some teams had way too many volunteers and some not nearly enough.
Ice. Again. Not sure what we could do, other than maybe get the county to sand?? I don't know how that'll be on the dogs or sleds, but a lot of volunteers were falling, which certainly isn't good for the volunteers or the dogs.
Volunteer parking needs to have signs, as we ended up... somewhere we probably shouldn't have been.