For those of you interested in hear our story, see below (it's the long version):
Raid the North Extreme 2003 – Atikokan, Ontario
My First Expedition Race
The Team
This was the most unique part of this whole experience. We all met over the internet coordinated by Warren Bailey. Warren put so much work into building this team through countless telephone interviews and it paid off in giving an experience of a lifetime for all of us. Six weeks before the race Warren, Cassie and I were committed to the team. Four weeks before we found Dave, the fourth piece of the puzzle. I knew we couldn’t go wrong searching in Newfoundland. In total we exchanged 279 email messages to coordinate the logistics of this race.
Warren “the mastermind and captain” Bailey
- A techy from North Vancouver
- An experienced RTN 36hr racer looking to do his first Expedition Race
Cassie “the inspiration” Gran
- A techy from Madison, Wisconsin
- An experienced Adventure Racer, Cancer survivor with an amazing drive to continue
Dave “wild child” Coleman
- From Corner Brook, NFLD
- Did the RTNX in Newfoundland in 2001
- Outdoors is his life.
John “dont lose the lighter” Ranson
- A statistician and golfer from Ottawa, Ontario
- An experienced RTN 36hr racer looking to do his first Expedition Race
Pre-Race
The plan was for the team to meet at an airport hotel in Thunder Bay Thursday night. Due to the blackout, Dave’s plane was cancelled until Friday and the RTN volunteers asked myself, Warren and Cassie (who drove from Madison) to drive to Atikokan that night. It would save shuttle space the next day for all the teams that were held up because of the black out.
Warren and I gave Cassie a tour of Thunder Bay on our way to Atikokan as we looked for a Wendys to eat at. Cassie was stunned to see all those Tim Hortons. It was a 2 hour drive to Atikokan and we soon realized heading there that we were in for a true wilderness test. Very little elevation, only trees and water. Cassie pointed out a ridgeline she hiked “just for fun” while awaiting our arrival.
We arrived at the Radisson Motel (not the kind of Radisson that we are thinking of), but it was a great spot. Most teams were staying there. Our race entry included 4 nights accommodation. Warren, Cassie and I settled in and had a good nights sleep. I was pleased to see Cassie’s interest in how the PGA Championship was going. We watched the golf highlights together (Go Mike Weir).
Friday morning we woke up and went out to breakfast, I stayed and had the continental breakfast at the hotel and started to organize my gear.
We spent Friday putting together our bikes and doing as much gear check / registration as possible without Dave who was expected to arrive Friday night.
This was an unsupported race. All we were allowed was a bin (50 gallons) and a hard-shelled bike box.
Cassie had some problems with her de-railer, so she zoomed out to the hardware store and found a few screws to fix the problem.
Opening ceremonies were Friday evening. We were supposed to be given the maps at this time but because several teams and racers had yet to arrive, they decided to give out the maps early Saturday morning. The town of Atikokan gave us a great welcoming. Lot’s of songs and dancing that we all participated in. It made us feel very special. A native Indian elder named Nancy, from the muskrat clan, performed a smudging ceremony to ask the spirits to protect us during the race; you could see in her face she was honoured with how interested everyone was in her traditions.
Late Friday night this long hair surfer dude walks into our room. It was Dave. The team was complete. However, Dave’s gear was not scheduled to arrive until early Saturday morning.
Saturday morning we woke up and went out for a nice breakfast together. Atikokan had many really nice restaurants. We headed to registration and spent from 10-1 finalizing registration and taking pictures. Early that morning we got the maps.
All afternoon the four of us went through the course individually. We knew it was going to be a race full of strategy / decision making and navigation and since we were all experienced in navigation we all did the maps separately so we could give each other separate opinions. We then went over the maps together and decided on our route.
The decision was for me to be the primary navigator with all others co-navigating. I have the most experience navigating RTN races and working with these kind of maps and my attitude towards navigating is to get everyone involved. Warren, our Captain was happy with this set-up. In the end it worked out excellent. Warren sat back and involved himself in any big strategic decision and always observed the team has a whole to make sure we were doing fine. Warren resolved any disagreements in routes and made Dave and I kiss and make up if we disagreed on anything. Cassie, an experienced orienteerer, winning several Rogaine events was integral when we were faced with really tough navigation. When we were in a little question on our bearing and location, Cassie looked at the map and figured it out. Dave took over navigation a lot when I needed a break. Everything worked really well.
At the final race briefing we were told that we had to have our bins and bike boxes packed and ready for the truck by 8pm Saturday night. We then had to catch the school buses at 4:30am Sunday to the start line were our bike boxes would be.
Race Summary (estimated 450km)
Start-CP1/TA1 – Bike
CP1-CP2 – Long Trek
CP2-CP3 – Trek
CP3-CP4 – Rappel / Short Canoe
CP4-CP5 – Trek
CP5-CP6 – Canoe
CP6-CP7/TA2 – Canoe
CP7/TA2 – CP8 – Bike
CP8-CP9 – Bike
CP9-CP10 – Bike
CP10-CP11 – Trek / Zipline
CP11-CP12 – Trek
CP12-CP13/TA3 – Bike
CP13/TA3-CP14 – Canoe
CP14-CP15- Canoe
CP15-CP16-Canoe
CP16-CP17- Voyageur Canoe
CP17-CP18 – Bike
CP18-Finish - Bike
Day 1 (Sunday, Aug 17th)
We were all excited, Cassie too excited that she forgot to pack food for the first section. We were lucky it was only 6hrs to the first TA. The buses picked us up at 4:30 and a 2:30 hour bumpy bus ride started. I proved that I was hydrated by filling up (peeing) a 1.5 litre bottle over the bus ride. Warren tried to get some sleep on the bus, but the pounding washboard roads worked to foil that plan. We were given an hour or so to assemble our bikes and get to the start line. The start line was at an intersection of some log roads. As we were putting together the bikes, everyone was astonished to see Dave take out his bike stand and assemble his bike. His bike stand was able to fit in his bike box and it proved very valuable throughout the race.
The race started at 8am. Dry, rolling log roads were what we were in for. Within 10 minutes Warren got a pinch flat. We barely had the tire off and a camera crew was there filming and asking what had happened. Warren and I changed the flat in a few minutes and it proved very timely as there was a difficult turn up ahead to recognize and we saw a lot of teams coming back to find the turn. We continued. Warren and Cassie were amazed with the rolling hills. This is Ontario I said; landscape is beautiful with lots of hidden surprises. With about an hour left in the bike, the heat was starting to affect Warren, Cassie and Dave. I was kind of worried. Warren’s legs were cramping up and he used 3 packages of Gastrolyte to pound the salts into his system. However, we treated some water and helped each other to the first TA. It was at a dry clearing, unfortunately not that close to water. Dave was dieing to jump in. We took 2 hours in the transition to take apart our bike, eat and prepare for a 2-day trek section, with a small canoe section.
The decision was to bring our pack rafts and kayak paddles (Thanks to Dave for putting his foot down Saturday evening. It was a huge play). There were lots of lakes between CP1 and CP4 and breaking out the pack rafts and paddling across lakes then bushwhacking to the next lake seemed to be the best route. Our packs were heavy with food, water and gear. We headed out on a log road for about 20minutes. Dave had yet to recover and we said when we get to the first lake, we would cool down and fill Dave with electrolytes. We choose a point to head into the woods and bushwhacked for about an hour. Dave was getting to the point of heat exhaustion and was getting sick. So many other people were. Occasionally Dave’s legs would cramp and we stopped to massage them and continue. I took his pack and we made it to the lake. Dave stripped naked, right in front of us (how dare he) and sat in the water for a while. This helped. We coasteerd around the lake and bushwhacked another hour to the next lake. At this point we saw a route that was good for pack rafting.
We used pumps to blow up the rafts and jumped in. It was too good too be true. We made quick work of the first lake and found a portage trail to the next lake. We didn’t even need to deflate. Bonus. The next lake was a long wide lake. The sun was setting and the stars and northern lights coming out. We saw another pack raft team in the distance. It seemed as though they were taking another route. We headed into a bay shaped like a finger and found ANOTHER portage route. I ran up the route to make sure it was safe enough to not have to deflate the raft. From here we went from lake to stream, from lake to stream still not having to deflate. What a great way to spend the first evening of the Extreme. It was warm and everyone was recovering nicely from the first day of blistering heat. We went through a really cool fast flowing stream into a large sandy lake. We had to do a big crossing in a shallow lake that had fairly large waves. I was a little restless and probably was a little to my teammates when doing the crossing. We made it to the shore and oddly enough found another portage to the last lake before CP2. We had about 2-3hrs on Sandford Lake to CP2.
Day 2
Somewhere around 3-4am we arrived at CP2. We were in 6th and Team Phoenix (a well known Ottawa team was sleeping at the CP), meaning we were in 5th when we left. This was pretty exciting for us. The two local volunteers staffing the CP were really enthusiastic and supportive; you could tell they thought we were a bit crazy. They also had some bottles of water and ice waiting on a picnic table for us. Everyone had different expectations in the race, but what we had in common was to race hard, be competitive, and have a blast and finish.
A decision needed to be made at this point. Do we pack raft directly across Sandford Lake and bushwhack to a log road that would take us to the rappel or continue to pack raft down to the end of Sandford Lake, very close to the rappel. We decided to pack raft. It was a long pack raft, however still gaining huge time versus the teams without a raft. We met the fourth place team that had damaged their pack raft. They were taking a break and having a fire. At the end of the pack raft we deflated, hiked to the power line, then the trail to the rappel. We met this guy who said was looking for a bear. They had shot it with a bow and arrow the previous night (ya ok). We got to the UTM for the rappel and we found no rappel, of course a rappel is never on a trail. We spent a little bit of extra time finding the rappel but it wasn’t that bad. We arrived and there was team Pheonix doing the rappel. The log road option looked to be a bit faster. However, we were ecstatic with our placing to that point (5th) and prepared for the rappel. Lot’s of media people were their taking pictures and asking questions, new territory for us. Dave rappelled first. We were told that we were rappelling right into the water. Dave the genius managed to avoid getting his gear wet by throwing his pack on the ledge before he entered the water. We all rappelled and got into the Canoe. Dave put on a show for the photographers and did a cannon ball into the water. It was Monday afternoon the hottest hours of the whole race.
We did a quick canoe crossing to the far shore to CP4. They just wanted to get us over to the far shore to put us in front of the toughest bushwhack yet. Phoenix was still there getting ready to enter this wall of deadfall. We headed in and Dave led the way through. Half way through we stopped for a little break and Warren shouted ‘{expletive} I lost my Kayak paddle’. The thick bush somehow dislodged the kayak paddle and broke the biner holding the paddle bag. DOH. Dave back tracked for 10-15 minutes and couldn’t find anything. Warren followed Dave for a couple minutes to help him find his way back since the brush was so thick; but was amazed when, after 10 minutes of bushwhacking, Dave emerged directly in front of him. Dave has an uncanny sense of direction in the bush that really gave confidence to the team. Thinking about it again, we should have spent longer looking because when we finally came out to the next lake, Warren said he also lost his pack raft. DOH. The kayak paddle was a big loss for Quetico Park later on in the race, but the pack raft would have been nice for this last lake we needed to do. It was around 4pm and blistering hot. We didn’t get down on this loss and just formulated a strategy to get to CP5 at the end of the lake. We decided to coasteer out to the point of the lake where we were hoping to get the wind with us for the remaining 6km to CP5. As we were coasteering, there was Pheonix getting their pack rafts ready. They were wondering why we weren’t using pack rafts. We didn’t say. Warren had also lost his “Sahara hat” in the bushwhack, but during the coasteer found another hat laying at the edge of the lake. He took this as a positive sign that things would somehow work out, even in lieu of losing the pack raft. We got to the point and inflated. Cassie, who towers over me, was chosen to share her raft with Dave while Warren and I carried everyone’s packs. It was working ok but slow. We tried to do some sailing with little success. Dave decided to do some coastering until we all had to get in the boats to do another crossing. It was getting dark and we had yet to sleep in the race. There was this long island going down the lake. I was with Dave at this time and it wasn’t working that well. We decided to get to this island and I would coasteer. After losing my sense of direction on that island and coming out on the other side and then hearing from Warren, Cassie and Dave that they were having major hallucinations. Interestingly, Dave and Warren later talked about their hallucinations and found they were seeing the exact same thing (Voyageur paintings on the rock walls) - eerie. We decided to get our first sleep of the race. We started a fire and slept for 2 hours. The usual routine would be to get to shore put our tarp down and sleep together under our four emergency blankets.
Day 3
We woke up with clearer heads. Dave sat with me in the pack raft and in conjunction with a few more coasteering sections we made good time in getting to CP5. We were still in 5th with Team Spirit sleeping at the CP. We quickly packed up the rafts, took advantage of the facilities at the castle and said hi to M-A a great volunteer for RTN while we got the canoes ready. With our surprise, there were no single blade paddles. Usually, I bring an extra single blade just in case a kayak paddle breaks and in our case we only had 3-kayak paddle, so we needed a single blade. I was a little worried as single blade paddles are supposed to be supplied. M-A gave us a paddle from a boat that was at the Castle. We set out on the canoe for a long morning paddle. It was a nice paddle with a hand full of portages. Dave and Cassie had an hour sleep as Warren and I paddled through some beautiful channels. We passed CP6 and arrive at TA2/CP7. It was nice to get to our bins and know that we were in 4th place.
We took about 3 hours in the TA. Time that was much needed for us to organize, eat and prepare for the 150km bike and 6-8hr trek ahead. Over these 2 hours, four teams arrived including Tobin and Team Starchoice. Tobin, a good friend and my main training mate in Ottawa. We exchange a few fun remarks and I made sure I took advantage of our team being ahead of him. The volunteers and media were amazed at the laughter and good spirits all the teams had. Warren cooked up some freeze-dried meals and stuffed food into his large dry-bag. It was really heavy and he was second-guessing whether he was packing too much food. Coming from 36hr races, it seems unusual to pack enough food and gear at a single TA to last for 36-48 hours. Knowing our biking was not the strongest, he didn’t want to bring extra weight, and this factored into the pack raft discussion that was soon to come.
This is where Dave and I had our one disagreement. We had to make a decision on the trekking section toward the end of the bike. Pack rafts were an option again. I disagreed because of the weight of paddles and rafts and the shortish nature of this trekking route. Warren made the final decision to not bring pack rafts. After the race we heard Pheonix used rafts. Either way, we did well in this trekking section and it ended up to be a very memorable and fun section. To make things faster, Dave took Cassie's pack on his bike. It was round 3pm Wed I think.
We went out on the road and were looking for a main log road. I took the wrong turn and lost us about 45min. We blamed in on the photographer and media people following us on the bike. Warren later recounted that he was instigating turning at the wrong location since there was flagging tape and a rock marking the entrance. This had been our navigation error at the start of the race where an obvious road was taped and we biked on past so he wasn’t wanting to let that happen again. Unfortunately the flagging tape was a red herring and in hindsight the turnoff didn’t match the terrain on the topo – a point which John brought up several times but none of us were listening very close. Heading back we saw Tobin heading down the wrong route. We quickly got back on track (1km further down the road) and started out on the long windy log road. The deer flies were brutal. At the start of the race Warren said that he didn’t use bug repellent. Warren took me up on a bet that he wouldn’t us it by the end of the race. Warren lasted till this point. The deer flies were biting even while we were biking. We made it to CP8 knowing a few teams had past us. Shortly after, we found a place to fill up with water and have an hour sleep. The conditions of the log roads were pretty good. We woke up and continued to CP9.
Day 4
We had about a 26km ride on asphalt road. Warren was pretty wrecked, it was about 3-4am and we decided to sleep until sunrise on the side of the road. As we woke up Cassie started to break out some awesome pick me up foods as we set off. She broke out the pre-cooked bacon (beautiful). As usual, Dave had a selection of home cooked goodies shrink-wrapped in individual little pouches. The “pan-forte” was to die for.
As we made our way to the bike drop off, another 40km we went into a cottage area where we met a cottager that let us use his dock to fill up with water and clean up somewhat. At this point, we were starting to be told that you could just drink the water out of the lakes. Up until now we had been treating it with Iodine or Prestine. I started to drink the water straight. Hmmmm. There were times in the race where I was drinking a litre of water every 30minutes.
As we continued, we new another hot day was in store. With about 10k left before the bike drop, Dave’s knee/IT band was starting to get pretty sore. We redistributed the weight among the four of us and with some towing assistance; we were able to keep the pace up to avoid any further injury on Dave’s part. On the up hills, Warren would ride up next to Dave and give a push while John towed like a truck. Warren was surprised at the incredible stamina John had to tow Dave up all the hills, and also the willpower of Dave to pedal with one leg the whole time – incredible teamwork. We happened to see Shannon, the medical director for the course as we were filling up with water and she gave Dave a quick massage. Dave was joking the whole time and keeping the CP staff in stitches. At the same time some volunteers gave us a pleasant surprise of some email messages sent to us from friends back home. Warren found this a really emotional point to know there were so many friends and family cheering us on; Bob Mackin, a Vancouver reporter, tried to get an interview, but Warren was too choked up to say much. We were in good spirits; we were always in good spirits. As we were getting back on our bikes, a volunteer was right beside us and Dave got his attention to what he was pulling out of his pocket. It was a sardine, head and all. Dave had a bunch of these that he had given us all in some previous food stops. The volunteer’s eyes opened wide when Dave popped it into his mouth and said, “that one almost got away”. I couldn’t stop laughing.
We pushed to the bike drop off where we left a garbage bag of stuff that we didn’t need for the trek. The volunteers were great at this checkpoint. They gave us all a can of coke and chocolates. The next section was a trek down to a lake and then along the lake to a zip line then a swim and a bushwhack to a log road which would bring us to the bike pick up for another 13k to TA3. It was nice to be hiking. We found a path down to the lake and started coastering along the lake. We would do some bushwhacking to cut off coastering around large peninsulas. We rocked in this stage. We enjoyed swimming across a few bays / swamps. We got to the zip line, which consisted of two sections. The first one was a lot of work; you had to pull yourself most of the way. The second one was a little easier. Both had exhilarating views as we were just above a huge waterfall. Warren adjusted his helmet before clipping in but forgot to connect the chinstrap and almost lost it over the second waterfall.
After the zip line, the thunderstorm was starting. Thunder and lighting was close. We bushwhacked to the river crossing. We only had to swim about 50m. Warren had been shivering during the bushwhacking but didn’t want to stop so he grabbed a crumpled up space blanket and jammed it in his bike helmet on his head. Lighting was flashing, rain was just pouring, and we jumped in and zoomed across. The water was so nice. Warren couldn’t figure out why John was telling him to not use the space blanket; it wasn’t until Warren was swimming halfway across the river that a flash of lightening and a clap of thunder brought home the point that a head-full of tin foil maybe wasn’t the best idea. I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to stay in the water that long with the lighting so we headed out, took a bearing and bushwhacked for about 1.5k to the log road. We hiked to the bike pick up. What an awesome section. We were pumped. The volunteers had a mosquito net tent for us to change into our bike shoes and re-pack. These volunteers were a husband and wife, with a small child, and they were taking part of their “vacation-trip across Canada” time to stop and volunteer for the race. We got back onto the bike for the last 13k. This section was a struggle for me in staying awake. With Warren’s assistance and a power shot and some singing, I made it to TA3. With our surprise there were about 6 teams in the TA. We were in 10th entering the TA and fairly rested. Ya right, we were going into our 5th day and we had only 5hrs sleep.
Day 5
Dave was anxious to get going and get the good boats. Everything in the TA was soaked from the storm. Warren got the stove going and cooked up several dehydrated food packs and repacked for the next leg. Cassie, Warren and I went to the auditorium where everyone was sleeping and slept for an hour. It was surreal to go from the frenzy of racing in extreme weather, to the calm and pitch black of this TA. It was eerily quiet and the warm auditorium seemed out of place having spent so much time in the wilderness the past five days. Dave packed all our bikes (what an animal) and woke us up to push us out of the TA. It was such a good call by Dave. The thunder and lighting was in the distance and weather wasn’t a big issue on the water at this point. We got ready and left the transition at about 3am back in 5th.
We paddled for about 7-8k, making this large water crossing towards the entrance of Quietico Park. There was another team close by that appeared to be taking the same route as us. The storm that had subsided came back up and the lake started too whitecap. It was inky black and tough to navigate. There were lots of islands and we got a little confused on where we were. It was a dark night, so it was tough to get our position. The other team had since disappeared into the blackness, apparently having taken another more southern route. We would later find that most teams took this more southern route instead of the “ménage du beaver portage” we chose. We decided to pull up on an island for an hour and rest till day light. It was a good call, as right away we got ourselves back on track.
It was a nice windy morning and we knew it was time to try Dave’s sail system. Dave rigged it in no time and we were off. We put our canoes together and sailed for about an hour. What a nice break. The canoes were catamaran’ed together and we were going so fast that a swell of water was waking between the canoes almost to their gunnel.
The canoe was beautiful. Nice rivers. The wind was with us and current against us, so we where moving all right. We had a little trouble finding one portage but everything else was fairly smooth. Whatever route we decided on, we were in for many portages. At 4pm that afternoon we arrived and CP14 and to our surprise were back in 10th. WRONG ROUTE. We realized that we weren’t pushing it through the portages and our portages were probably longer and more technical then the other routes, which probably was the big reason for the 6-hour difference. I was really down. I gave Dave the maps and he took over while I mentally recovered. Warren, Cassie and Dave were still in great spirits, they got me back and we pushed hard till dark. It was around 10pm and we were having a difficult time finding a portage. We were all getting tired and Cassie was getting cold. We decided to start a fire a have an hour sleep. This wasn’t a good place to stop. There was no level ground and very little openings. However, we found a spot and cuddled up. While we were getting a fire ready I misplaced the lighter and with huge luck found the lighter in a pile of leaves.
Day 6
We woke up and did the long portage and continued on through the night. It was about 3am and we saw Team Persistence ahead. Together, we started to look for another portage. In the park portage routes aren’t marked so you end up drifting along the shore looking for some sort of path. After about 30min we gave up to darkness and cold. Persistence all looked a bit tired, and in a scramble to build a fire, they hadn’t beached their canoe and it floated back out into the lake so we paddled out and retrieved it for them. We all shared a fire and slept for a few hours until daylight. We woke up and as we got into the canoes we noticed Dave’s paddle had disappeared. DOH. Dave said, “I can’t lose that paddle” it was a nice paddle. It was a calm, foggy morning and we were in a bay. Dave looked at the wind and said let’s look across the bay. Within minutes we found the paddle floating in the water. We couldn’t believe it. As we were getting ready to leave, Warren noticed a couple of Dave’s miniature packaged food items on the ground. He picked them up, mostly so as not to litter, but this would later play out as food ran short and these items became a critical part of our rations. We found the portage right away (incorrectly marked on the map) and focused in on a big day of hard canoeing. We did really well. The portages were long and demanding. Dave and I were able to carry the canoes forever if it wasn’t for that yoke digging into our neck. Warren was huge. He did every portage without a complaint. Of course he cursed at a few trees and mud puddles that went up to his knees. He was the king of portaging. We arrived at CP15 at 3pm. We new things were getting tight for the last push to CP16 then CP17 for the cut-off (8pm). We didn’t really think of it and pushed hard until 10pm. We were running out of food and started to ration for the remain section. What a great focused team. We were around 4hrs from CP17, it was a beautiful night, and we had just come to a portage that had a great campsite. We all looked at each other a said let’s enjoy this last night in the wilderness. We knew our placement wouldn’t change at this point and it was the safe call. We knew we wouldn’t cross the finish line but we knew we all found what we were looking for in this experience. A great wilderness adventure, getting through adversity as a team, pushing each other’s limits and becoming great friends and also being very competitive throughout the race. I am sure there were some eyes opening when they saw Expedition Canada in the top 5 for the first 2/3rds of the race. We called in at around midnight to tell Headquarters where we were and our ETA the next morning. We were running low on food so will piled together everything we had; 2 gels, ¼ of a Cliff bar, 10 strips of licorice, and the “discarded snack nuts” that Warren had picked up earlier. Warren was feeling the effects of all that portaging and so stripped open a few discarded gel packs and licked the remnants from the foil.
Day 7
We had a great night in front of a big fire. In the morning, we took some great pictures and had breakfast of 2 sugared almonds and 1 strip of licorice. I shared a few tears and we pushed to CP17 to arrive before lunch. To get us through the morning with out too many hunger pains, a friendly canoe camper gave us some peanuts and prunes. My god they were good.
The volunteers and Jeff and Carrie were there to welcome us and drive us back to the hotel. We went out to eat right away (Warren ordered breakfast, lunch and dinner). We organized our gear and went to the awards ceremonies and dinner and managed to put back a few beers before the sleep monsters found us again.
It was an experience I will always remember. Four people coming together and not knowing each other is risky for the money and training time that we put into an adventure like this. However, no one would have known we had just met 8 days ago. If there was an award for the most smiles and spirit, I am sure our team would have got it. We all helped each other through our own tough times and gave each other an experience of a lifetime and the drive to do it again. Cassie, Warren and Dave, you guys are the best.
John Ranson
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