What It Takes to be a Musher
By Tammy Winans on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 |
On Monday, March 28th we had a special guest speaker, Doug Ruzicka, come to Roanoke Elementary School. Mr. Ruzicka is a musher from Anchor Point, Alaska. He shared many facts about Alaska and explained all of the equipment a musher needs to have on his sled. He even brought along one of his sled dog and let one lucky student try out his sled. Here are some of the things Mr. Ruzicka talked about during his program: -mushers wear beards to protect their faces from frost bite; -each musher uses about 2,000 booties for his sled dogs during the iditarod; -their skin can become frozen solid in 4-5 minutes; -sled dogs have 2 layers of fur; -sled dogs work best at 30 degrees below zero; and -you can't get to Juneau, Alaska by car because there aren't any roads to the city. You either fly in a plane and land on the water, or you travel there by boat. The students were very interested in hearing what this musher had to say since the Iditarod race had just finished up from this year. Every year at Roanoke School, one of our kindergarten teachers, Mrs. Cathy Geyer gets everyone involved in the race by having each classroom pick the musher of their choice that they think will win the race. Every day a student from Mrs. Geyer's classroom gives the Iditarod update for the day to tell what place all the mushers are in and you can hear cheers from the classrooms that are announced. Mrs. Geyer also has a bulletin board outside her classroom that shows where all the mushers are at along the trail. Everyone in the whole school gets excited about this event each year, so seeing Mr. Ruzicka, a real live musher, really got everyone excited.
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