The Big Race (Iditarod Part 2)

I had a blast watching Mason's 7th grade class compete in their mini-Iditarod. I took a lot of pictures and posted them to Flickr. Fortunately, Mason had to write an essay for the project, so she was able to "kill two birds with one stone" and we can publish it here.

If you didn't read part one (and see the cute huskies), click here.

The Iditarod IDU by Mason Rose

“Mush” I say as we start the race. The dogs run and we see the finish line ahead of us.

Every year we have an IDU week. IDU stands for Interdisciplinary Unit. An IDU is when you stay in one room for basically the whole day. You use almost all the subjects to finish the project. The real Iditarod Race starts in Anchorage and ends in Nome. It’s a sled dog race in the freezing cold weather. Now we had to build a sled and then race it around the block (not your ordinary block, more like a double block). I like IDU week.



On the first day we spent about three periods planning outdoor ideas. Every time something went wrong, we held a short team meeting. I couldn’t explore the course because I was in my Italian class when the rest of the team mapped it out, so the team had to tell me about it. Noah drew our blue prints for building the sled, and then we looked them over as a group. We made many changes to our wheels.



We worked very hard on our sled throughout the week. We attached the axels to the bottom of the base platform of the sled and then attached the wheels to the axels. We had to cut out some room from the base so the wheels had enough room to make turns. Everyone pitched in and helped with everything. Noah drew our moose logo, Maddie and I painted and Ryan and Kathryn screwed in the side antlers. Friday was race day and we still had a few problems to fix.





I’m glad we did a test run because we discovered some problems that needed fixing with our sled. One big problem was turning. There wasn’t enough room for the wheels to turn a full 90 degrees, the wheels rubbed against the sled. We had to fix the axels and cut out more room for the wheels so that we could turn more easily. Thursday we took the sled for a test run around the course to make sure everything was running smoothly for the big race. We had to make sure that our “dogs” could pull hard enough and I needed to know that I would be able to make the turns.



Friday was race day. We were well prepared and were scheduled to start at 9:15. I couldn’t wait to race. I knew we were going to do well and our sled would not fall apart! Shortly after the start, our wheels began to squeak very loudly, but we kept going. Everyone on the Moose Team did their best and most importantly, had fun! I thought I did pretty well with the mushing and steering; and the “dogs” pulled really hard and fast. Everyone, including our sled, survived the race.

I’m excited that I learned how to use power tools! If I were to do it over, I would once again improve our wheels and make it so our axles wouldn’t squeak. Everyone on our team had a great time and as a result of this project, we all learned some new things. We made a good team; after all we finished in six minutes! Working together with the same group every day, for an entire week taught me a lot about teamwork and accomplishing something as a group. Go team Moose!

Mason now has a cold (or maybe the flu), but she is fighting through it and has another two days of ISATs. I'm starting to get sick as well, but so far it's just a sniffle and a sore throat - taking plenty of vitamins and doing the best I can to sleep through the night (but that never happens).

~ Max & Mason