Half a century on...

Guess what happened to me yesterday?

Oh yes! I am now half a century old. It is not entirely clear to me how that happened.

Birthday smoothie! Love that wrinkle-erasing computer camera.

My friends, who know me well, posted some interesting things on my Facebook timeline yesterday...

Well, that's good to know!!

Couldn't agree more!

Gordon had a big birthday surprise cooked up for me. After breakfast, we took off for points north.

I had no clue where we were off to!

That's my clueless look!

Gordon was dropping no hints. He told me to bring warm clothes!

By the time we got to Hawkesbury, I knew we were going to head over the bridge to Quebec.

But I still didn't know our final destination. I did eventually discover that we were going to have lunch at ChocoMotive in Montebello.

I had a great cup of chocolat chaud, aka hot chocolate! Chocomotive is a chocolaterie and a bistro. We had a super lunch there, then I loaded up on some handmade chocolates to take with me! It is my right to buy lots of chocolate on my birthday.

This is the main street in Montebello.

Here's Chocomotive, which is housed in the old train station. Beautiful!

Then Gordon wanted me to get a move on, because we had somewhere to be at 1 pm!

But where?

Well, this was my first hint!

We went dogsledding at La Meute Tanwen. 

It was FANTASTIQUE!!!!

We had the option of driving the sleds or not. We both wanted to! But I started out as a passenger.

Which was just a HUGE amount of fun!


HUGE !

And such a beautiful day! After more than a week of bitter cold and wind, yesterday turned out to be perfect. Sunny, no wind, and a high of about -4C, which was plenty warm for us!

Soon enough, I got to drive the dogs myself. My four were very zippy. I had to keep touching the brakes on the sled to make sure we didn't run into the team ahead of us.

We were having a little break here! Most of the dogs were crossbreeds of Husky, Malamute, Greyhound and I forget what else. I know from all the Iditarod and Yukon Quest books I've read that a team of Huskies looks nice but is damn slow. 

The view of the Laurentians around Ripon was magnifique!

And there's Gordon, already breaking the rule of always keeping two hands on the sled! If not, you are supposed to loop your arm through the handle while you do whatever it is you need to do with your free hand.

I wiped out once yesterday, but I held onto my sled and waited for help to get it upright. Gordon wiped out twice. He was completely thrown off, and his team ended up pretty much right up my behind. :) It was hilarious. He is not good at holding on tight in a crisis.

Here is a much more experience musher. He was leading the way. We stopped here to look at the gorgeous view!

After two hours, it was over, sigh!! 

That little blond fellow in the middle is an adorable pup.

And I was very fond of this odd-eyed cutie.

Lovely, healthy, happy dogs. Éric takes good care of them.

I could have gone for another two hours. But man, my triceps are killing me today!

After our hard day of mushing, we had a lovely birthday supper at Le café du bistrot in Saint-André Avelin. While we were there, a couple and their young child arrived via snowmobile...

... don't you love the little trailer? Everybody was properly attired in snowsuits and helmets! If I were a kid, I'd love zipping around in that thing.

And my friend Ronna sent a pic of me preparing to attack our birthday cake last weekend...

Gordon looking perfectly oblivious to the madness beside him, as always!

My BEST birthday EVER!! Thank you dear Gordon!

And here's a video, so you can feel like you were there. Sorry about my finger. It was tough to keep a grip on the iPhone!