I'm tethered to a speeding dog, bikes wallow in sand, and I haven't got the slightest clue what I am doing.
``Back off!" I shout. This is musher speak for slow down. I had just learned the phrase. Alta accelerates and hits the turn with a 45-degree bank like a greyhound on the far corner of the track. I feel fear.
I am not afraid of landing on my face. I am afraid of letting down the dog. I want Alta to be proud of me, to know that I am doing my share of the work, to appreciate the fact that the old human at the other end of her leash can still learn new tricks.
But I am also in trouble, and therein rests the essence of bikejoring. It is not just the ultimate clean, free ride through the countryside; it is the challenge, indeed the obligation, to prove one's worthiness as dog's best friend.
Born of a need for mushers to exercise their dogs off season, bikejoring (a term adapted from the Norwegian sport of towing skiers) uses one or two dogs to pull a rider across generally flat, unpaved terrain. A competition course typically might be four miles long, and participants, starting at one-minute intervals, race the clock.
Five years ago the sport was basically unknown, according to Paul Therriault, president of the Down East Sled Dog Club. Now as many as 50 New Englanders may compete at levels ranging from novice to professional.
Four weeks ago, the International Sled Dog Racing Association made bikejoring an officially sanctioned event in the United States. And today more than a dozen competitiors are expected to attend a bikejoring demonstration at the Down East club's annual fall trade show. The event is slated to be held at the Oxford County Fairgrounds here, about 40 minutes north of Portland.
``With no slight to my wife," said Therriault, ``this may be the ultimate partnership, a symbiosis between human and dog working together toward the same end."
What dogs make the best bikejoring partners?
``In the end, it's all in the genes," said Jessica Doherty of Boston, who for 20 of her 30 years has been racing sled dogs that she trains off season on snowless terrain.
