 ° f / ° c  |
 |
 Days  |
Target Iditarod Teacher on the Trail™ The Rite Thing
by Jane Blaile
I was looking over the sample of the weatherproof Iditarod checker's form we received at summer conference and decided to try to contact the Rite in the Rain Company about getting more samples. I want to use the paper to teach my students the scientific process. (Look for a lesson plan later.) Well, good ‘old Google took me right to the website. After exploring it for a few minutes I went to the "Contact Us" tab. Now, my impression of the "Contact Us" tab is that it is an ambiguous place businesses developed to keep people from actually calling them and you get an automatic reply immediately, but wait for someone to read, research, and answer your question - if you're lucky. I ventured onward anyway, figuring I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
There were all kinds of departments - marketing, shipping, orders, technical product questions, government shipping, etc. The first contact is sales. I knew sales reps have product samples, so I sent a message explaining who I am and what I wanted.
The next day I got a reply with the good news that I was going to be able to receive samples. But the best part of this reply was not only the samples, but it was sent to me by the actual designer of the dog team diaries and the checkpoint check sheets. What are the odds of that? It gets better. Turns out this designer got hooked on the Iditarod (is that a surprise?) and he and his brother volunteer every year at Skwentna checkpoint.
They are in Anchorage for the start, but after the 1st ten sleds go, they snow machine to Skwentna and work on getting it ready for the non-stop day 1 dog and musher traffic. He gave me his phone number so we can talk about the race and the crazy checkpoint Skwentna is at the start. You know? I think Iditarod fans are really just one big family.
