Outhouse Race in Dawson City

9 Aug 2015--Yesterday we went into town to see the 38th Annual "Great International Outhouse Race", and getting there a little early we decided to walk along the river a bit.



Lo and Behold, before we knew it, there were our 2 houseboats from yesterday... that turned out to be just one houseboat...I guess the guy was adding a sitting room for himself?  haha  Check out the porch swing!  Quite a set-up he has going, you know he has to be a real interesting character.

 


They had a farmer's market going on, and we haven't had a lot of luck with those up here, but we thought this guy selling dresses out of his bus spoke to the attitude of a lot of those we have observed up here.  They really seem to march to their own drums!



On to the race, the start of which was held outside Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall.  They had quite a crowd of both locals and tourists, and a pretty good MC who kept things lively as we awaited the starting gun.



The contestants were all locals with the exception of one team, and they all have to make some type of wheeled contraption to race with and come up with a theme and poem/song for the crowd to judge them on to determine what place they start in.  Some of the contestants included this group of Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their prisoner, the 'Poo'stitute!



And the "Old Farts"...notice the toilet paper hanging from the guy's shoe in the 2nd pic!



Excuse me Sister Helen, but these ladies were called "The Shitheads"!  haha...and they have Nesquick smeared on them.



And here is "Pooh and Friends", along with none other than Gertie, from last night's show.  It took us a while to realize she was the star of the show last night!



There were more teams, but you get the idea.  After placing their carts on the starting line, each team heads to a mini-obstacle course.


 

Each team member had to do at least one task, and they started with throwing rolls of toilet paper in a nasty, dark water-filled buckets.  The bucket holder then had to take the wet toilet paper and throw it ahead to knock over a toilet plunger.



The toilet plunger person then had to push a piece of ice over a line drawn on the ground, using an orange hanging from his/her waist in a nylon stocking.  And the final entry had to crush a balloon on a dirt filled bucket.



Then and only then could they advance to their contraptions and take off thru town in a leg race of all participants!  Gertie's actually had 2 entrants in the race:  The girls in the 3rd pic here are the "Flies on Poop" group, and they were the dancers from last night's show, while the Shitheads were the bartenders and waitresses.



Crashing thru the finish line in first place are the Police and Poo-stitute, followed in 2nd by Gertie's Shitheads and then another team that was a hotel representative.



This was fun and it was a beautiful day, so we were glad we went.  We will be leaving here tomorrow, crossing back into Alaska to go to Haines, an ocean-side town for a couple days.  Weather is predicted to be back to normal...overcast and cool (haha)...so any sun at all is welcome!