The theme of the 36th Annual Home Show that opens this weekend is “Be Inspired” and that is exactly what Iron Dog legend Scott Davis did at the Kenai Peninsula Builders Assoc. (KPBA) meeting last week. KPBA along with Spenard Builders Supply are the sponsors of the Home Show that promises a wide array of vendors sure to please anyone with early symptoms of spring fever and chronic home improvement projects. Scott Davis and his family is the owner of Davis Block and Concrete providing redi-mix and concrete blocks to Alaska for nearly 40 years and have been active KPBA members for over 25 years. Still a bit trail weary and recovering from the worse crash of his career, Davis told of his experience during the grueling 2015 Iron Dog snowmachine race the “World’s longest and toughest Snowmachine Race.” Davis is a 7 time race champion with 21 finishes in the top 3 and along with teammate Aaron Bartel finished an impressive second in this year’s race in spite of serious injuries due to a crash on the trail.
“I changed my philosophy about the race this year and my pace,” said Davis in an interview, “I increased my speed and along the way perhaps I had a little too aggressive a pace or perhaps after racing over 75,000 Iron Dog miles over the years eventually you have to figure you’re going to have a crash. I’m not sure really what the cause was but it happened and I broke some ribs and tore my spleen and collapsed a lung from it. I was north bound but ended up riding the rest of the way home with it, so it affected the outcome of the race a little bit and it came to the place where we were holding on to second instead of battling for the lead,” he said. Davis who has announced his retirement in the past says he refuses to do it again, “I’ll just wait and see how I feel when it comes time to sign up again,” he said. Scott says the resurgence of the oil and gas industry has been a benefit to all of the building industry in Alaska and is looking forward to the coming gas line.
With the mild winter this year’s earlier than usual Home Show seems to be in sync with Mother Nature as many people are already inspired to get started on their summer projects. Tom Seggerman built the shed that will be raffled off at this year’s show, “This shed is very important because the proceeds from the raffle go to our scholarship fund which encourages young people to get into the trades as a profession. As we all know there is a graying in the trades so this year there will be four scholarships of $1,000 each for young people going into trade school,” explained Seggerman. The 36th Home Show opens Saturday at 9:00am and Soldotna Regional Sports Complex raffle tickets for the shed will be available at the show or from KPBA members
