Iditarod Weirdness

So here's how greeting the first Iditarod musher works at our little checkpoint.

1. Everyone waits for the musher
2. It takes a long time. The aching cold makes it seem even longer.
3. You start to see a little blinking light. That's him! The musher!
4. The blinking light gets slightly closer.
5. Repeat step 4.
6. Keep repeating step 4. And 5, for that matter.
7. The musher starts to arrive in town........!!!!!
8. The musher arrives! Hurrah! Except he looks like he's going to fall off of his sled, and the dogs look like they are doing more of a speedwalk than a run.
9. Cheering. At least I cheered. And Ethel cheered. Did anyone else cheer? I thought I heard some clapping....
10. Bum rush the musher and his dogs while the official Iditarod person interviews him.
11. Follow the musher and watch him feed/water his dogs.
12. Follow the musher inside the little house, or wait for the next musher.

I thought it was seriously weird. We relaxed as we were waiting for Lance Mackey to come in though. Here's Agnes and Kristy kicking back (Marie must have thought it was a good idea for a picture, too):



Even Tyler started getting tired after a while. Mackey didn't arrive until after 1:00 in the morning! A little nap in the snow fort is all you need until the next musher arrives:



The pictures I got when Lance Mackey arrived turned out to be really blurry. Plus I didn't want to blind the guy. Here are some more interesting pictures I took the next day, when the pressure wasn't so high. Here's the checkpoint during the day, the straw is for keeping the dogs toasty:



Aaron Burmeister of Nome takes a break inside the checkpoint. Take a look in his bag to see what musher crunch on while they are on the trail. Looks like a lot of chocolate and nuts! Keeps the energy up? Notice those cinnamon rolls in the background being munched on by a vet, those are all me, baby! Aaron was a good sport though, even though he came in 15th place, he's got the smile of champion:



Zack Steer and his completely snow-white dog team made him look a little bit like Santa Claus (if Santa had dogs instead of reindeer). The dogs didn't want to go at first and he said, "Looks like they want to go back to Anchorage!" After 700 miles, I would too:



A little more convincing and off Zack goes to Koyuk. 42 miles and he's at another resting point. Looks pretty bleak though, doesn't it?



All in all, I feel very out-of-place hanging out at the checkpoint. There is a lot of standing around. I would talk with the mushers about sled-dog racing, but they are in THE MIDDLE OF A RACE, y'know? I'll just supply the baked goods, thank you very much. And I'll bring up some straw for a dog team or two. But I'm sure that Palmer, in the picture with me here, loves every minute of it! He ran the Iditarod a few years back and is one of the checkpoint managers.



The mushers are still coming through! Lance Mackey takes first place, but Jeff King was on his heels the whole way. Great race!