March 1, 2003

• Mush, you huskies!    

  
  

  The national anthem is being sung at this moment by the Frozen Pipes barbershop quartet, on my TV, from downtown Anchorage at the start of the 31st running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.  The first running of the race was in ’73, the year I came to Alaska, a few months before my arrival.  I’ve been blogging about Iditarod as the excitement built, for almost a month.  The main entry of the series was mostly about the 1925 Serum Run to Nome.  Another one was more about the race itself and a few of the mushers.  I devoted one blog to a special musher, my neighbor Dee Dee Jonrowe.

  
  

  First out of the chute this year, very soon now, will be John Baker.  Here, he’s shown during an earlier year’s race, catching a nap at the Unalakleet checkpoint.  John is one of few Alaska Natives who run this race.  He’s an Inupiat from Kotzebue.  He has run about ten Iditarods, and during the off season he travels to schools across the Arctic, speaking in support of getting an education.

  
  

  Another Native musher, Yu’pik Mike Williams from Akiak, has what I think is one of the finest reasons of all for running the Iditarod.  Mike says that he has been mushing dogs “since birth”.   Every year that he mushes to Nome, he’s mushing for sobriety.  He gets out there to promote the Native sobriety movement.  During the off season, he speaks at schools and civic groups in support of sobriety.  Go, Mike!

  
  

  One of my favorite white men in the race is Charlie Boulding.  He has been through chemo for colon cancer this past year, no mean feat considering the long trek by 4-wheeler from his remote home to Fairbanks every week.  Charlie responded to a reporter recently, something to the effect that this isn’t fun anymore.  He’s out there for the money.  I hope he doesn’t just finish in the cash.  I hope Charlie wins.

  
  

  [They're off!  John Baker, in bib #1 just left the chute.]

  
  

  From Charlie’s official musher biography :  Charlie Boulding, 60, was born in North Carolina. Before moving to Alaska in 1983, he lived in Montana where he worked on an oilrig. He came to Alaska to run dogs and live a subsistence lifestyle. He says it’s been so long that he doesn’t even remember when or why he became interested in running the Iditarod. He won the Yukon Quest in 1991, ran again in 1992 and won again in 1993. After the 1992 Quest, Charlie ran the Iditarod, calling it “my learning year.” He has run the Iditarod almost every year since. A fisherman and dog musher, Charlie is married and lives on the Tanana River near Manley.

  
  

  Martin Buser, wearing bib #15, has just left the starting chute.  Martin, born in Switzerland and an Alaskan since 1979 when he was 21, is a nice guy.  He got in a wee bit of trouble about seven years ago when he unofficially comandeered a fireboat on Big Lake to help fight a wildfire–just couldn’t bear to see the equipment tied up to a dock while his neighbors’ houses burned down. 

  
  

  He not only won last year’s race, but he set a new time record in doing it.  When he arrived on Front Street in Nome, an agent from the INS was there to meet him, with his citizenship papers.  Martin is a local favorite.  Any man who loves dogs as much as he obviously does, and isn’t ashamed to talk baby talk to his “puppems” on a global satellite TV hookup, is okay by me.  This year, with the lack of snow here in the valley where he lives, he has been “truck training” like all our local mushers, hauling 30-40 dogs hundreds of miles and staying away from home a week at a time, in training.

  
  

  Another local kid–gawd, that shows my age:  I watched him grow up, but he has teenage kids now–is in the chute… #20, Lance Barve.  His dad Lavon, a longtime Iditarod musher now retired, owns, and Lance works in, the Wasilla print shop we use.  Lance has won Jr. Iditarod a few times.   The pundits are saying that Lance has a good chance of being the first rookie ever to win this race.

  
  

  Dee Dee, wearing bib #30, just mushed out the chute for her twenty-first running in the Iditarod.  This image was from her nineteenth race, in ’01.  In an interview aired this morning, I heard Dee Dee Jonrowe say that she is now a cancer survivor, not a victim.  She’s not wearing her wig any more.  She’s been off chemotherapy for five weeks, and says she feels tired “from the inside out.”  But she’s out there.  I’ve already expressed how I feel about her.

  
  

  Cassandra Wilson of Portland, Oregon, is this year’s Teacher on the Trail.  I heard her telling a reporter this morning about the effort and expense she put, over the past two or three years, into winning this honor.  Wells Fargo sponsors the program, furnishes the sled and outerwear for each year’s teacher, but the educators themselves have to learn dog handling and get into condition for the run.  Ms. Wilson says she does it for her students, so they will see that it’s possible for them to achieve their goals, too.  She will be carrying a laptop on the trail, and will search out internet connections at checkpoints, to report her progress.

  
  

  The ceremonial start in Anchorage requires a lot of work and expense by the city, hauling and spreading snow to give the mushers eleven miles of “trail” before they load the dogs into the boxes on the backs of their trucks, haul the sled onto the top and tie it down for the drive to Fairbanks, 358 miles away. 

  
  

  Besides the downtown merchants who depend on this event to get them through their slow business season, the ceremonial run is largely for the benefit of Idita-Riders.  This is the ninth year for this program which provides funds so that mushers finishing back in the pack, in slots once “out of the money”, will get a little bit of the purse.  That’s important, because breeding and caring for dogs, getting supplies and equipment for the trail, etc., is expensive.  Those seats in the sleds for the initial leg of the “trail” through Anchorage, are auctioned off during the winter before each race.  This year Martin Buser and Charlie Boulding brought in the most money for the fund.  The total earned by the auction this year was over $100,000.

  
  

  The TV cameras have turned occasionally this morning to a window overlooking the starting chute.  Sitting there watching is one of the local heroes.  Col. Vaughn, in the parka at left, went to the South Pole with Byrd seventy-five years ago.  Last year, he recreated the serum run on the Iditarod Trail.

  
  

  I met Col. Norman Vaughn close to 20 years ago.  He was outside the old Sheep Creek Lodge (replaced by the new one after it burned down in the mid-eighties).  Col. Vaughn was looking around in the flower beds, trying to find the electrical outlet there, so he could plug in his electric razor and spruce up before going in for lunch.  The Colonel’s health has slowed him down, but none of the smart money is betting that anything can keep him down.

  
  

  I could go on and on.  I probably will, over the next week or two, with updates and progress reports.  I’m not generally a sports fan, but there are a few sporting things that get my attention.  Oddly enough, they all involve animals other than primates:  horse racing, sled dog racing, and “the roughest eight seconds in sports,” bull riding. 

  
  

  It cheers me up, thinking about those happy huskies out on the trail.  Huskies love to run!

  
  

  

  
  

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  As threatened, here’s my first update:  a shot from the webcam on Anchorage’s 4th Avenue, partway through cleaning up the snow that they hauled in last night.  In lower right is a statue of Balto, “that miserable dog.”

  
  

  

  • 4:26 pm
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