March 8, 2003

• Iditarod Excitement

  
  

  Jim Lanier’s dogs have some really fancy blankets to lay under at the checkpoints.

  
  

  Despite poor trail conditions that forced a change, cutting off about fifty miles of trail, the race is getting HOT.  The table of statistics at ITC/HQ has gotten harder to interpret since most of the mushers have already taken one or both of the mandatory 8 hour and 24 hour layovers.  Only a very few, far back in the pack, haven’t taken either mandatory layover, so they will fall even farther back when they do. 

  
  

  We can disregard them, as far as winning is concerned.  They can still finish, and the last of them will win the Red Lantern Award and get to carry it the last leg of the race, from Safety to Nome, then take it home.  A friend of mine in this neighborhood, Rhodi Karella, the “mushing grandma”, has one of them in her living room.  So what if it’s the booby prize?  That particular last place prize is so far beyond the reach of most of us, it still counts for something.  Just having the gumption to keep going after everyone else has either finished or quit counts for something.

  
  

  Dee Dee Jonrowe has taken her 24 hour layover and is out of Kaltag in 24th place on that southward loop that will eventually bring her back through Kaltag before she sets off northwest toward Nome.  She is now running with ten dogs.

  
  

  Jeff King, in first place with 14 dogs, and Rick Swenson in fifth place (the only musher in the race now with a full team of 16 dogs), still have to take their 24-hour layovers.  Robert Sorlie, the Norwegian who led the race until he stopped for his 24-hour layover, still has the 8-hour rest to take.  He is in second place with 12 dogs.

  
  

  Five out of the first twenty mushers have taken both mandatory layovers and can be expected to move up in the standings as those ahead of them stop to rest.  They are Ed Iten in 18th place with 12 dogs; Vern Halter in sixteenth with twelve dogs; Sonny Lindner in fifteenth place with twelve dogs; Linwood Fiedler in eighth place with eleven dogs; and Ramy Brooks in third place with eleven dogs.

  
  

  I signed up at Ramy’s website for email updates from his mom Roxy Wright who is out on the trail.  Here is the latest one I’ve received:

  
  

  
  

  “See how easy it is to misread the race
  
  I made the rash assumption that Ramy would be behind Martin [Buser, now in sixth place with 13 dogs] because their times were similar coming into Eagle Island.  But I had a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that something wasn’t right.  I chalked up Ramy’s dramatic decrease in speed to a conservative move to reserve energy.  Now I’m pretty sure that Ramy took a break before coming into Eagle Island.
  
  At any rate – he is back on the trail!  Martin can’t leave Eagle Island 1 until he is 1:52 behind Ramy.
  
  At this point we can look to the front….here is where strategy and adaptability will come into play.  Ramy is only 6 hours behind Sorlie…and Sorlie needs an 8 hour rest!”

  
  

  A lot of Alaskans would love to see Ramy win.  He’s from a big old Alaskan dog mushing family.  Alaskans are maybe the most chauvinistic of all Americans, and close on the heels of the French, who invented the word.  Greyfox and I were laughing this morning about all the complaints we heard around here when Montana musher Doug Swingley won in ’95.  He was the first and only non-Alaskan to win the race.  After that first win, he came back in ’99 for the first of a string of three wins in a row, then in 2002 he took a slow “victory lap”.  He said good-bye to the friends he’d made along the trail, finished 40th, and retired.

  
  

  Now, Robert Sorlie, from Norway, has a good chance of winning.  If he does, it’s really going to steam our more chauvinstic neighbors, I’m sure.  Tee hee…  

  
  

  

  • 5:29 pm
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