I really enjoy getting questions for which I have answers.  Keep ‘em coming!

SeanHarrington asked:

Is “Cripple” Cripple Creak from that song? “Up on Cripple Creak, she sends me, if I spring a leak, she mends me….” Was that The Band?

The Band did record that song.  It was written by J.R. Robertson.  But the “Cripple Creek” in it is not the Cripple River where there is a checkpoint for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.  Nor does the song refer to the Cripple Creek in the Fairbanks, Alaska area.

The photo at left is the Cripple checkpoint on the Iditarod trail at Cripple River.

The song’s creek is in the Colorado Rockies and was, in the ‘seventies (and could be even now for all I know, having been out here on the edge of the wilderness for so long), a mecca for the hip subculture and a burgeoning artists’ colony.  From the web, I’ve learned that it is now a gambling resort, so any hippies left there are probably dealing blackjack, pumping gas, or cleaning hotel rooms.  My source regarding that song is the late Linda Goodman, a former resident of Cripple Creek, CO, in a book of hers I read years ago, probably Star Signs.  I was in that Cripple Creek a few times while I lived in Colorado before coming to Alaska.

WINDY~~~~~~~ WEATHER~~~

I have ample material for race updates today, but anyone who wants them can find links in my last few days’ blogs that will take them to websites where they can get more info than anyone ever wanted to know.  Today, I’ve got weather on my mind.

One of the things I like about snow is the quiet.  When there is an insulating blanket of snow on the ground, it tends to muffle sounds.  As snow falls, all sounds are absorbed.  Nothing is so quiet and peaceful as snowfall on a windless day.  Few things are as disturbing to my peace as noisy weather.

I mentioned a while back that rain had washed away our snow, and that I was weary of the sound of dripping rain.  When a high pressure system moved in, the rain stopped and the wind began.  It has roared through the trees night and day for days and days.

There are several plastic shopping bags snagged on tree branches, whipping in the wind.  We’ve been seeing video on TV of roofs blown off a bit farther down this valley, where the mountains close in and create a wind-tunnel effect.  Yesterday, blowing dust impaired visibility and caused a 4-vehicle (3 trucks and an SUV) pile-up.  This area has a lot of glacial silt and volcanic ash lying around.  It doesn’t take much wind to stir it up.  The current winds are more than enough.  There are air quality alerts for this entire region of Southcentral Alaska, because of the blowing ash and silt.

Two days ago, Greyfox placed enough confidence in a forecast for diminishing winds to go to Talkeetna and open his stand.  The winds increased.  Knife boxes blew off his table.  He got a fiery wind burn on face and neck, and got chilled clear through.  He witnessed a lot of drive-by tourism:  people cruising slowly up and down Main Street, with someone hanging out a car window with a camcorder.  Nobody stopped to shop at his stand, but in midafternoon, when one of the locals who want street peddlers banned from Talkeetna stopped by to harrass him, that did it.  He packed up and came home. 

Today’s forecast is for 50 MPH winds.  If we don’t blow away, I’ll be back with more race news or whatever….

My Map Rap

Ta-daah!  This will not only illustrate the big difference between this year’s Iditarod and those of previous years, but will also show my regular readers where I live in relation to the rest of Alaska, and Anchorage, too.  We  have a saying up here in the valley, about Anchoragua, that it has all the traffic and pollution of a big city, some of the cultural amenities, and in addition it is only about fifteen minutes from Alaska. 

Follow the line of dots on the map north from Anchorage… up there between Willow and Talkeetna, is a dot labeled Sheep Creek.  This tells me that the creator of this map could well be a near neighbor of mine, since Sheep Creek isn’t a town.  It’s not even a village.  It’s a creek that crosses the highway near that spring where we get our water.  Near the creek is a lodge of the same name.  You won’t find it on many maps, but here it is.

The dotted line that goes generally west and then northwest from Wasilla is the usual trail the race takes, beginning on Sunday, the day after the ceremonial run from Anchorage to Eagle River.  In recent years, due to a lack of snow farther down the Susitna Valley, the restart was moved to Willow and the run to Eagle River was shortened so that this year it ended in a parking lot on the edge of Anchorage.  That stretch of trail across Dalzell Gorge and through the Farewell Burn has always been one of the most challenging parts of the race, until this year.

photo below:  Rookie Tyrell Seavey uses his weight to keep the sled upright as his team rounds a corner leaving the the Tanana checkpoint Wednesday morning.

At Ophir, the dotted line splits.  Formerly, in alternate years the race took either the northern or southern route.  Yesterday, at Ruby, the mushers leading the pack reached the first “traditional” checkpoint and joined the original trail.  That N-S loop on the map above, through Grayling and Eagle Island, follows a segment of the traditional southern route, adding some distance to compensate for what was lost in moving the start to Fairbanks, north of the Alaska Range.

By 9 AM today, local time, the four leaders had made it out of Galena on the way to Nulato:  Robert Sorlie in with 15 dogs, out with 13; Martin Buser in with 15 out with 14; John Baker in with 15 and out with 14; and the Iditarod’s only five-time champion, Rick Swenson, in with 16, out with 16.  Rick “retired” a few years ago, but he’s back to try for a sixth win.  He is now running about 7 1/2 hours behind Sorlie, the super-fast Norwegian who finished ninth last year as a rookie in this race.

Charlie Boulding is out of Ruby in 12th place with 13 dogs.  Dee Dee Jonrowe is out of Ruby in 17th place with 12 dogs. 

Dee Dee has done some commercials for an Anchorage Subaru dealership.  I’ve been trying to get a little video or still shot from it (short of taking a screen shot with my camera).  In the commercial, an unusually bewildered Dee Dee is standing with her head and shoulders out the sun roof as one of her dogs drives the car and another turns up the air conditioning.  She does a great job of sounding querulous, peevish and lost, all of which are just not the Dee Dee we know and love, but are certainly funny.

Norwegian musher Robert Sorlie and team head down the Yukon river shortly after leaving first from the village of Tanana.

. 

Dog-Dropping
(dropping dogs)

No, my topic for today is not feces, not dog droppings.  It is the canine component of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. <<<This link goes directly to the latest available detailed stats.  That table is where I get my periodic glimpses of what’s going on out there on the trail.

A lot can be inferred from those details.  There are better predictors there than simply the ranked standings, times, etc.  Two very important columns in the table are “dogs in” and “dogs out”.

Veterinarians at checkpoints examine every member of every team as they arrive.  They remove dogs whose condition they feel renders them unfit for the trail.  Mushers also have the option of leaving dogs for the same reason, as well as other reasons such as a female’s going into heat (a distraction to one’s own dogs and a possible source of conflict with other teams) or a dog becoming balky or combative.

Anyone who has lived with dogs knows they have their own personalities.  Canine athletes can be as temperamental as any primate.  Wise mushers don’t try to make a dog go if it wants to stop.  Very few mushers make it to Iditarod-level competition without such wisdom.  One notable exception was banned from the race some years ago.

I noticed yesterday morning that all the teams still had their full original complement of 16 dogs.  Occasionally a musher has, for some reason, to start the race with less than the allowable limit, but this year I think they all started with sixteen.

The Tanana checkpoint, a checkpoint for the first time ever this year with the race restarting in Fairbanks, is the first one where I noticed many dogs being dropped off.  If a musher had to remove any dog or dogs from the team out on the trail between checkpoints, the dog would have gone into the “basket”, the sled, for the ride to the next drop point.

From there, the Iditarod Air Force, a volunteer force of bush pilots some of whom are also veterinarians, fly the dropped dogs back to headquarters in Wasilla, where they are massaged and pampered until their mushers come back for them.  (If you want more about this, or just want the dog’s-eye-view of the Iditarod, check out Zuma’s Paw Prints, and don’t neglect the archives .  Zuma (and/or her human associate) has a sweet disposition and a fine sense of humor.

Update:

At 11:23 AM, Alaska time, Robert Sorlie, wearing bib #23, checked in at Ruby, with an elapsed time of 18 hours, 23 minutes from Tanana.

HERE is a great eye-witness trail report, complete with rumors, from the mother of one of the mushers, a World Champion musher herself.

Each of the three front-runners, Robert Sorlie, John Baker and Jeff King, left Tanana one dog short, with fifteen each.  Charlie Boulding dropped 3 dogs in Tanana, taking his team down to 13. Jessica Royer’s team, in 28th place, came into Tanana with 13 dogs and left with 11, the smallest number among those currently in the race. 

This doesn’t look hopeful for her, but it doesn’t destroy her chances for a win, either.  I could probably dig through archives and find the least number of dogs to arrive in Nome in a winning team, but I’ll rely on my memory and Greyfox’s.  We both recall at least one winning team with only eight dogs.

Martin Buser, Aliy Zirkle, Rick Swenson, Sonny Lindner, Mitch Seavey, and Jessica Hendricks, all in the top 30, have made it through Tanana with all sixteen of their dogs.

For my readers who are rooting along with me for Dee Dee Jonrowe, she checked into Tanana at 6:21 PM yesterday with fourteen dogs.  She left there at 2:15 this morning in eighteenth place with twelve dogs.  Go Dee Dee!

First, an updated Iditarod Update:

As of about 7:30 PM Xanga (Eastern) time, three mushers had made it to the Tanana checkpoint:  Robert Sorlie, John Baker, and Jeff King.  Dee Dee Jonrowe, in 22nd place, left Manley about four hours ago.

Although several of the registered mushers withdrew before the race’s start, none of the starters have scratched yet.

Now, to return to our regularly scheduled blogging….

FOUR BOYS

One kid had ADHD, high test scores and miserable grades.  In a small school a long bus ride from home, he had few friends.  When he started wearing glasses in third grade, it helped with the schoolwork, but didn’t help him socially.

One was another misfit boy, but a year younger.  He wore glasses, too.  His dad was the village handyman and might have been the town drunk if he hadn’t had so much competition for the position.

Those two saw each other around school but didn’t get to know each other until the older one took a year off from school to travel, between elementary and jr. high.  In the same grade upon his return, and in a school new to both of them, they became friends in jr. high.  In spare moments at school, they played D&D.  That long bus ride, no car for either boy, and their shared geeky, bookworm, computer nerd personalities, meant that they seldom saw each other outside of school.

The other two boys eventually joined in the role-playing games with the first two.  One of them was taller than most grown men when his friends were about up to his belt buckle.  Then he stopped growing at what is still a reasonably normal height.  An early bloomer physically, he had a childlike fantasy life and loved video RPGs.  Constantly in camo during grade school, in jr. high he became very goth in appearance and had waist-length light brown hair.  In high school he adopted the name of the main enemy boss in his favorite video game.  A little later on, as an emancipated minor, he had his name legally changed.

The fourth boy loved video games and computers, too, but always had to share those he had at home.  He was the eldest of a big growing family that moved into the neighborhood when he was in seventh grade.  His father worked as a building contractor and karate instructor.  The first boy had barely noticed this new kid in school before he and his mother enrolled for martial arts training with the boy’s father.  When the sensei brought his slender but skilled eldest son along as a sparring partner for the bigger first boy, they became friends.

The four boys started spending more time at each other’s houses as they grew older and more mobile.  The early-blooming kid’s mother moved away and he decided not to move with her.  He was officially a “runaway” or delinquent, with his mom’s connivance, living with various friends in the neighborhood, including each of the other three boys.  Then the karate master took a guardian’s responsibility for him officially and helped him stay in high school for a while.

But the young man left school and wandered between his friends’ houses and other friends and cousins in a nearby town.  He had a series of menial jobs, and he commissioned a smith to make him a sword that stood taller than himself.  He carried it everywhere, walking and hitchhiking 

The sensei’s son had grown big and beefy, and a Marine Corps recruiter made him a great offer.  Right after graduation, he was gone.  The little geeky one had dropped out of high school after several suspensions for vandalism.  He hung around home for a while, then joined the Army soon after the Marine went away.

The first boy, having coasted through high school without doing homework, did his senior year twice, with correspondence school in the summer between.  During that one’s last year in high school, the early bloomer dropout was moving up into supermarket management in a job that started as a bag boy.  Then he met and married his soulmate, an older woman with a young son.  Soon after that, the better to support his family, he joined the Army.

The myopic late-bloomer has been out of school almost two years now and the other boys almost three years.  He has heard from his friend in the Marines once or twice, but not for over a year.  He and his mother get occasional phone calls from one or the other of the two young men now in the Army.  In their high school years, that young man’s mother became a close friend and confidante to the early-blooming drifter and the weird little geeky guy with all the repressed anger and hostility.

I have no serious worries that my kid will be drafted if the draft is reinstated.  I think the chance that he could pass a military physical is very slim.  If he did pass the physical, he’d probably flunk a psych exam.  Under the circumstances, it’s fortunate for him that he’s not interested in a military career.  Still, I have young men in the military.  Joe, that beefy Marine who used to throw me across the dojo when the top of his head wasn’t up to my shoulder, is important to me.  Matt, the geeky kid who calls, talks to Doug a few minutes and then gets on the line with me and talks, talks, talks… I love that young man.  It has been an honor to be allowed, by phone and email, to follow his growing maturity in military life.

But Sephiroth, the early-bloomer, has been one of my favorite people since he was just a very tall little kid bicycling along the highway between home and the Wolf Safari tourist trap “theme park” all summer to clean out wolf cages for a few bucks.  He, more than any of the other kids including my own son, is responsible for my enjoyment of video games.  During his drifting period, when he moved in with us he brought his Super Nintendo and PlayStation and got me hooked.  He introduced me to ChronoTrigger and Final Fantasy… even FFTactics, “Tic-Tacs,” the best of the best.

His phone calls tended to come in the middle of the night when he was just fifty miles away at his cousin’s house, having a sleepless night and needing someone to talk to.  He still does sometimes need to talk, but calling from Germany, he usually catches someone awake here.  Even if I was sound asleep, I’d try to wake up because he’s always got something interesting to say.  This man is a deep thinker and a brilliant fantasist, an Aquarian with imagination and flair.   He is my personal number one reason for dreading war.

The rest of the list is long and diverse, embracing everything from the most personal, selfish motives to the highest spiritual ideals.  With all my heart and soul I cry and pray:  no more war!  In my mind and my gut, I  suppose we must endure one now.  I may have to take it.  I don’t have to like it.

Thinning the Herd

That phrase is a favorite of my grumpy old fart.  He trotted it out recently to comment on that “hardcore” kid who overdosed fatally, live–and then dead–on his webcam, while boasting in a chatroom about all the drugs he was taking, most of which and certainly the most dangerous of which, were prescribed for him.

For all I know, Greyfox could have learned that, “thinning the herd,” phrase from some source within Mensa.  Mensa calls itself, “the high IQ society.”  Many Mensans, however, call it, “where the eggheads go to get laid.”  Eugenics, breeding a “better” human race, often showed up in Mensa publications during those few years in the ‘seventies when I was a member.  There was a long-running paid ad in one of the newsletters, that said simply, “The more intelligent you are, the more children you should have.”  This was before AIDS, when it looked like overpopulation was going to kill the planet and the mainstream media were urging their readers and viewers to stop having kids after two:  “replacement”.

Being part of a farming family, I have a slightly different view of “thinning the herd.”  Often, it would be a particularly smart cow that went to the slaughterhouse, one who learned how to open gates, for example.  The farmer or rancher who thins a herd is looking to remove genetic defects, physical abnormalities and weaknesses:  the sort of things that would get a sickie like me cut from the herd at an early age.  Human examples of the sort of animals likely to be kept in a ranch herd would probably include athletes like Bechler, the Orioles’ pitcher who died of heatstroke last month.

Some people would like to protect herd-thinning fools from themselves.  It is said that Bechler was taking ephedra, a thermogenic stimulant herb.  This morning I heard the phrase, “twenty fatal incidents” bandied about by two men debating a possible ban on sales of ephedra.  If I lived in a hotter climate, I could earn a living collecting wild ephedra or growing it, if it becomes an under-the-counter drug.  A friend of mine in New Mexico had a lucrative spike in his herb business when the FDA briefly banned the herb chaparral in the ‘nineties.

Politically, I’m an anarchist.  Since anarchy doesn’t show up on ballots in this state, I’m registered as a Libertarian.  It’s just a statement, that registration.  It doesn’t affect the way I vote, because I usually cast my ballot against the biggest crook and for his chief opponent, whoever has a decent chance of winning and keeping the worst assholes out of office.  But this is a Republican state, and the assholes get in, anyway.  My vote is just one little flake in a blizzard.

I don’t think we should be protected from ourselves.  There are some people I think don’t deserve protection at all.  Take drunk drivers:  I don’t think a drunk driver should be tossed in jail, ordered into rehab, and have his driving license suspended.  I think it would be more appropriate to hook him up to an IV drip of pure alcohol and let him die the way he lived.  **and, in case anyone wonders, that’s hyperbole… for one thing, the IV part would put some unfortunate medical personnel in the position of taking life rather than saving it.  For the same reason, I oppose execution by lethal injection.**

If the American Medical Association, which opposes any American’s right to self-medication mostly because it cuts into the income of its members, can find only twenty cases of fatal ephedra poisoning, I say that’s statistically insignificant.  Compared to the millions who have used it without ill effect, it’s a very small number.  Why aren’t they out there advocating a total ban on alcohol?  Think about it:  all those ERs that get the human wreckage from drunk drivers, all the revenue from cirrhosis treatment, liver transplants, prescriptions for Antabuse, etc.  Alcohol makes money for the AMA (and even the doctors who are addicted to prescription drugs–most of them are addicted to alcohol, too).  Herbal medicine and all self-medication is counter to the best (financial) interests of the medical profession, so AMA opposes it.

Prescribed drugs do more harm every day than herbs do.

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!

.

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.”