March 22, 2005
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Okay, the last one wasn’t the last one.
One more Iditarod story because the Red Lantern has a good one.“It’s very gratifying to finish, and there’s
no doubt that I’m proud of this dog team,” Morgan said by phone. “We
lived through some crazy experiences.”The 44-year-old pilot for Alaska Airlines
felt happy but more relieved that the race from Anchorage to Nome was
finally done. He spent the final day trudging his dilatory lead dogs
through a blizzard that began near White Mountain.The wind was blowing close to 60 knots, he
said, and he could only see one trail marker at a time. He said it
wasn’t a “Libby Riddles” blizzard, but it was tough on the dogs and
himself.Morgan was the only musher around, and he’d
been pulling his lead dog on a leash for about five miles. He said
driving his dogs from Unalakleet to Nome was a struggle the entire way.“Earning the red lantern was no piece of
cake,” Morgan said, laughing. “I had a great team, but certain things
happened that didn’t go our way.”After leaving Willow 15 days ago, Morgan
realized he had three females in heat and a bunch of males with
anything but racing on their minds.“That put a cramp in his Iditarod lifestyle since they were his leaders,” Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said.
Morgan held his love-struck team together
from Finger Lake to Iditarod and untangling them nearly 200 times, he
said. He eventually dropped all three and had to separate the females
from the males.“It was like a bull moose in the rut,” he said. “We had love on the trail.”
Morgan, who was loving the thought of taking
a shower and eating a hot bowl of soup, has earned the right to say he
officially viewed the Iditarod Trail from three perspectives: One from
the ground, one from the air and one on a snowmachine.Morgan has served as an Iditarod Air Force
volunteer since 1995. He also competed in the Tesoro Iron Dog
snowmachine race in 1998.
Comments (5)
Hi sweety–first of all, kitten news–I moved boxes and crawled under the bed with a flash, sw them moving, and heard them this morning. Frankie was out this morning to eat, didn’t go outside. Silky is still out someplace. Poor Hohner spent the night outside, he’s back now. The terrible three were going batshit this morning, romping and stomping–thought about calling Animal Control to come out here and dart their asses. (Just kidding!)
More windfall news–I checked the bag of baking stuff, it is in a really hard to get at place, and frozen down to boot. It will have to wait. I intend to open up one of the big soft bags in the back, see what kind of goodies I might find there. Back, hurts, I think it is fibro, that old burning tearing sensation. . . .
No paper, burned most of my cell minutes on hold until I talked to a circulation guy. I’ll read the library paper, when (if?) I get my own, I’ll use it to enter you in the drawing. If I remember, I’ll call Seth fromt he library phone.
Talk to you tonight (if I remember to charge the cell, it is low again)–take care.
Love on the trail indeed! Poor guy. I almost fell out of my chair when I read that. Glad you decided to post one more.
Hi again–googled the steins, they are going dirt-cheap on ebay.
Not surprised about the storm warning, the sky to the south looks ominous. Weather still calls for double-digit winds, maybe I’ll bag it today, too–it would be a short day in any case, due to the meeting.
I once wrote an Ingar Gorse poem called “The White Mountain” Such a beautiful name.
It was like a bull-moose in the rut…That’s not a line one hears everyday in England!
http://gorse.homestead.com/102.html