At 2:46:48 this morning, Lance Mackey has won his second consecutive Iditarod, after having won his fourth consecutive Yukon Quest last month.

Jeff King passed through Safety Checkpoint an hour and eight minutes after Lance Mackey.

At 1:42 AM, the tracker was showing Lance about eight and a half miles out of Nome, seven miles ahead of Jeff King, moving 2 MPH faster than King.  It might be safe now to predict that Lance will win.

The two teams are close enough together, that it might also be reasonable to speculate that Jeff could have won if he had dropped those two tired dogs sooner, to get more speed from his team.

The Nomecam shows that crowds are already gathering along the chute leading to the finish line.  They have about an hour to wait.  The winner should be decided by 3 AM, give or take a few minutes.

Lance Mackey checked into Safety at 11:44, and out at 11:45.

At midnight, the tracker, for what it's worth, was showing Jeff King nine miles from Safety.

Ramey Smyth, in third position, left White Mountain at 11:44 with 8 dogs, leaving Ken Anderson, Martin Buser, Hans Gatt, Mitch Seavey, Kjetil Backen,  Paul Gebhardt, Zack Steer, Sebastian Schnuelle, Rick Swenson, Cim Smyth, Jessie Royer, and DeeDee Jonrowe in Whiite Mountain.  Anderson has completed his 8 hour mandatory rest there and could be leaving any time.  Jonrowe's team is not eligible to leave until 5:51 AM.

Deborah Bicknell left Nulato in 81st position with ten dogs at 11:39, two minutes ahead of the current Red Lantern, Liz Parrish, and her team of 14.

Tracker Trivia:  earlier this afternoon, when Lance and Jeff were both in White Mountain, the tracker data was showing both of them at elevations below sea level, and one of them ten meters lower than the other -- an underground parking garage??

Lance Mackey checked out of White Mountain at 4:53 PM today with the same eleven dogs he had when he got there.

Jeff King dropped two dogs in White Mountain and checked out at 5:50 PM with fourteen.  I assume that the two he dropped are the same two he said were "tired" a day or two ago.  Tired dogs had to be slowing him down some, so his dropping them now means he is getting serious about catching up and passing Lance.

Jeff's tracker must be malfunctioning, because the data on him is tagged, "estimated."  If the data is correct (and it has been from mildly to wildly inaccurate throughout the race), Lance is about 14 miles from Safety, the last checkpoint, traveling at 6 MPH.  Jeff is estimated to be 8 miles behind him doing 7 MPH.  What's really going on out there is anybody's guess.

Safety is 22 miles from the finish in Nome.  Two hours or so into Safety, maybe three hours from there to Nome, unless somebody's dogs have some terrific energy reserves for a sprint to the finish.  If I can stay awake long enough, I intend to stay up here, checking the standings and watching the Nomecam refresh every minute until I see a team of dogs under that burled arch on Front Street... IF I can stay awake that long.

The field is now down to 82 teams.  Steven Madsen scratched in Galena, leaving the Red Lantern up for grabs.  Right now, it looks like either Liz Parrish or Deborah Bicknell.  Both of them are in Nulato, and the four mushers closest to them on the trail left Nulato between 7:15 and 7:30 this evening.

I have about 23 minutes before Doug moves me out of here so he can play D&D -- his scheduled games are TuThSat now.

I have mentioned that I had been sneaking around Xanga on the Welcome Wagon, disguised as a coyote, earning bonus credits so I can give Greyfox the gift of lifetime Premium Xanga.

The disguise is really just to get those credits accrued more quickly, because SuSu has been spending hers.  I was playing Welcome Wagon Lady back before Xanga paid us to do it, when the front page listed some of the newly created blogs.  That was how I found fatgirlpink with her first entry and shared her with a bunch of the rest of you who grew to love her as much as I do.

About 99% of the new or returning Xangans I encountered in the past week or so either had nothing at all to say, or nothing that I found interesting.  There were two notable exceptions:

For your own sake, check them out.

A second dog has died in this year's Iditarod.  About 10 PM Sunday, Blake and Jennifer Freking, a married pair of mushers from Minnesota running the Iditarod together, were stopped to snack their teams between Galena and Nulato, when a snowmachiner going about 40 MPH ran into Jen's team.  Alaska State Troopers were called and presumably are investigating.

Lorne, a three-year-old female (left above, in a photo from the Frekings' website) died immediately, and three-year-old male Aries (right) was seriously injured.  Aries was taken to Nulato school, given IV fluids and painkillers through the night, and flown out to Wasilla Monday morning for further care.

In an email posted on the website, Jen and Blake said:

Lance Mackey dropped a dog in Elim in the wee small hours this morning, rested an hour and a half, and left the checkpoint with eleven dogs fifty minutes ahead of Jeff King, who still has his full starting team of sixteen.  Lance pulled into White Mountain at 8:53.  At 9:19, the GPS tracker was showing Jeff about five miles out of White Mountain.

The Nomecam is showing dawn over a deserted Front Street, with flags of various nations competing in this year's race windblown into horizontality.  Yesterday afternoon, I watched a few tourists smiling into the webcam with their cell phones held to their faces, presumably calling friends and family to log in and take a look at them.

All teams have a mandatory 8 hour rest at White Mountain, so the race
for first place resumes around 5 PM today.  White Mountain to Safety is
55 miles that Don Bowers said, "can be one of the most dangerous
stretches on the race when the wind blows."   Although it is windy now in Nome, White Mountain is showing only a 5 MPH breeze currently.

From Safety to Nome is another 22 miles.  Don Bowers estimated that the 77 miles from White Mountain to Nome generally take from seven to eleven hours.  Add it all up and it's highly likely that we will probably know who the 2008 Iditarod champion is sometime between midnight tonight and dawn tomorrow.

Martin Buser pulled into Elim just before 9 AM in third position with 13 dogs.  He was a bit over 8 hours behind Jeff King into Elim, and within half an hour of his closest three competitors out of Koyuk:  Hans Gatt in 4th with 12 dogs, Ken Anderson in 5th with 15 dogs, and Ramey Smyth in sixth, now down to 9 dogs after dropping one in Koyuk.

Rookie Melissa Owens left Shaktoolik in 25th position near midnight this morning with nine dogs, about three and a half hours ahead of her closest competition for Rookie of the Year, William Kleedehn in 29th position with eleven dogs.  Rohn Buser in 34th position dropped another dog in Unalakleet, leaving there at 2:34 AM with seven dogs.  Melissa, in case you forgot, or missed it earlier, is eighteen years old, a former Junior Iditarod champion, youngest woman and one of the youngest mushers ever to run the Iditarod.

Steven Madsen, the current Red Lantern, in Galena in 83rd position with eleven dogs, is the only musher not to have completed the mandatory 8 hour Yukon River layover.  He has been there seven and a half hours as of the latest update, and will probably be out of there with his 8 hours done by the time I post this.  Race leader Lance Mackey left Galena about 11 PM on Friday.  A three-and-a-half day distance between the front and back of the pack is not bad.

Below, in a photo by AP photographer Al Grillo, one of Silvia Willis's dogs snoozes in Unalakleet yesterday.

Koyuk villagers Michelle Kavairlook and Katie Hannon view a photo they just shot of themselves in this photo by Bob Hallinen of the Anchorage Daily News

Hallinen also caught Lance Mackey struggling out of his wind pants in Koyuk yesterday.

...and helping his team out of deep snow beside the street in Koyuk.

Hallinen also captured this shot of Jeff King retrieving his team after they had pulled up the snow-hook anchor and ran off with their sled.

Last minute update: 
Jeff King pulled into White Mountain 57 minutes behind Lance Mackey.  He will have seventy-seven miles in which to make up those 57 minutes this evening when he is eligible to leave White Mountain.  If Lance's team can keep going at the pace they have been setting, Mackey will win.  If something happens to stop Lance, Jeff has a chance.

I'm still not well, can't move too far from the nebulizer or be on my feet for more than a minute or two, and talking or laughing tends to get me out of breath.  Even so, there is great improvement over my condition three months ago before the ambulance ride to the hospital, or even just since a few weeks ago when my little walk to the end of the driveway put me back in bed with high fever and severe dyspnea.

The clearest sign I see that my condition has improved is this restlessness I feel.  Partly, the restless feelings could be cabin fever brought on by warmer weather and longer daylight.  But I think there is also an element of pure joie de vivre here, simple joy of living.  I came so close to dying....

So what does one do with a mind that's over-revving in a body that can't even get into gear?  For now, I'm happily occupied for part of each day following the mushers on the Iditarod Trail, by radio, online newspapers, the official standings at iditarod.com, and the comically buggy test run of the GPS tracking system.

Between refreshing the standings page and looking up the latest news postings, today I have been running around Xanga in my KaiOaty disguise, leaving Welcome Wagon comments and earning bonus credits toward Lifetime Premium for ArmsMerchant.

But I always come back to the trail and the race.  Between August when the Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival happens, and the next August when it happens again, the Iditarod is the happeningest thing in this valley.  Besides that, I love dogs.  I'd like to share a couple of stories on the side that haven't made it into my regular updates.

One involves a rookie in this year's race, Sam Deltour (photo at left by official Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz).  He came to my attention because, other than Jeff King, he is the only musher who still has the maximum number of dogs in his team.  There may be others who haven't dropped any dogs, but if so they started with less than sixteen and I'd have to go through the personal details one by one to find them.  Sam still has sixteen.

I looked him up.  He's single and 22 years old, a medical student who lives in Belgium.  He's an adrenaline junkie into extreme sports.  This year he is running Mitch Seavey's puppy team, which more or less explains why he still has all sixteen of them.  The main purpose of these puppy runs is to train the dogs, not to compete in the race.  Each one that completes the race is one more that has that experience and is prepared for racing in subsequent years.

Sam is currently in 71st position, just behind Sue Allen, who is training a puppy team for the Busers.  Sue, however, hasn't been able to keep all her puppies on the trail and is down to just twelve dogs now.

The other sidebar story I have for you involves Dr. Stuart Nelson (photo at right, by Marc Lester of ADN), the Iditarod's chief veterinarian.  He oversees blood pre-screening of every dog entered, about 2,000 this year, for pre-existing conditions that could endanger their health in the race.  He also supervises all the volunteer vets in every checkpoint on the trail.  He was featured in yesterday's Fairbanks News-Miner.  It's an informative story about an interesting man.

I have put in a full day at this keyboard, and I'm dog tired.  I'm off to my bed for a while.  Seeya later.

In Unalakleet yesterday evening, Lance Mackey arrived an hour and a half behind Jeff King, dropped two dogs, taking his team down to 12, rested two and three quarters hours, and left at 6:17, regaining the lead from Jeff, who left Unalakleet at one minute past seven.

Lance's team got into Shaktoolik at 1:14 AM today, followed thirteen minutes later by Jeff and his team.  Jeff says that two of his dogs are tired, but for now the entire sixteen he started with are remaining in harness.  Lance left Shaktoolik just before 6 AM today, with Jeff 39 minutes behind him.

Lance said his dogs perked up as soon as they "sniffed the cooler air on the coast."  They had been turning up their noses at food in the warm days of the early part of the race, and now their appetites are healthy, and they are barking and eager to run.

Now on the ice of Norton Sound, 23 miles short of the Koyuk checkpoint, the tracker (buggy and somewhat unreliable) is showing Lance ahead of Jeff by about two miles, with the speeds for both teams varying between about 6 and 9 MPH.  The winner is expected to reach Nome sometime Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

Farther back in the pack, mushers are adjusting to the idea that their chances of coming in first are slim to none, and they are tweaking their strategies to get ahead of their near competitors to finish as high as they can.  The tracker shows Mitch Seavey 20 miles behind Jeff King, with Kjetil Backen a mile behind him.  The standings out of Unalakleet are:
3. Hans Gatt (out of the checkpoint at 2:27 AM)
4. Paul Gebhardt
5. Kjetil Backen
6. Mitch Seavey
7. Martin Buser
8. Rick Swenson
9. Ken Anderson
10. Ed Iten
11. Jim Lanier (at 67, the oldest musher in this year's race)
12. Jessie Royer
13. Aaron Burmeister
14. Sebastian Schnuelle
15. Zack Steer
16. John Baker
17. DeeDee Jonrowe
18. Ramey Smyth
19. Gerry Willomitzer (out of Unalakleet at 8:12 AM)

Martin Buser, now in seventh position with 13 dogs after dropping one in Unalakleet, seems to be feeling some pressure from his son:  "Impossible first doesn't mean I have to wait around for Rohn to get here," he said on APRN.

He probably doesn't need to worry about that.  Rohn dropped a dog in Kaltag last night, leaving there just after midnight in 33rd position with 8 dogs.  He is now third among the rookies.  William Kleedehn also dropped a dog in Kaltag, down to eleven in 28th position.  Melissa Owens, youngest woman to ever run the Iditarod, is now leading the rookies, out of Kaltag with ten dogs, in 27th position, sixteen minutes ahead of Kleedehn.

At the back of the pack, two more rookies have scratched:  Rodney Whaley in Cripple, and Darin Nelson in Galena.  Veteran musher Art Church, Jr. scratched in Ruby, and Peter Bartlett scratched in Nulato.  This brings the field down to 83 teams.  Currently in last position is Steven Madsen out of Cripple with eleven dogs, about two and a half hours behind Trent Herbst with 15.

Lance Mackey attending his dogs in Unalalkleet Sunday
by Bob Hallinen of ADN

Mackey leaving Unalakleet Sunday
photo by Al Grillo, AP

I understand that happiness is a choice, that it comes from within and consists more of appreciating what one has than of getting what one wants.  That said, I find that sometimes it is easier to be happy than at other times.  In certain circumstances being happy requires a wrenching effort.  Right now, for me, contentment is effortless and happiness just happens.

Doug was up all night, so I got lots of uninterrupted sleep, without the necessity for getting up to tend the wood stove.  We do still need a fire, but generally warmer weather has taken much of the stress out of life here.  I can even get out of bed in my pajamas, slip into house shoes and move over to the computer to blog without having to add extra layers of sweaters, pants, socks and boots.  The cats and Koji appreciate the warmer days, too, I know.  Koji even lay down on the floor yesterday to gnaw on a rawhide strip, instead of jumping up on the bed out of the drafts.  When I woke today, I only had to crawl out from under my covers, and not from under a suffocating pile of heat seeking felines.

When I got out of bed, Doug was out splitting firewood.  Then he was in my bed before my warm spot had cooled.  That's comforting to both of us.  He gave up sleeping in his room months ago, both because it was cold and uncomfortable and because at the time I was needing his help a lot so he wanted to be out here where he can hear when I call.  The sofa we had set up to accommodate play on the Xbox and PS2, and named Couch Potato Heaven, is very comfortable for gaming, but painful verging on crippling for sleeping.  Taking shifts in the bed works best, so I'm extra happy that our sleep schedules are back around again to opposing hours of the day.

Food in my stomach is pleasant, and free food has extra appeal.  Greyfox salvaged several sacks of canned soups and such from the dumpster at Felony Flats recently.  It was during the big subzero cold snap, so they had all been frozen.  Freezing tends to alter the texture of canned foods, but the can of vegie soup I just ate didn't seem to have suffered too much from the change.

I'm also finding it enjoyable to have several interesting things to do, none of which is particularly demanding.  From time to time, I leave Xanga and take a look at what's going on on Front Street in Nome, through the Nomecam.  The Burled Arch is up, and I have watched some heavy equipment moving snow around and smoothing it out down the middle of the street, but the fences that will hold back the crowds at the finish of the Iditarod have not been set up, and there are no TV lights or camera crews there yet.

Through the morning, I have been monitoring the GPS Tracker on the trail, as Jeff King and Lance Mackey pass through the Nulato Hills, moving closer to Unalakleet and the coast of Norton Sound.  They have been nine, ten, eleven miles apart all day so far, and except for a brief time when Lance apparently stopped, their speeds have been close to the same, with Lance's occasionally up to 2 MPH faster.  OOooo, Jeff King just put on a burst of speed, up from 7 MPH to 12, about 11 miles short of Unalakleet, and despite Jeff's acceleration and Lance's maintaining his steady 8 MPH, Lance is reportedly now a mile closer to Jeff.   The tracker still has bugs, I guess.  Either that, or Lance found a short cut.

Did you know that there is another race going on out there now?  I keep forgetting to mention the Iditarod Trail Invitational bicycle race.  They started before the dog teams did, and are now being overtaken and passed by the mushers.

Another little bit of Alaska news I've neglected to mention:  the governor is pregnant -- seven months along and either nobody noticed or they just thought she was getting fat and were too considerate to say anything.

Aha!  Now some fences are going up along Front Street.  I guess I picked the right day to open up the Nomecam.

Well, Jeff King is about 8 miles from Unalakleet, Lance Mackey is still trailing about ten miles behind Jeff, with Kjetil Backen still almost 40 miles back behind Lance, and ten more teams strung out in the ten miles or so behind him.

I think I'll disconnect from the web and call Greyfox.  Today is cheap cell minutes all day.  Happy happy, joy joy!

The necropsy on Zaster, the dog from rookie John Stetson's team who died early Saturday after having been flown to Anchorage for emergency veterinary care, is reported to have shown that aspiration pneumonia was the cause of death.  Stetson scratched from the race in Cripple at 4 PM Saturday, citing the loss of Zaster and concern over sick dogs in his team.

Ryan Redington, the 25-year-old grandson of Iditarod founder Joe Redington, Sr., was in 48th position and down to ten tired dogs, when he scratched in Ruby on Saturday.  Ryan's best finish of his four previous Iditarods was eighteenth, last year.

This brings the field down to 89 teams now, all of whom have completed their mandatory 24 hour layovers.  Ken Anderson, now in 9th position, is the only musher out of the top 28 teams not to have completed the mandatory 8 hour rest on the Yukon River.  He has been in Kaltag for over six hours now, so that's probably where he has decided to take his 8.

I reported Friday that DeeDee Jonrowe had passed Paul Gebhardt and won the gold for being first into the halfway point at Cripple because Gebhardt had, "lost the trail and had to do some backtracking."  Since then, I have gotten the full story.  The checkpoint had been moved about twenty miles further down the trail from its position last year.   Gebhardt was so worried that he had passed the checkpoint that he turned around, losing, he estimates, about six hours.

Lance Mackey was in first position into Kaltag about 9:30 last night.  He spent only seven minutes there before getting back out on the trail.  Jeff King was almost an hour behind him into Kaltag, and rested there until 3:44 this morning.  Jeff still has all sixteen dogs he started with, and Lance has the fourteen he has been running with since Cripple.  Latest data from IonEarth Tracking shows Lance moving at 9 MPH, eleven miles behind Jeff , whose speed is shown at 7 MPH.  Kjetil Backen is shown 37 miles behind Lance, moving at 6 MPH.

Leaving Kaltag behind Jeff King this morning were:
3.  Paul Gebhardt at 5:50 with 12 dogs
4.  Ramey Smyth at 9:20 with 12
5.  Zack Steer at 9:36 with 12
6.  Sebastian Schnuelle at 10:20 with 15
7.  Kjetil Backen at 10:21 with 13
8.  Hans Gatt at 10:22 with 12 dogs

Martin Buser, Jim Lanier, Mitch Seavey, Rick Swenson, Aaron Burmeister, Ed Iten, Jessie Royer, DeeDee Jonrowe and John Baker are all in Kaltag.

William Kleedehn, in 24th position in Nulato with 12 dogs, leads the rookies.  Rohn Buser, in 28th position, entered Nulato 33 minutes after Kleedehn, and is down to nine dogs.

Deborah Bicknell apparently got her move on.  She has passed three teams, and has been in Cripple since 1:30 AM today, with 11 dogs.   The current Red Lantern is rookie Rodney Whaley, out of Ophir with 13 dogs.

Al Grillo of the AP caught Lance Mackey multi-tasking, booting up Pimp while smooching with Rapper.

Jeff King and his team, photo by Al Grillo of Associated Press

Bob Hallinen of the Anchorage Daily News caught Jessie Royer's dog Montana mid-sneeze.

Photo by Bob Hallinen - the purple kuspuk and pink harness identify this as DeeDee Jonrowe and her team.

Who's your favorite musher?