January 11, 2009

• Tears of Joy and Awe

  I suspect that I didn’t make myself entirely clear in my earlier entry today.  I had been depressed very briefly when I woke today.  It took little more than some moving around and eating something to get my blood sugar up and my mood lighter.  I’m restless and need to get out of this place, but I’m happy nonetheless.

  I called my neighbor Lori to ask if Doug could bring over a couple of buckets to fill, and she told me their water system has been frozen for a week.  When it thaws, they will probably have to deal with burst pipes.  I commiserated with her for a while, hung up, and congratulated myself again for making the choice not to go deeper into debt to get water piped in here.  The spring water is better quality, too.

  Since the temp was up around -20°F, I suited up, grabbed the car key, and went out to evaluate our mobility.  I had to brush four inches or so of snow off the top of the car over the door so it wouldn’t cascade into my seat when I opened it.  Then I remembered that it had been snowing when I parked the car a couple of days before Christmas.  Doug had shoveled the roof of the trailer, but after the temperature plummeted to thirty below zero, he left the car buried and the driveway unshoveled.  The plow added a berm behind the car, and I knew as I stood there looking at the driveway and the berm that even if the car would start, we were not going anywhere in it today.

  I tried it anyway.  I depressed the clutch and wiggled the shifter as I routinely do, to make sure it’s in neutral.  I should say, I tried to wiggle the shifter.  It’s so cold and stiff it’s not wiggling.  I managed to push it enough from side to side to ascertain that it wasn’t in gear.  Then I pulled on the choke and turned the key.  The car went, “uh.”  I went, “oh,” and went back in the house.

  Doug and I had a little fuss at each other because he used up the last of his energy before retiring for the day on a trip to the mailbox.  He left while I was on the phone, without saying where he was going, and had forgotten that I wanted him to drag along a sled and some buckets to see if he could get water at the motel, and to stop at the RV park and see if they had any dog food and/or kitty litter in their little store.

  Doug brought in firewood for the night, and I decided to suit back up and shovel a little of the snow from around the car since I was feeling restless and twenty below wasn’t feeling too cold.  As I went out the door, he said he was going to put a CD on if he could find Hobo Jim.  He said he’d had a couple of Hobo’s songs running in his head for a while.

  I shoveled out in front of the car, scraped the snow from the hood, and worked my way along the passenger side before running out of steam.  As I walked in the house, I heard the final verse of The Iditarod Trail Song:

  Well, I just pulled out of Safety,
  on the trail and all alone,
  I’m doing fine and picking up time,
  and a-runnin’ on into Nome.
  There’s no sled tracks in front of me
  and no one on my tail,
  I did, I did, I did the Iditarod Trail.

  I got all teary, as I have every time I’ve heard it since I heard Libby Riddles tell about the last leg of the 1985 Iditarod, when she was between Safety and Nome, about to become the first woman to win the Last Great Race.  It was stormy, windy, and she could barely see her team ahead of her.  She said the only thing that kept them going was that her dogs knew the way home and wanted to get there as fast as they could. 

  She had her radio on, listening to KNOM in her earbuds.  Having gotten the word from Safety that she was on her way, the DJ played the song and dedicated it to her.  She said when she heard that last verse, her tears blinded her.

  *sigh*  It’s time for a woman to win the Iditarod again.

  

  Jessica Hendricks won the Sheep Mountain 150 last month.

  Lance Mackey, who has been winning Iditarods, Yukon Quests and lesser races a lot in recent years, is leading in the Copper Basin 300 today.  He has announced that he won’t be running the Quest this year.  Instead, he is leasing some of his dogs to Kwethluk musher Harry Alexie and earning $50,000 to train Alexie.  That leaves Lance with no spares, and too little time between Quest in February and Iditarod in March for the team to recuperate.  He had to choose between the two big races, and decided to run the Iditarod.

  The 26 teams in the CB300 are running in 50 below zero temperatures this weekend.  The photo here of an undentified frosty musher, from the CB300 website, is by race spectator Brad Henspeter.

  • 7:25 pm
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