Lance Mackey might have set a record yesterday for the fastest time from the heavenly pies and cheeseburgers of Takotna to the old ghost town of Iditarod.  His 9 hours, 56 minutes, beats Jeff King's 2007 time on that run, 13 hours, 12 minutes, called "blazingly fast" until now.  Bruce Lee, in his Iditablog from the trail, said he didn't have facilities out there to do the fact checking, and I don't have the patience to go through half the race archives to dig out that little fact, so we will leave it at "might have set a record."  [Only half the archives would be relevant, since the trail takes the southern route through Iditarod only in odd-numbered years...  come to think of it, less than half the records would need to be checked, only those for more recent years, since the race became more than a "long camping trip with dogs."]

Being first to the halfway point in Iditarod won Lance $3000.00 in gold nuggets.  He was there almost four hours before the next following team, Aaron Burmeister's, arrived.  Lance rested in Iditarod for 6 hours and 23 minutes before checking out again.  This morning, he passed through Shageluk, in at 7:35, out at 7:43, and checked into Anvik at 12:12.  He still has all sixteen of the dogs he started with.

I caught a brief radio interview with Lance this morning.  He said that about a third of his team this year is made up of "rookie" dogs who have never before run an Iditarod.  Some of his well-known veteran dogs, such as Zorro, Hobo, Stitch, and Handsome, are retired.

A few things can be inferred from Lance's having his full team at this stage in the race.  One of them is that he apparently made wise last-minute choices there in Willow last Sunday when, half an hour before race time, he still had not decided the final makeup of his team.  Another:  they are all healthy, strong, fast, and willing to run.

A team is only as fast as its slowest dog.  Mushers drop slower dogs early in the race for strategic purposes, and have to drop any others who slow down or become ill or injured along the way.  As the race progresses and fatigue becomes a problem, the number of dogs in a team becomes more important, at the same time that the numbers begin to dwindle by attrition.

Lance Mackey made a leisurely run from Shageluk to Anvik, averaging about five and a half MPH.  His fastest speed, checkpoint-to-checkpoint was Willow to Yentna, at 16.85 MPH, and his team's overall average speed between checkpoints is about 9 MPH.  Something else can be inferred from his being in Anvik with 16 dogs when his closest competitors are still in Shageluk:  he will be hard to catch.

In Shageluk as of 13:06 AKDT:

2. Sebastian Schnuelle, into Shageluk at 11:04 with 15 dogs
3. Aaron Burmeister 11:15 with 12
4. Mitch Seavey 11:45 with 14
5. Jeff King 12:45 with 15

Out of Iditarod on the trail to Shageluk:
6. Cim Smyth-12 dogs
7. Hugh Neff (AKA "Huge Mess")-13
8. Paul Gebhardt-12
9. John Baker-14
10. HansGatt-14
11. Aliy Zirkle-14  (Her husband, Allen Moore, is out of Ophir in 38th position with 14 dogs.)
12. Dallas Seavey-15  (His new wife, rookie Jen Seavey, in 57th position, is running at the head of the pack of rookies in the rear, training a puppy team as she learns the Iditarod ropes.  Since it is a training run, her goal is to get them all to Nome -- she still has all sixteen of her pups.)
13. Ken Anderson-11
14. Gerry Willomitzer-13
15. Jessie Royer-15
16. Warren Palfrey-14
17. Rick Swenson-14
18. Sonny Lindner-14
19. Dee Dee Jonrowe-14

Martin Buser is still in Iditarod in 20th position with 14 dogs.

Everyone back through Trent Herbst, out of Takotna in 56th position with 15 dogs, has completed the mandatory 24 hour layover.  This leaves only the 8 rookies in their little pack at the back, still to do theirs.  Three of them, Jen Seavey, Timothy Hunt, DVM, and Kurt Reich are now in Takotna taking their 24s.  The back 5 are in McGrath, and have been there for between 8 and 19 hours, suggesting that they have decided to take their 24s there instead of mushing on to Jan Newton's pies in Takotna, as most of the experienced mushers did.  Last into McGrath, at 6:12 this morning, was Rob Loveman with fourteen of his Siberian huskies.

A cute story from this morning's Iditarod report on public radio:  Rookie Lou Packer, MD (61st position, in McGrath now with 16 dogs) said he was cruising along when one of his dogs (I think he called him, "Tempeh.") reached over and gave the dog beside him "a peck on the cheek."  The other dog then returned, "a big kiss on the cheek," of the first dog.  Love on the trail... it's in the air this year.

Or is it just that editors and reporters don't care all that much about the accuracy of their reporting?

Yesterday, just before I relinquished this computer and quit scanning the news for Iditarod updates, I commented on the floater that went out from Associated Press, reporting that Martin Buser was leading in the Iditarod -- when in fact he had lost his short-lived lead about five hours before that report went out, and had already been passed by seven teams by that time.

Perhaps the nineteenth century pace of the newspaper business allows and accounts for such delays in reporting, or maybe Mary Pemberton, whose byline appeared on that report, mistakenly thought that the first team into a checkpoint held the lead even if it was still there in the checkpoint after seven other teams had been there and gone again.  I'd ask her, if I had access, but I'd probably just get a defensive response.  Professionals seldom appreciate embarrassing questions about their work, from amateurs like me.

I have been reading and hearing professional journalists bemoaning the sloppy reporting and lax ethics of bloggers.  (Bigger bloggers than me, of course... the most attention from beyond Xanga that my site ever got was during last fall's presidential campaign, when somebody put a link to my "felony flats" photo shoot in a comment on a Wonkette post about Sarah Palin's hometown, which just happens to be where my Old Fart lives and has his little arms business.)  Journalistic integrity is not, however, the exclusive domain of those with degrees in journalism and regular paychecks from newspapers, and bloggers aren't the only people doing sloppy or unethical reporting.

I would like, even for just one year, to get through a Yukon Quest and an Iditarod, without addressing the "animal cruelty" issue in connection with these races.  However, it keeps coming up and I don't want to let the distortions and lies go unanswered.  This morning, my Google News search for "Iditarod" brought me a Star-Tribune article from the Twin Cities (where they're close enough to the North Woods that somebody ought to know better) that said the dogs are "forced" to race in the Iditarod.

Another article, in the Los Angeles Times, says that the dogs, "aren't given a choice to compete or not."  This statement is so ludicrous it would be laughable if it were not so despicably false, and possibly libelous.  On any given day of training, if a dog doesn't want to run, it stays in the dog yard.  Generally, when they realize that the musher is getting ready to harness a team for a run, the dogs yap and jump around, competing for attention.  A reluctant runner would, at best, slow down the whole team, and could cause tangled lines and injuries.  A team runs together or it doesn't run at all.  Dogs that show reluctance to run don't usually stay in the kennels of competitive mushers.  If a pup's personality captures the heart of a musher or someone in the musher's family, and it lacks the spirit or stamina to race, it simply doesn't race, and doesn't become breeding stock. 

The teams that consistently win the mid- and long-distance races are generally made up of "Alaskan huskies."  Most years, a team or several teams of pretty purebred dogs:  Siberian huskies, malamutes, and once, for a while, a team of standard poodles, run in the Iditarod.  I say, "run," not, "compete".  They are just no competition for the dogs we call "Alaskan huskies," and the AKC calls mixed-breed.  Generations of those AKC breeds have been selected for traits that win dog shows.  Dog mushers select for traits that win races.

Beauty doesn't figure into the criteria for a husky (not talking about Siberians, here).  If you look at the leading teams going through any checkpoint beyond, say, Skwentna, on the Iditarod Trail, you'll see a motley collection of often funny-looking dogs.  If you watch and listen as a musher hitches up a team fresh out of the box on the back of the truck or after a rest on the trail, you'll see the dogs trying to drag the sled before the musher is ready:  lunging against the snow hook (or the chain fastened to the truck's bumper), jumping, yapping, begging to RUN.  On numerous occasions I have seen mushers and handlers untangling lines after a team had been all hooked up, because in their eagerness to go they had been jumping up and over each other, braiding their lines.

Any individual dog that decides, at any point in a race, that it doesn't want to run, will be respectfully and even affectionately carried in the sled bag to the next checkpoint and given a thorough examination by a veterinarian before being flown back to race headquarters to be picked up and returned to its kennel.  A team that decides, during a race, to quit, just quits.  It has happened to many of the top mushers.  They camp until the dogs are ready to move, then they go to the nearest checkpoint and scratch from the race.

Mushers have been known to lose their tempers when a team has quit on them.  They yell, scream, kick and strike out in rage.  It can happen when a man has gone without sleep for days and his judgment is impaired.  I've never heard of this happening to a female musher -- someone correct me if I'm wrong.  I do know that both Susan Butcher and Dee Dee Jonrowe have admitted sitting down by the trail and crying when a team quit on them.

A man who has devoted years to training and feeding a team, and has given his all to strategizing and guiding his team through days and nights of rough trail, sees his hopes of winning, of prizes and glory, dashed by a pack of balky dogs.  Most guys chalk it up to experience, take a break, give the dogs a snack, and get back on the trail as soon as the dogs are ready, going on to finish as best they can.  All the most successful mushers understand that dogs won't do their best under compulsion.

Once in a great while, a frustrated and fatigued man might snap and hurt his dogs.  The men are not simply disgraced by such behavior.  They are ostracized by their peers, and either suspended or banned from racing, depending on the severity of their temper tantrum and its effects.  It happens only rarely, and when it does happen there is always a brief flurry of scandal, followed by silence and shunning.  Coming back from such disgrace is so hard that they usually don't even try.

When a dog dies, as Jeff Holt's dog, Victor, did a few days ago, people grieve.  Mushers bond with their dogs.  If there were no bond, there could be no race, none of the coordination and cooperation that gets a team down the trail in winning time.  I found these two unattributed photos on the web.  I think the upper one illustrates a musher's feeling for his dog.  This is 2-time defending Iditarod Champion Lance Mackey, and the dog sorta looks like Larry to me, but I could be wrong about that.

This dog is Nigel, the member of Nancy Yoshida's team that got loose after she crashed her sled on the Happy River Steps.  Nancy is out of the race now.  Nigel has been seen along the Happy River by somebody flying over in a fixed-wing aircraft, but at last report had not been captured.

When an Iditarod dog gets loose and runs away, trailbreakers on snowmachines go searching for it, Iditarod Air Force pilots are alerted to keep a lookout for the missing dog, and word is passed to the mushers as they pass through checkpoints.  Mushers have stopped their own teams and lost time in the race to chase down a loose dog.  Such a dog, if captured, gets a free ride to the next checkpoint, in the sled of the musher who caught it.

Hang in there, folks.  This rant is almost over.  I just can't keep silence when media people in influential positions spread misinformation or disinformation.  I realize that newspapers are struggling to survive and publishers are wary of offending PETA and the Humane Society, who routinely tell their members to boycott publications or TV outlets that report favorably, or even just neutrally and factually, on the Iditarod.  I can understand why they slant their stories to keep from losing subscribers, I simply cannot approve, cannot fail to comment, to try and insert a little bit of honesty and journalistic integrity.

Okay, end of rant.  I'll be back later with an Iditarod update.

If you keep an eye on Iditarod news this afternoon, you are going to know a lot more than I do about what's going on.  I must leave the computer to Doug at noon.  Meanwhile, I'm looking at standings that give me dozens of more-or-less meaningless numbers along with several unsolved mysteries.  One of few certainties was stated fairly well this morning by warweasel:  "Personally, I think they're all nuts.  Interesting characters for sure, but... all this running about in the snow and crashing.  Yikes.  Not for me!"

That competitive dog mushers at this level are crazy is a well-known, widely acknowledged fact.  For starters, they have to be crazy about dogs.  Then, to train those dogs and finish enough mid-distance races to qualify for the Yukon Quest or Iditarod, they have to be demonstrably driven to the point of obsession.  Right now, out on that trail... well, nobody with a normal love of comfort, safety, and ease, would be there.  Even the dogs are nuts.  Seeing them jumping and lunging against the harness, hearing them yipping and pleading with their musher to let them run -- anyone would call it pure canine madness.

When it comes to competitive strategizing, some of them are crazy like foxes.  Everyone, except possibly Martin Buser himself, is wondering why he cruised through Takotna yesterday, then stopped in Ophir.  At 8:28 this morning, he was still in Ophir, with only another eight and a half hours remaining in his mandatory 24 hour layover.  He was joined there by Jim Lanier just after midnight.  This morning, between 6:09 and 9:12 AM, Aaron Burmeister, Hugh Neff, Lance Mackey, Sebastian Schnuelle, Ken Anderson, Jeff King and Mitch Seavey passed through Ophir, leaving Buser and Lanier waiting out their 24s there.

Reports say that the trail out beyond Ophir consists of a thin layer of set-up snow over a couple of feet of soft stuff.  All seven of the teams now past Ophir have completed their 24.  Buser's will be done this evening and Lanier's around midnight.  Aaron Peck, Paul Gebhardt, Hans Gatt, John Baker, Dallas Seavey and Aliy Zirkle have completed their 24s and are on the trail between Takotna and Ophir.

Farther back, out of McGrath on the way to Takotna, is another pack of teams who did their 24s in McGrath:  Ed Iten, Bill Cotter, David Sawatzky, Gerry Willomitzer, Rick Swenson, Sonny Lindner and Gerald Sousa.  Reason suggests and experience tends to confirm that the 2009 champion is one of these teams that have already put that mandatory rest behind them.

With snowfall and blowing snow, and a soft trail sometimes hidden under more snow than usual, many people are saying it's a wonder there haven't been more mishaps than there have been.  Currently, one little mystery of the trail is that Bjornar Andersen of Team Norway scratched at Takotna.  In sixteenth position when he checked in there at 5:21 AM yesterday, his scratch was highlighted as a recent update when I logged in around 8:28 today.

*Oh-KAY!  That one isn't a mystery any more.  The Fort Mill Times comes through again.  Ever since I got on here I have been refreshing my Google News search on Bjornar Andersen's scratch.  The first story on it to pop up is from Fort Mill, South Carolina, as usual.

Race officials say the musher from Elverum, Norway, scratched Thursday after being injured in a sled crash between the Rohn and Nikolai checkpoints.

He traveled nearly 70 miles to the Takotna checkpoint after the crash, and that's where he decided to scratch.

Race officials say he will be taken to Anchorage for medical assessment.

The nature of his injuries weren't immediately known.

I'm out of here for now.  If something intensely interesting happens in the next two hours, while I still have access to the computer, I'll let you know.  Otherwise, mañana, everyone.

UPDATE, an hour later:
Greyfox alerted me to some photos in today's Anchorage Daily News.

Love. . . (Schnuelle with Gas and Diesel)

Al Grillo, AP

More love. . . (Aliy Zirkle and husband, Allen Moore)

Marc Lester, ADN

...and pain. (Cindy Gallea, after colliding with a branch in Dalzell Gorge)

Marc Lester, ADN
 
I found these, and MORE, at adn.com.

Filed under, "see how wrong they can be," as of about 10:30 this morning, Mary Pemberton of the Associated Press was saying that Martin Buser was leading, because he had been first into Ophir.  Never mind that he is still in Ophir, has not yet completed his 24 hour layover, and seven teams who have completed theirs have passed him while he rests in Ophir.  Aaron Burmeister took the lead at 6:17 this morning.  I would think AP would have someone reporting on the race who knows where to find the current standings and how to read them.

Final update, 11:34 AM:  Paul Gebhardt, John Baker, Cim Smyth, Hans Gatt and Aliy Zirkle are through Ophir.  Martin Buser, Jim Lanier, Aaron Peck, Ed Iten and Dallas Seavey are in Ophir.  Of that group, only Buser and Lanier have not yet completed their 24 hour mandatory layovers.

I'm out of Xanga.  Seeya later.

This is not very new news, but today was the first time I encountered any mention that Sebastian Schnuelle and Libby Riddles are an item.  They have a long-distance relationship like mine and the Old Fart's, another reason (besides my feelings for both Libby and "Sab") that this pair is making me smile a lot today. (photo from AP)

I'm not sure I have ever met him, though he looks a lot like a young man from Germany, called "Sepp", whom I knew briefly back in the 1980s.  That smile and the wild head of hair arouse all my maternal instincts.  I only met Libby once, years ago, soon after she won the Iditarod and became a major hero to women everywhere.

In case you've forgotten or were not paying attention, Sebastian Schnuelle won the Yukon Quest last month.  Libby won the Iditarod in 1985, and in the past has answered interviewers' questions about her romantic life by saying she had no time for romance.  Info below is from Iditarod Hall of Fame:

About Schnuelle, Gerry Willomitzer says

*sigh*
**smile**

Not all the trail news is so sweet.  I mentioned yesterday that rookie Nancy Yoshida had crashed and broken her sled on the Happy River Steps.  The first word of her troubles reached officials at a checkpoint before 4 AM on Tuesday.

Victor, a six year old in Jeff Holt's team died between Rainy Pass and Rohn Roadhouse.  Cause of death is unknown.  A necropsy will be done to determine why Victor died.  More at adn.com.

In an unrelated incident, a rookie musher crashed her sled on the Happy River Steps.  She had been in 57th position leaving Finger Lake.

Other problems have been relatively minor.  At Rainy Pass Lodge on Puntilla Lake, Jeff King had a bloody scrape on his cheek and didn't know how or where it happened.   Dee Dee Jonrowe had to repair a broken sled there.

Ravens and foxes had torn into food bags dropped at Puntilla by the Iditarod Air Force for Hans Gatt and Martin Buser.  More on Buser, King, Jonrowe and others at adn.com.

Leading the pack out of Nikolai checkpoint are Hugh Neff with 14 dogs, Aaron Burmeister and 14,  Sebastian Schnuelle with 15 and Paul Gebhardt with 14.

Except for Nancy Yoshida, presumably either still waiting for rescue, being rescued, or already safe at a checkpoint, Rob Loveman and his Siberian huskies are still bringing up the rear.

Nine leading teams passed through the Rohn Roadhouse Checkpoint between ten last night and midnight:

1. Paul Gebhardt and 16 dogs
2. Sebastian Schnuelle (16)
3. Lance Mackey (16)
4. Cim Smyth came in with fifteen dogs, and dropped two more at Rohn
5. Hans Gatt (16)
6. Aliy Zirkle, leader among the women so far, dropped one dog at Rohn, now down to 15
7. Aaron Peck dropped one dog at Rohn, now down to 15
8. Ramey Smyth dropped one dog at Rohn, now down to 15
9. Gerry Willomitzer dropped one dog at Rohn, now down to 15

On their run to Rohn from Rainy Pass yesterday, the leaders went through Dalzell Gorge, one of the toughest parts of the race.  Coming up next between Rohn and Nikolai is the Farewell Burn, the other part of the hardest part of the trail.

Don Bowers's trail notes go on in that vein, and on, and on -- it's a long stretch of trail.  You can read more of it, HERE.

Six of this year's rookies are running near or behind the middle of the pack:
Karin Hendrickson in 35th position, out of Rohn with 15 dogs at 9:31.
Chad Lindner in 44th, Wade Marrs 45th, and Michael Suprenant 48th, in Rohn now with 16, 14, and 15 dogs, respectively.
Harry Alexie in 50th with sixteen, and Tom Thurston in 53rd with 15, out of Rainy Pass on the trail to Rohn.

Iditarod "veteran" Rachael Scdoris and her seeing-eye musher Tim Osmar are cruising along behind them in 55th and 56th.  The little blind girl still has all her dogs; Tim dropped one of his at Rainy, down to 15.

The other nine rookies have been bringing up the rear throughout the race so far.  For a while, a "veteran," Bob Hickel, had been keeping them company back there, but he scratched at Finger Lake after an 8-hour run from Skwentna, 2009's first scratch.

In the dream it was summer and I was in some kind of community hall, or maybe a roadhouse, out on the old Iditarod Trail.  People came and went, most of them men.  There was a game of dominoes going on at a table on the ground floor.  There was a second story, with a stairway along one wall of the big open space of the first floor.  I don't know what was upstairs because I stayed downstairs.  A woman came in once carrying food -- sort of a typical Alaskan social scene, except for the animals.

Most were bears, big healthy brown bears.  Not all of them were brown; one of these brown bears was white.  It wasn't a polar bear (wrong shape), but just looked like an albino grizzly or "brown" bear.  They shuffled around, looking over the shoulders of domino players, or they sat out of the way along the walls or lounged in the way on the stairs.  They were just there, part of the crowd.  After my initial alarm wore off, I recall wondering why I'd ever been afraid of bears.

The only other animal there was a tiger -- a big tiger, bigger than any of the big adult grizzlies, which would be a dead giveaway that this was a dream if I'd been thinking about it.  Its attitude was mellow and its behavior was as civilized as that of the bears.  I gathered from talk I heard that the tiger was the companion of one of the men.  I approached him and asked him if that was his tiger.

He said, "You don't own a tiger."  His story was that he had found the tiger -- or really, the tiger had found him, out on the trail someplace.

And then I woke up.

Race report later.

Lance had passed 13 teams and was 33rd into Yentna at 19:25, out at 19:29.  At the next checkpoint, Skwentna, he was in 14th position, in at 22:27, out at 2:53 this morning.  In fourth position at Finger Lake, he was in at 7:56, out at 7:58.  First into Rainy Pass at 11:34 this morning, Lance still had all 16 of his dogs.  Thirty minutes before the start yesterday he hadn't yet decided which sixteen of his dogs would go to Nome, except for Larry.  Larry's position in lead was assured.  Lance and his team rested at Rainy Pass, leaving at 17:34 in tenth position.

Passing through Rainy and out while Lance Mackey and his team were resting:
1. Sebastian Schnuelle (this year's Yukon Quest Champion), out at 15:35 with all 16 dogs;
2. Paul Gebhardt out at 15:43 with 16;
3. Rick Swenson (the only five-time Iditarod Champion) out at 15:46 with 16;
4. Aaron Burmeister out at 15:55 with 16;
5. Hugh Neff out at 16:18 with 14 dogs;
6. Melissa Owens (2005 Jr. Iditarod Champion) out at 16:20 with 15;
7. Ed Iten out at 16:46 with 16;
8. Bjornar Andersen out at 17:28 with 15;
9. Jeff King at 17:32 with 16.

I suppose I was dreaming when I expressed my hope that Rob Loveman would be Rookie of the Year.  A bunch of other rookies would have to either have tons of trouble on the trail or simply scratch, for that to happen.  I overlooked one essential fact about Loveman's team:  they are all Siberian Huskies.  That means they are prettier than just about any of the mongrels we call Alaskan Huskies, but without nearly as much speed, stamina and hybrid vigor.  Loveman's team started in 49th position.  He has dropped back to 66th now, out of Skwentna at 12:30 today with all 16 Siberians, trailed only by Eric Rogers, who was still in Skwentna at last report, with 15 dogs.

If it is snowing  in Rainy Pass or north of the Alaska Range, Lance Mackey's decision to rest at Rainy might have been a strategic choice, to let a few others get out ahead and break trail for his team.  In deep snow, the main drawback to such a strategy is that the trail is only one sled wide and somebody has to leave the trail to pass, or to let another team pass.

Beyond the Rainy Pass checkpoint, the trail climbs the south side of the Alaska Range to the mountain pass known as "Rainy," highest point on the trail.  The next checkpoint, on the north side of the Alaska Range, is Rohn Roadhouse.  Before they get there, they go through Dalzell Gorge:

Five miles after the summit you’ll come into the wooded valley of Dalzell Creek for a couple of miles of fairly easy running. Then you’ll swing across to the south side of the valley and make a sharp climb up to a forested shelf that runs along the valley side. The trail gets very narrow and winding with big trees on either side. You can easily see that the terrain is beginning to drop off sharply on your right.

After half a mile you’ll see a “Watch Your Ass” sign; immediately beyond is a steep 200-foot hill down into Dalzell Gorge. Depending on conditions, the Gorge can be nothing more than a very scenic exercise in sled driving, or it can be your worst nightmare come true. The worst-case scenario is minimal snow and lots of glare ice and open water. Hopefully you’ll have some warning if it’s really bad.

Once you’re down into the canyon, the trail will start jumping from side to side, crossing the creek (which always has open, running water) on sometimes-narrow ice and snow bridges, some of which may be collapsed. Even under good conditions, keep up enough speed to cross these bridges cleanly—if your dogs cut you across them or slow down at the wrong time you can find yourself in big trouble quickly, sliding down ice ledges into the water. (The water isn’t much more than a foot or two deep in most places, but it’s usually at the bottom of a nightmare of sloping ice.) At some points the canyon is barely wide enough for the trail and the creek. There are also lots of very big trees down in the gorge; the trail wraps tightly around a few of them.

UPDATE:  Rick Swenson, and then Paul Gebhardt, checked into Rohn at 20:01 tonight, in first and second positions, with sixteen dogs each. 

At the same time Andersen was checking into Rohn, Rob Loveman, in last place, was checking into Finger Lake, with all 16 of his pretty purebred dogs.

This day's Checkpoint News is HERE.

It is that awkward time around here:  my sleep cycle, which is usually more-or-less attuned to a natural one (up in daylight, sleeping at night) is coinciding with my son's.  He apparently evolved on a planet with longer days than ours, so unless something intervenes (such as an appointment or emergency) he usually goes to sleep and gets up a few hours later every day than he did the day before.  When we are out of phase with each other, that makes it convenient for sharing the computer and game consoles, and for keeping the wood stove going.

Last night, I was in bed reading when he loaded the stove for the night and went to sleep.  Soon after, I turned out my light and fell asleep.  Three hours and some minutes (more on that in a moment) later, I was enmeshed in a horrible nightmare.  I was in a gamelike scenario where each time I entered a room I could either go back the way I came or leave the room to the right or left.  At first, my options appeared to be clear-cut, a light/dark or right/wrong choice, and I went whichever way seemed appropriate.

Soon, however, I was flustered, confused, frustrated and terrified.  No matter which way I went:  left, right, or back, I encountered George W. Bush, his clones, or buck-toothed drooling inbred dubya descendants.  It was horrible, and it was with a sense of relief that I woke up, put on my glasses and looked at the clock.  It said 3:46.  I would swear to that, truly.

Noticing that the glass door on the woodstove was dark, I got up and touched the stove.  That cast iron monster was the coldest object in the room.  The wood that Doug put in there when he went to bed was unburned and barely warm.  Once again, my beamish boy had put the fire out with fuel.  Under it were only a few glowing coals, not nearly enough to restart the fire.

I pulled the wood out, crumpled a lot of paper (Greyfox saves the packing material for us from his knife shipments, makes good fire starters.), placed a layer of thin wood chips I'd gleaned from Doug's chopping block area (Byproducts of his wood splitting make good kindling.), and laid some of the warm wood on top of that.  After igniting the paper, I disconnected my nebulizer from its air compressor, uncoiled the long tubing, stuck a soda straw into the end of it, and blew on the fire to get it going.  Gone are the days when I have enough wind to blow on a fire myself, and I have never owned an old-style bellows.  The nebulizer compressor does just fine, and the soda straw attachment keeps me from melting the end of the tubing.  I do melt a few straws that way, however.

When the fire looked as if it would persist on its own, I straightened up, coiled the tubing, reconnected it to my nebulizer, and looked at the clock again:  3:46 again.  I looked around, patted the furniture, slapped myself, and said aloud, "Am I dreaming?"  Doug stirred and grunted, "Huh?"  I don't know if he was awake or not, but I explained about the time warp anyway.  I checked the thermometer:  20 outside, 50 inside, not too bad, no threat to the tropical houseplants or little kittens in their boxes (Two of P.K.'s died, leaving four, and there are three survivors out of the six that Bagel birthed over the weekend.), but I was glad that the nightmare woke me before it got much colder in here.

Then, for the next three hours I kept babying that fire back to life, uncoiling the compressor tubing, inserting the straw, etc., etc., ad nauseam.  By the time it was burning well and I was free to crawl back under the covers, it was almost time for the 7:33 Iditarod report on KSKA.  It wasn't even remotely close to "latest standings," had a sound bite from Lance Mackey (misidentified by the reporter as "Rick Mackey," his older brother) in Willow on Sunday, and reported the first few mushers into Yentna Checkpoint yesterday evening.  I'll search out and compile the latest and blog it in a while.

This is a day of physical chaos for me -- spilled water while preparing to make coffee, and coffee afterward, for starters.  I'm stumbling and fumbling (sensorimotor deficits) a lot more than usual, which I suppose is to be expected after two near-sleepless nights in the wake of a trip to town.  While I was still trying to get the fire going, I fell onto the stove.  My exclamation roused Doug enough for another of those, "Huh?" grunts, and after saying I fell, I said I was glad the stove was cold.  Those welder's gloves with the Kevlar® stitching have done a great job this winter of preventing the usual crop of burns on my hands and arms.  One burn on a wrist, I got when I forgot to put on the gloves before opening the stove.  Last week, I stumbled and caught myself with a hand on the hot stove.  I was glad for the pan of ice cold water on the floor under the roof leak... plunged my hand in immediately and the burn went away.

One of the goodies that Greyfox acquired for us before this latest trip to town was a half gallon of heavy whipping cream -- got one for us and one for himself, marked down to 99 cents each.  Doled out in small doses, whipped up with Splenda®, it's one of the greatest ways to cheat on my diet that I have had in a long while.  I piled it on the sugarless gluten-free beans, corn and squash pie until that was all gone.  Now I am casting about for other less-than-lethal treats that can be improved by a dollop of less-than-harmless moo juice.  Among those avaliable foods already considered and rejected:  grapefruit and chicken salad.

Okay, enough of such silliness.  Later, with an Iditarod update.
  

Wasilla was warm and sunny yesterday.  Driving down the Valley, all my side windows and the window in the hatch were frosty, as they have been since the weather turned cold last fall.  The heater in Blur is anemic.  It will keep the windshield defrosted, but I dress as warmly to drive as I would to walk, and I keep a lap robe in the car so my legs won't freeze.  Actually my lap robe is an afghan knitted by Greyfox's grandmother, very classy black and white zig-zaggy stripes, but I digress.

I was parked in front of Greyfox's cabin long enough for the rear window and those on the right side to melt clear of frost.  Next time I parked, I put the car with the other side in the sun, and for the rest of the day, for the first time in months, I had clear visibility in all directions.  That was the first sign of changing seasons.  The next one came when I got all my shopping done, loaded up the stuff that Greyfox had at his place for me, and got home before dark.  Longer days mean a lot to me.

The drive home was not entirely uneventful.  Approaching Houston, a riderless horse ran by in the ditch, saddled, bridled, with stirrups flapping as it went.  A mile or so farther on, a young woman on another horse was headed in the same direction, not going quite as fast as the first one, but crossing through traffic in a way that made her horse shy and rear up briefly before she got it under control and, once on the same side with the runaway, sped after it.

Willow was showing some of the preparations for today's Idiatrod Re-Start.  Mostly, it was traffic-related -- barricades in places, orange cones, snow berms removed to provide parking and shuttle bus turnarounds.  On the highway, a big flashing sign directed mushers toward their overnight parking area.  At the elementary school, a sandwich board advertised this morning's PTA breakfast buffet.

As Doug unloaded the car and I put away groceries, he buried my bed under all the bags of clothing from the dumpsters and books and videos from the library's bag sale.  Sorting and stowing that stuff kept me busy into the night, and as usual my fatigue from the day had me sleeping in one- or two-hour increments.  After five or six hours of that, I gave up and got up.  I'll be able to sleep better tonight. 

I certainly have plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and plenty to read now.  Since Doug and I did a water run a few days ago, there's plenty to drink, too.  I probably won't need to go anywhere for weeks.  Yay!