Day Nine - The Iditerod
We started the day early with a 5am coffee in our room. Belinda is still on Toronto time and I was awake as well.
We have nice digs here, but one of us is messy and one of us is tidy. Guess which is my bed. Hint: it's the far one.
We all gathered downstairs in the lobby to have breakfast together at 7.30am, the first chance to meet the whole team that we'll be spending the next 10 days with.
We have Brett and Claire who are South Africans now living in Brisbane. Brett has run various airlines around the world, only every in tropical countries, and is currently CEO of Soloman Airlines Limited. Claire is a Doctor, doing lab/pathology work for the central lab for Queensland. So they are finding this weather ridiculously cold.
Meena is a lawyer and works for NZ Post, Alistair works in IT for a company in Wellington and they both were awarded/gifted the trip by HP, I believe in some sort of incentive/reward scheme.
Kevin is from Montgomery Alabama and Mark is from Washington state, and I haven't yet found out what they do for a living. They all seem like a very nice bunch of people so far.
After breakfast we hopped into two big SUV's and headed in to town to watch the ceremonial start of the Iditerod race.
This is known as "The Last Great Race" where dog mushers race long distance from Anchorage to Nome in north western Alaska, a distance of over a thousand miles. There are 57 teams competing, each with 14 dogs, so you can imagine the barking and howling as we approached the area where the starters were preparing.
The dogs are bred to race, and it was fascinating listening to our guide Jon and his wife Tania talking about their experiences.
Jon has run the Iditerod twice. Tania was telling us when they first started to get into it, they didn't know very much, and were looking for dogs to compliment their team. They found some dogs described as "good eaters" and they thought that the only good thing that could be said about the dog was that it was a good eater. However they came to realise that this is important, because when you are racing, you need the break to be as short as possible, so you need a dog that will eat whatever is put in front of it and then lay down and rest. Some dogs are picky eaters, and won't feed properly, and if they won't eat, they can't run. So a dog described as a "good eater" is a very good quality to have.
There has been controversy about the race, that it's cruel to the dogs, as some of them do not always survive the trip. There are accidents, incidents with wildlife, and stress sometimes takes it's toll. But it was pointed out that there are way more dogs euthanized in city pounds than die on the Iditerod trail. It seems to have similar parallels to farming, while there are the rare few that are cruel to their stock, for the most part they treat the animals very well, because they care for them, and they are their lifeblood. So too with Iditerod dogs. And Jon assured us, that you can't make a dog run if it doesn't ant to. They just will not. There are checkpoints along the way, and enforced breaks, including a 24 hour stop somewhere along the trail. Jon said typically if a dog runs for 6 hours, it needs to rest for 4-6 hours to recover and be ready to run again. So in a typical Iditerod race when a musher reaches a checkpoint, they cook for the dogs, feed them and get them resting as quickly as possible. Then they tend to any injuries, massage them if required, and then once that's done, the musher will try and nap until the dogs are ready to go again.
The dogs wear booties, this is protection from abrasions etc as the snow can be quite gritty, and there are also sharp rocks/stones on the trails. Their feet don't need protection from the cold, unlike humans their circulation does not shut down at their extremities.
The teams are started at 3 minute intervals, and do a 11km lap around Anchorage. This is only a ceremonial start, the real race starts tomorrow in Willow. It used to be in Anchorage but was moved as there hasn't been enough snow in recent years, however this year there is plenty.
So we jostled at the fence for a spot to watch the goings on and try and catch some of the action.
I can only upload really short videos, but this gives some sense of the chaos.
There were some colourful characters wandering around.
And to prove I am really here …..
Once all the starters had set off, we mooched around it bit, it was snowing but not too cold, only about minus 7. It's all relative.
We headed back to the hotel to recharge batteries and change lenses, grab a bite to eat, and then headed back into town for the Running of the Reindeer. Think running of the bulls but with reindeer. The idea is people dress up in whacky costumes, and run down the street amongst the reindeer. It's all quite harmless, the reindeer are very tame and trot through the crowd quite happily. There was one character wearing a mankini. Oh sorry, a mankini and boots. Because no boots would be crazy right ? These Alaskan's are crazy.
In a group of people, even a small group such as ours, there is always one. One who is late, one who is ditzy, one who is funny ….. always one. As she was the last one to breakfast this morning, I predicted to Belinda that Meena would be "the one". I was accurate. All day, Chris had been saying, if you want to buy toe warmers, now is the time to get them as it's our last chance etc etc. Meena had been to Big Rays to pick up various other items she could not source in NZ, but did not heed Chris's advice. As we were heading back to the Hotel at the conclusion of the reindeer running, she decided she needed toe warmers. So we had to loop our way through closed streets to get back to within a block of Big Rays so that Meena could go get toe warmers. While we were heading there, Claire asked Meena to pick her up a pack as well, just so they had some extras. They come as an individual pair, or in a large pack of 8 pairs. So if someone asks you to pick up a pack, they are gonna mean a pack of 8, right ? Seemed obvious to me. But Meena gets back, with a pack for herself, and offers Claire a pair, a single pair out of the pack. Too funny. Belinda and I couldn't look at each other. I would love to know what Claire was thinking at that moment.
We eventually got back to the hotel and had about an hour to chill before we all met in the bar/restaurant for dinner. Meena was last to arrive, of course. She's the one.
More friendly chit chat and introductions and getting to know each other over dinner.
Tomorrow we have a 9am breakfast and 11am departure for Willow to watch the actual start of the race. It's only an hours drive, so we have a cruisy start to the day. They are predicting heavy snow, 12-18 inches, so it sounds like there will be plenty of the white stuff for us to play with !
We have nice digs here, but one of us is messy and one of us is tidy. Guess which is my bed. Hint: it's the far one.
We all gathered downstairs in the lobby to have breakfast together at 7.30am, the first chance to meet the whole team that we'll be spending the next 10 days with.
We have Brett and Claire who are South Africans now living in Brisbane. Brett has run various airlines around the world, only every in tropical countries, and is currently CEO of Soloman Airlines Limited. Claire is a Doctor, doing lab/pathology work for the central lab for Queensland. So they are finding this weather ridiculously cold.
Meena is a lawyer and works for NZ Post, Alistair works in IT for a company in Wellington and they both were awarded/gifted the trip by HP, I believe in some sort of incentive/reward scheme.
Kevin is from Montgomery Alabama and Mark is from Washington state, and I haven't yet found out what they do for a living. They all seem like a very nice bunch of people so far.
After breakfast we hopped into two big SUV's and headed in to town to watch the ceremonial start of the Iditerod race.
This is known as "The Last Great Race" where dog mushers race long distance from Anchorage to Nome in north western Alaska, a distance of over a thousand miles. There are 57 teams competing, each with 14 dogs, so you can imagine the barking and howling as we approached the area where the starters were preparing.
The dogs are bred to race, and it was fascinating listening to our guide Jon and his wife Tania talking about their experiences.
Jon has run the Iditerod twice. Tania was telling us when they first started to get into it, they didn't know very much, and were looking for dogs to compliment their team. They found some dogs described as "good eaters" and they thought that the only good thing that could be said about the dog was that it was a good eater. However they came to realise that this is important, because when you are racing, you need the break to be as short as possible, so you need a dog that will eat whatever is put in front of it and then lay down and rest. Some dogs are picky eaters, and won't feed properly, and if they won't eat, they can't run. So a dog described as a "good eater" is a very good quality to have.
There has been controversy about the race, that it's cruel to the dogs, as some of them do not always survive the trip. There are accidents, incidents with wildlife, and stress sometimes takes it's toll. But it was pointed out that there are way more dogs euthanized in city pounds than die on the Iditerod trail. It seems to have similar parallels to farming, while there are the rare few that are cruel to their stock, for the most part they treat the animals very well, because they care for them, and they are their lifeblood. So too with Iditerod dogs. And Jon assured us, that you can't make a dog run if it doesn't ant to. They just will not. There are checkpoints along the way, and enforced breaks, including a 24 hour stop somewhere along the trail. Jon said typically if a dog runs for 6 hours, it needs to rest for 4-6 hours to recover and be ready to run again. So in a typical Iditerod race when a musher reaches a checkpoint, they cook for the dogs, feed them and get them resting as quickly as possible. Then they tend to any injuries, massage them if required, and then once that's done, the musher will try and nap until the dogs are ready to go again.
The dogs wear booties, this is protection from abrasions etc as the snow can be quite gritty, and there are also sharp rocks/stones on the trails. Their feet don't need protection from the cold, unlike humans their circulation does not shut down at their extremities.
The teams are started at 3 minute intervals, and do a 11km lap around Anchorage. This is only a ceremonial start, the real race starts tomorrow in Willow. It used to be in Anchorage but was moved as there hasn't been enough snow in recent years, however this year there is plenty.
So we jostled at the fence for a spot to watch the goings on and try and catch some of the action.
I can only upload really short videos, but this gives some sense of the chaos.
There were some colourful characters wandering around.
 |
| Is it a man? Is it a bear? |
Once all the starters had set off, we mooched around it bit, it was snowing but not too cold, only about minus 7. It's all relative.
We headed back to the hotel to recharge batteries and change lenses, grab a bite to eat, and then headed back into town for the Running of the Reindeer. Think running of the bulls but with reindeer. The idea is people dress up in whacky costumes, and run down the street amongst the reindeer. It's all quite harmless, the reindeer are very tame and trot through the crowd quite happily. There was one character wearing a mankini. Oh sorry, a mankini and boots. Because no boots would be crazy right ? These Alaskan's are crazy.
 |
| Running with the reindeer |
In a group of people, even a small group such as ours, there is always one. One who is late, one who is ditzy, one who is funny ….. always one. As she was the last one to breakfast this morning, I predicted to Belinda that Meena would be "the one". I was accurate. All day, Chris had been saying, if you want to buy toe warmers, now is the time to get them as it's our last chance etc etc. Meena had been to Big Rays to pick up various other items she could not source in NZ, but did not heed Chris's advice. As we were heading back to the Hotel at the conclusion of the reindeer running, she decided she needed toe warmers. So we had to loop our way through closed streets to get back to within a block of Big Rays so that Meena could go get toe warmers. While we were heading there, Claire asked Meena to pick her up a pack as well, just so they had some extras. They come as an individual pair, or in a large pack of 8 pairs. So if someone asks you to pick up a pack, they are gonna mean a pack of 8, right ? Seemed obvious to me. But Meena gets back, with a pack for herself, and offers Claire a pair, a single pair out of the pack. Too funny. Belinda and I couldn't look at each other. I would love to know what Claire was thinking at that moment.
We eventually got back to the hotel and had about an hour to chill before we all met in the bar/restaurant for dinner. Meena was last to arrive, of course. She's the one.
More friendly chit chat and introductions and getting to know each other over dinner.
Tomorrow we have a 9am breakfast and 11am departure for Willow to watch the actual start of the race. It's only an hours drive, so we have a cruisy start to the day. They are predicting heavy snow, 12-18 inches, so it sounds like there will be plenty of the white stuff for us to play with !
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