Idita-ready

0Josh • 4th Mar 2005 • blog entries, Iditarod, nome., travel

Well, the past few days down here in Anchorage have been great, nice and relaxed…while at the same time hectic. Thursday I rewarded myself a little bit by sleeping in until after 9:30, I went back to the Iditarod Headquarters and hung out for a while. I also made a major Costco run and did some other errands. I got back to the Bronczyks in time to get dressed for the Musher’s banquet. I wasn’t sure what to wear to a banquet where there was going to be over 150 tables….and this is Alaska, it takes a whole lot for people to get formal. I went with dark slacks and a dress shirt, I brought a tie along just incase. The dinner started at 6:00, and lasted until about 10:30. We had steak for dinner and watched the mushers pick their starting position. Each musher would then give a “thank you” speech like they just won an Oscar. With 80 mushers, things took a while to wrap up. I took pretty detailed notes all evening long to ensure that I could phone in a good report the next day to the radio station.

Friday morning I got up at 8 and called into KICY. I first left a message with my report so that someone could take it off the phone system and insert it into the news later that morning. I called back and got on the FM morning show, and then got on the AM morning show. I spent some time on the phone trying to connect with Iditarod contacts and make final preparations for Saturday morning. I left the house around 11 and ran errands at Iditarod Headquarters, the malls, and spent a while downtown anchorage. I had lunch at a brew house, and then went over to an Art Gallery that was hosting a send off party for Iditarod champion Jeff King. After that I headed back to HQ to see if there was anything going on. I picked up Hannah from the airport around 6:30 and showed her around Anchorage taking her to Iditarod Headquarters, and then to downtown. We went to a restaurant for dinner where they had this funky trivia game that you could play electronically at your table while competing with people all over the restaurant..pretty crazy. We headed back to the Bronczyk’s to plan out the attack for Saturday morning.

Its looking like a 6:45 wakeup so we can be down at the start by 8:00, two hours early. It should be a blast!