Iditarod 2005: The Ceremonial Start

0Josh • 5th Mar 2005 • blog entries, Iditarod, nome., travel

This morning started early. My alarm went off at 6:30, and somehow I fooled myself into thinking that was when I needed to get up. I slept in….for 15 more minutes until my second 6:45 alarm went off. I got out of bed and slowing went through my normal morning routine which I’ve found is easily adjustable from temporary home to temporary home. It sounded like Hannah had gotten up as well, and we were on the way to a good on time morning. We left the Bronczyk’s house around 7:30 and were aiming to be downtown anchorage by 8. The race didn’t start until 10, but we knew the pre-race time would be valuable for getting good interviews. I started off with an interview with Ed Iten, a man who people are speculating can place in the top ten. It was pretty shaky, but we had to keep moving, and keep talking. Now, the hard part was the moving. Our press passes could get us pretty much anywhere we wanted to go, however moving around in the fenced off areas where the mushers were proved to be harder than we thought. See, the problem was the trucked in snow…. it was so loose on the street that you feet sank to the bottom when you walked, and it took a lot more effort. We got some pretty good interviews, then a 9:00 I called in a report to the station.

We got some more interviews and then I called in live from under the starting banner at 10:00 when everything started. I gave a live 10 minute report and it went really well. Hannah and I continued to scrounge through our list to find mushers that I wanted to get interviews from. At about 11 we decided to go inside and take a break. After lunch we hung out some more down at the start getting some really good pictures from our privileged area (you’ll see them online soon!). We then got in the car (after being let out of the parking garage even though we were 75 cents short) and drove to one of the spots on the trail that basically went through a neighborhood. After some good pictures we packed up and headed further down the trail to near the end. When we got there we had just enough time to see the last musher run by. All in all it was a pretty successful day.

I was able to talk to (from memory) Current (2004) Winner, Mitch Seavey, Dallas Seavey, 2003 winner Robert Sorlie, first musher Jessie Royer, top 10 contender Ed Iten, Blind musher Rachel Scdoris, Ramy Smyth, Itilan musher Dodo Perri, Greg Parvin from Nome,Charlie Boulding, 3 time winner Jeff King, and others. However, there were a number of interviews I was pretty disappointed that I didn’t get, but hopefully will be able to land at the re-start tomorrow. We’re headed out again around 7 tomorrow morning.