Idita-Willow

1Josh • 6th Mar 2005 • blog entries, Iditarod, nome., travel

Hannah and have decided, and its official: the restart of the Iditarod is much more fun than the actual ceremonial start. Now, don’t get me wrong the other part was cool and everything, but today was a blast. You wouldn’t have guessed that about 3 hours after we left the house this morning around 7. It was almost 10 and we were still in Anchorage, or back in Anchorage. When we left town to drive out to Willow, we had directions but they lacked one minor thing, the direction of the highway that we were supposed to take. We were taking state route 1, and for north it said “downtown” so we took south. Bad idea. about an hour and a half later I think “I haven’t seen any signs saying Wasilla at all, just ones for Seward!” we pull over and get out the handy satellite phone. After a few quick calls we learn that Wasilla is north of anchorage and we had just spent a long time driving nowhere. After we turned around and are almost in town, we were stopped for about 30 minutes because an accident was blocking both lanes. At this point we weren’t sure if we were going to make it out there early enough to interview mushers before they had to leave…but still knew we could at least make the start of the race no problem. We got there around 12, which was an hour before the media was going to be kicked out of the starting shoot, and two hours before the race started.

We got lots of good interviews in, and I was able to get everyone that I was sad to have missed the day before. We also got some great pictures under the starting banner as well. I phoned in an update to KICY, handed off the satellite phone to the “teacher on the trail” who will call in updates to us, and I made one last contact with the guys from OLN. When 2 rolled around, hundreds of people had gathered around the starting fence, and we weren’t sure where we were going to be able to get a good spot. We walked up to the starting line, and saw what I was looking for, a press box. We got to lean on the fence at the very front and get a great view of all the mushers starting the race.

What made this so much cooler was the fact that mushers were in the zone, and I could even tell in the way they anwsered interview questions. The ceremonial start is more of a festival and is very fun for everyone involved, the re-start actually felt like it was the start of a serious competition. As mushers would bring their teams up to the starting line, you could see the stress in their faces as they knew their official time started right now. The dogs came up to the line jumping, howling, and ready to go. It was with much effort that the dog handlers calmed the dogs down, held the sled back, and made sure everything was set to go. In the really well trained teams the lead dogs were focused. Tails down, noises pointed forward and completely still, even with barking dogs behind them. In mushing, all the other dogs take their cues from the leads. It didn’t go so smoothly for everyone though, one musher’s team wouldn’t go and after they did start it wasn’t for very long as the ALL stopped about 30 feet ahead. Rachel Scodoris, the 19 year old legally blind musher decided that starting as number 10 wasn’t going to work and opted to start at the end.

It was an amazing day, and I have to keep reminding myself that after all these weeks and weeks of work, the iditarod work isn’t over, its just starting. I fly back to Nome tomorrow afternoon and have under a week of tracking online to do with hourly updates on the air, and then I start back out on the trail. Just typing that makes me excited!!! I’ll meet them on the coast and follow them up until the winner comes into Nome. I’ll see the population of our small little town double in the next two weeks as the remaining mushers, media, and tourists come into Nome. Its going to continue being a very exciting time! I’m leaving Anchorage but the iditarod continues.