Nigel, the missing sled dog from the Nancy Yoshida (3) team that had the crash on the 10^th, showed up at the Talavista Lodge in Skwentna on Friday, having apparently decided that the “wild life” was not for him.

Lance Mackey (47) is back in the lead, and has made it to Eagle Island, while the group behind him are taking their 8-hour Yukon breaks.

The back of the race is finishing their 24-hour stops in Ophir.

Harry T Alexie (67), the National Guard team, has moved up to 26^th place and becomes the leading rookie. Karin Hendrickson (29) has been the leading rookies for most of the race.

Melissa Owens (30) has been running very consistently in her second Iditarod, and has been staying in the top half of the teams.

The ADN reports, and the GPS tracking confirms that Lance Mackey (47) lost up to two hours of lead when he missed a turn on the trail from Shageluk to Anvik. [The guess is that he fell asleep on the trail.]

He is now running in fourth position, but he has completed the mandatory 8-hour stop on the Yukon, while the three teams in from of him and the three teams behind still have to take theirs and he is less than a half-hour behind the current leader, Jeff King (41). He can make it up, but that’s a lot of time to lose.

The back of the race is in McGrath, apparently taking the mandatory 24-hour stop.

The Current Standings [12:10 AM CDT]:

1 Jeff King (41)
2 Sebastian Schnuelle (34)
3 Aaron Burmeister (56)
4 Lance Mackey (47)
5 Cim Smyth (37)
6 Sonny Lindner (42)
[Read more →]

3/14 is Albert’s birthday and

Π Day.

I assume you have all shopped for the perfect gift.

To get you started: Π ≈ 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419
716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211 70679…..