Hugh Neff made up the 42 minute deficit and beat Allen Moore to the finish in Whitehorse by a minute for his first Yukon Quest victory at 7:14AM CST this morning.

Lance made it third, and Sonny Linder is on his way for the last 100 miles with a minimum team of 6 dogs. The heat is taking its toll, which is not good news for the Iditarod, as it is in March.

Standings at 10PM CST:

At Whitehorse
1 Hugh Neff (6)
2 Allen Moore (1) {+0:01}
3 Lance Mackey (16) {+5:25}
4 Jake Berkowitz (13)^R {+7:17}
Beyond Braeburn
5 Brent Sass (10)
6 Sonny Lindner (3)
7 Joar Leifseth Ulsom (17)^R
8 Abbie West (21)
9 Kristy Berington (2)^I
At Braeburn
10 David Dalton (4)
Beyond Carmacks
11 Kyla Durham (7)
12 Paige Drobny (12)^R
13 Trent Herbst (22)^I
14 Gus Guenther (20)^R
Beyond Pelly Crossing
15 Yuka Honda (19)^R
16 Brian Wilmshurst (11)^R
17 Misha Pedersen (5)^R
Beyond Dawson
18 Marcelle Fressineau (15)^R
19 Michael Telpin (24)^R

These are the official standings. That means they are official, not that they are correct. Things jump around a lot as people decide to update the standings. This problem is especially bad in the back of the pack, as no one bothers to update those standings when the lead is changing.

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, the small “I” indicates a Quest rookie who has competed in the Iditarod, and the small “R” indicates a total rookie.

Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.

All posts on the Yukon Quest can be seen by selecting “Yukon Quest” from the Category box on the right sidebar.

Why are you being hustled by street vendors to buy sad and drooping former roses, vegetative matter that missed the cut for bouquets, or were too late to the hospital?

Blame Esther A. Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her guilt is writ large by the Greeting Card Association’s Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary. She imported the concept to the US from Britain to bolster her father’s stationery store in 1847.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the stationers had infiltrated school boards and imposed the now mandatory exchange in the classroom to push the low end product of Asian children and prisoners.

Seeing the success of the card merchants, the confectioners jumped on board to fill the lull between Christmas and Easter with the benefit that the bulk of purchases would be made by desperate men with less sense of taste than a golden retriever. If the box was red, heart-shaped, and said chocolate, a man would buy it.

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