Things I Read
Robert Peston, the BBC business editor, explains that the Cyprus rescue breaks all the rules. There were rules established about structuring the bail-outs, and taking money from depositors is exactly the reverse of what the ‘rules’ mandate.
As things stand now, the banks in Cyprus may never reopen. The Euro-Techs may have forced the Cypriots into default with their ‘bailout’, which will flush markets and the Euro into the septic tank. Stand back and watch the dominoes fall.
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The Alaska Dispatch gives the real story behind what happened to Cindy Abbott. The best I can say about the ‘official’ announcement from the Iditarod Trail Committee is that they might have been concerned about privacy issues regarding Cindy’s medical condition.
Cindy did not injure her leg on the Burn, and she did not pull a muscle on the Yukon – she broke her pelvis about 20 miles out of Willow after losing control on glare overflow ice. Because of her underlying medical condition, she lives in fairly constant pain, so she has a high tolerance and didn’t realize how serious her injury was. She traveled about 600 miles on a dog sled with the broken ends of the bone grinding on each other.
She was caring for her dogs, lifting hay bales and dog food, and mushing, while occasionally taking a couple of ibuprofen, until just short of Kaltag when the team refused to race into the wind on the Yukon.
Back in my Day 11 post, I expressed my concern and frustration about the fate of Cindy, because she was way overdue in Kaltag. I watch the leaders, but the stories in back of the pack, especially the stories about the rookies, are of real interest to me. I do some number-crunching to figure out how they are doing and whether they are waxing or waning at various stages of the race. Cindy was doing fine [which is fairly amazing given her injury], with good consistent times, and then this anomaly.
The woman has real intestinal fortitude, true grit. I’m sorry that she didn’t realize her goal of finishing, but she is a great example for people who think things are just too hard to do.
4 comments
What is interesting is that the dogs scratched, not Cindy Abbot. The dogs weren’t done insofar as not being able to go on, but they weren’t going to put their handler through any more pain. Never let anybody tell ya that dogs are just “dumb animals”…
The dogs know that facing into a wind in cold weather is not a good thing from a survival point of view, and will lay down with their tails to the wind until it lets up. It takes a weather leader, which is a very rare dog, to convince a team to run unto the wind. If a musher doesn’t have a weather leader, and most don’t, they have to take over the lead and pull the team behind them.
Cindy was in no shape to walk in front of the team, and the dogs knew it. At that point, the best chance at survival was to stay in place with their backs to the wind, and conserve their energy.
The winds in the Yukon River Valley produce some of the coldest wind chills in Alaska. The coldest air around settles into the valley and creates the winds. If you can climb the hills on the sides the temperature will go up, and the winds decrease. The dogs have been born and raised in these conditions, and are the product of generations that have survived these conditions. They are a good deal better at it than humans.
The bottom line for the race is that you can continue as long as you can care for the dogs. As soon as you can’t take care of the dogs, you will be withdrawn if you are too stubborn to scratch. Mushers can do what they want to their own bodies, but they have no right to endanger the dogs. This is sled dog racing, not musher racing.
600 miles on a dog sled with a broken pelvis. Amazing.
Have you seen any reports about how she might be doing? I cannot imagine how much additional damage was done after 600 grueling miles. You really caught on to something being off early on in your post. And it’s taken this long for any official report to come out. Guess they have their reasons.
What a woman. Thank the Good Dog for smart dogs.
What I’m looking for, Juanita, is people giving up in the back, because that leads to problems for them and their dogs. That is rare, which is why the veterans always outnumber the rookies on the scratch list. The veterans know when things are going wrong for their run, and they will cut their losses and scratch. Rookies will usually hang in there to the bitter end. The sleep deprivation really affects the ability to make rational decisions.
I don’t understand how she could handle the thumping of going down the Stepping Stones or hitting the hommocks on the Burn. Most of the steering on the sled is a matter of shifting your weight, like skiing, and that had to be painful.
She is looking at major surgery with stainless steel rods, bone grafts, and a body cast, followed by a lot of rehab.
I don’t think the ITC wanted to risk revealing too much of what they knew, and it wasn’t reported on until her husband made it public.