Iditarod 2015 – The Parade

by Bryan

12 comments

1 Badtux { 03.07.15 at 3:41 pm }

They need to start the Idiotarod Parade in Anchorage. Led by Rep. Don Young (R-Wolves) followed by the entire Palin clan, the Duck Dynasty clan, climate denialists, most of Congress, etc. Thing is, I don’t know if Anchorage is big enough to hold that many idiots…

-Badtux the Snarky Penguin

2 Bryan { 03.07.15 at 9:59 pm }

One of the main sponsors of the race is Exxon-Mobil so they have been soft-pedaling the problem since switching to Fairbanks. It is kind of difficult to ignore it with the current conditions in southern Alaska. They have been shifting or canceling shorter races because of the conditions. January was even warmer than February, so a date shift may not help.

Anchorage is limited by the water and mountains, so they’ll need to house them on boats, and turn the whole thing into a water event with the dogs and sleds on barges 😈

3 Badtux { 03.08.15 at 3:23 am }

Hmm, I seem to remember a science fiction story by Cyril Kornbluth with a similar motif. But let’s not put the dogs and sleds on barges. Let’s put the participants in the IDIOTarod onto the barges, and let them swim to where the dogs and sleds are located on land. With 90 pound weights attached to their legs :).

4 Bryan { 03.08.15 at 4:13 pm }

I would favor the dogs and sleds on the the bargs and the idiots towing them for 11 miles 😈

5 JuanitaM { 03.09.15 at 9:12 am }

I haven’t been following the Iditarod as long as you, but this just seems so strange not having the teams going through Finger Lake and Rainy Pass.

Still, not having to go through the burns may be just as well. All those hidden stumps don’t seem like a “normal” trail for sledding, anyway.

As long as they end up with all healthy dogs and people in the end, that’s really all I care about. You may have noticed that I put people second. 😉 .

6 Bryan { 03.09.15 at 9:57 am }

Not having the mountains, the Stepping Stones, the Dalzell Gorge will certainly make it a much faster race and not having the Burn makes it safer for teams.

They have had to take the race off the Tanana River at least from Manley to Tanana because of a major outflow and open water caused by the major temperature swings of the last couple of weeks. The expansion and contraction busted the surface ice.

If Lance Mackey had a more experienced team, he would be the odds on favorite for this trail as he trains on it.

Zoya DeNure has her team of ‘rescues, rejects, & runts’ in the race this year. There are also 6 all Siberian teams with the Quest Red Lantern Rob Cooke leading them off.

7 JuanitaM { 03.09.15 at 11:55 pm }

I hadn’t heard about another change on the trail. Seems it’s getting harder all the time to sled these days.

It does appear that everyone is coming into checkpoints in a fairly tight formation so far, at least compared to other years. The Gorge seemed to separate teams in the early stages. Have you heard any comments from the mushers as to what they think about this new trail so far?

Aliy followed DeeDee by four minutes, so they may be traveling together. It would be nice to see Zoya finish this year, but she’ll take care of her dogs first, however that works out.

I had been wondering why Mackey had not been in the front of the pack for the last few years. After his last win, it looked like he was holding back. Which, at this point, if he wanted to retire, no one could fault him after all those wins. Thinking of Mackey, I miss seeing Newton in the list this year. Didn’t he borrow Mackey’s dogs for several of the races? It was always fun to see someone from balmy Jamaica tackling the frigid weather of Alaska. Now, there’s someone who was looking for a challenge!

8 Bryan { 03.10.15 at 11:38 am }

Lance has been dealing with a lot of medical problems and the team that won the doubles [Yukon Quest-Iditarod] had to retire. He is rebuilding a new team that is two-year-olds, so they haven’t hit their peak and you can’t let them get carried away or they will never reach their potential.

It’s hard to miss DeeDee on the trail even in the dark because of her ‘hot pink’ parka, and Aliy and DeeDee have been running in the same races for years. Once they get on the Yukon, the race will stretch out as people go to their own run-rest patterns. It is over a 110 miles from Tanana to Ruby, so it will be time to camp.

Zoya made up a lot of time, more than an hour and a half, to jump forward 50 places. Remember, until their times are adjusted for the start differential, their positions aren’t known.

9 JuanitaM { 03.12.15 at 9:10 am }

I didn’t realize that Lance was having medical issues again. I remember he had cancer some years back, though. Whatever he’s been through, it’s made him look a whole lot older than his 44 years.

10 Bryan { 03.12.15 at 11:44 am }

He has circulation problems, especially in his hands and is subject to frost bite. He’s talking about retiring because he just isn’t able to take care of his team the way he wants to. The chemo wiped him out, and when they banned marijuana from the race it was very hard for him to compete, which is why he was gone for a while.

11 JuanitaM { 03.13.15 at 9:40 am }

Now that you mention it, I do seem to remember something about circulation problems. I had kind of forgotten about that because he won a couple of races after the chemotherapy and cancer treatment, and it didn’t seem to affect his ability to perform in the field. I’m supposing the marijuana really was helping him.

I wonder what the medical marijuana laws are in Alaska. It doesn’t seem all that different from someone taking insulin on the ride if they’re a diabetic. But then, I take a broad view of these things in the first place. There’s a lot of people that wouldn’t agree, I know.

12 Bryan { 03.13.15 at 9:58 am }

Alaska was one of the first states to make medical marijuana legal, but legal and accepted are not the same thing. The ITC makes the rules, and the rules don’t have to make sense.