I got a late start Thursday. Moonshadow Kennel driver Tom Daily and I bumped into each other at a gas station in Anchorage. Both of us were lost, pleading with strangers for directions to the Clarion Hotel, the site of the Iditarod’s mandatory prerace meeting.
The streets were slippery. A guy in a small car rammed me. I jumped out, fearing a catastrophe. The dog truck was unscratched, but the car’s grill was smashed. The guy just stood there, staring at the damage.
“Look,” I said, “this was clearly your fault. You agree, don’t you?”
He nodded yes.
“Good, because I don’t have time to mess with cops.”
I roared off, leaving him standing by the ruined car.
Twelve mushers, including Daily and me, missed the first roll call. Jim Kershner, who was again serving as race marshal, fined us $500 apiece. Then I found out that fines wouldn’t be collected until and unless I again entered the race in some future year. A reprieve. I put the fine out of my mind. Nothing mattered beyond the starting line on Saturday.
The Egan Center ballroom was packed. Last-minute withdrawals cut the number of teams to 75. No matter. My early entry had paid off. My name was number 3 5 on the list, meaning that I’d be drawing for position with others in the top half of the field.
The actual drawing was a tedious affair. Kershner held up a boot filled with buttons marked with starting position numbers. One by one, we mushers reached for a number, then stepped up to the podium in front of a huge Iditarod banner and thanked friends and sponsors. Folks at my table checked off the positions as they were announced.
I lined up ahead of Terry Adkins and Nels Anderson. The three of us were drawing for the last starting positions in the first half of the draw. Afterward, Kershner would refill the boot with buttons representing starting positions 38–75 for mushers, like Madman, who had signed up after that first day of registration in July, so many months ago.
As we awaited our turn for position, I bantered with Adkins, a true Iditarod legend.
When the mushers set out for Nome in the inaugural 1973 race, Redington talked the U.S. Air Force into letting Adkins, a Kentucky-born military veterinarian, serve as Iditarod’s first chief veterinarian. A year later, Adkins returned to Nome mushing his own team to a nineteenth-place finish. Adkins missed the 1975 race, but that was the last time an Iditarod started without the wise-cracking Montanan manning a sled.
Adkins hadn’t finished higher than twentieth since 1986. This year promised to be different. He was coming off a stunning victory over Butcher in the 500-mile John Beargrease, and there was reason to believe it hadn’t been a fluke.
Following his retirement from the service a year earlier, Adkins had begun experimenting with a new approach to dog training in San Coulee, Montana. Rejecting conventional theories about the dangers of overtraining, Adkins kept his dogs working through the summer, dragging a heavy car chassis through the mountains near his home. By the start of the race, each dog in Adkins’s team had over 4,000 miles of conditioning, nearly twice the mileage most mushers considered optimum. The result of his intensive high-aerobic training had been evident at the Beargrease. The Montanan’s team hadn’t been the fastest in the race, but no one else had dared march over 200 miles in a single shot.
Kershner didn’t have a number 1 button in his boot. That position was traditionally bestowed upon an honorary musher chosen by the Iditarod Trail Committee. That ceremonial spot was reserved this year for the late Dr. Rolland Lombard, a sprint-mushing great. The musher leading the way out of Anchorage — launching the largest field in the nineteen-year history of Redington’s Last Great Race to Nome — that job belonged to the driver of team number 2.
As we three approached the stage, the number 2 button was still in Kershner’s boot, along with button numbers 13 and 33. No driver in the field was better suited to put that starting advantage to good use than was Terry Adkins, the man standing behind me. Give his marathoners a lead, and they might just hold to Nome. He badly wanted that first spot.
I reached in the boot and fingered the three buttons, finally settling on one of them. I flashed my choice to Kershner, who rolled his eyes. Then I stepped up to the microphone.
“As most of you know, I’m a reporter. Well, I’m going to be able to write about WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO LEAD THE IDITAROD!”
A hush fell over the room, then slowly gave way to hoots and giggles. I held up the number 2 button and waved it around for all to see. Deadline Dog Farm’s team would lead the charge out of Anchorage.
Each musher would take along a handler as far as Eagle River, loaded in the sled bag or trailing behind on a second sled. It was a safety measure. Countless things could go wrong driving a dog team through the crowds and traffic of Alaska’s largest city. Kershner gave mushers the option of taking that extra rider as far as Knik Lake, where the Iditarod Trail left the road system for good. My brother Coleman had agreed to ride along on the first 20 miles, with Eric Troyer from the News-Miner filling in afterward.
Listening to me onstage, it dawned on my brother that thousands of people would be watching us. Coleman was not at all thrilled with that idea. He hadn’t admitted it to anyone, but his shoulders and knees still ached from our test run earlier in the week. His wife, Bonnie, was also frightened. She pictured her husband being dragged to his death in front of cheering crowds of bloodthirsty Alaskans.
A parade of well-wishers came over to our table. Fellow rookie Laird Barron, still waiting for his chance to draw, slapped me on the shoulder. Marcie and Kevin were giddy with excitement, babbling about sled-packing tips and dog-feeding strategies. Lavon Barve, who had drawn the fourth starting position, brought me down to reality.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” said Barve, a perennial contender. “But I’m gonna pass you, probably about four miles out. Here’s how I want you to handle your team….”
When I got the chance, I split for the pay phones downstairs. Mowry wasn’t in a position to help me with the start. The sportswriter and Nora were off in Canada covering the Quest, which was already underway. Before he left, Tim had talked to his old trail partner, Peter Kelly, about helping me at the start. I called the Iditarod veteran from the banquet hall to confirm that he would be available.
“Peter,” I said, “you’re not going to believe it. We’re going to have to have our shit together — I’m going out first.”
“Far out,” Kelly said.
Mowry refused to believe the news at first, but then he became excited. Going out first virtually guaranteed our team would beat the mob to Skwentna, the Coach reasoned, providing me with a tremendous advantage.
CHAPTER 3. Leader of the Pack
I’d snatched barely two hours of rest before Peter Kelly and his friends showed up at Cyndi’s on race day. Kelly was impressed that I got any sleep at all. It was 4 A.M., but I didn’t feel tired. The Day was here.
I took advantage of the hour-long drive to interrogate Kelly about the trail. He listened to me ramble for a while, then passed me a cup of coffee laced with a strong shot of Kahlua.
“You need to settle down, man.”
We arrived at Iditarod’s staging area about 5:30 A.M. One of the 225 volunteers assisting with the start checked off my name and directed us to the front of the parking lot. After a wait of about 20 minutes, we were waved through a corridor of downtown streets to Fourth Avenue. Parking spots were assigned in reverse starting order, providing handlers with an easy exit route. Our space was located at the far end of the closed avenue, four and a half blocks from the starting line. “A long, long, long way,” decided Nancy Marti, as she surveyed the scene. Nancy dreaded the moment when she and my other handlers would begin shepherding the team toward the distant countdown area.