Aerie/Iditarod Report, March 17, 2010

What a glorious spring day it was today. A fitting day for St. Patrick if there ever was one. You could almost see the grass turning green under the bright, golden sunshine. Although it started near freezing here at the Aerie (and even colder down in the valley) it warmed nicely in to the mid-60s in the afternoon.

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Tonight Terry and I attended the Tiadaghton Audubon Society where we had guest speaker Bill Russell from Penn State. Dr. Russell is a physicist by trade but a mycologist by habit. He is the author of Field Guide to Mushrooms of Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic. He is considered an expert in identifying mushrooms and this must be true for he also claims to have eaten over 200 different species and (although not liking all of them) he is still alive and kickin'!

His talk was extremely informative and aided immensely by slides of the more common edible mushrooms (and some not so edible!) that he has taken over the years.

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I spent some time this morning trying to catch up on all the events happening in Nome and points east along the trail. You saw some of the over night stuff in this morning's post. Well, it's now just after 10 PM EDT and there have been a total of 22 men and women and their dog teams across the finish line on Front Street. The 22nd was DeeDee Jonrowe who is quite a remarkable woman. Most of her story is here on her Wiki page. She's been running the race almost every year since1980--including one year when she was still recovering from an auto accident that hospitalized her and her husband and killed her grandmother and another when she was just completing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She holds the record for the fastest race run by a woman. Her 9 days, 08:26:10 run in 1988 was good enough for second place. While she has never won the Iditarod, she has finished 2nd three times and been in the Top 10 fourteen.

One thing that is not there is the fact that just as the race started this year, she learned that her elderly mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and would undergo surgery while DeeDee was on the trail. Another item not mentioned is that by the time she left Cripple (about 1/2 through the race) she was down to just 8 dogs and had nearly 500 miles to go. When she crossed the finish line this evening (afternoon in Alaska) she had all 8 of those dogs stepping proud.

Like I said, one heck of a woman.

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With 22 racers and their teams in Nome, there are still [does some rough calculations, with scratch pad, pencil, calculator--why doesn't this damn computer have a calculator any more?--and comes up with] 34 mushers and their teams heading to Nome. Lots of action yet to come in the days ahead. You can follow the leader board here.

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Well, that's about it fro tonight. I've got an early date in the morning to go up to the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge on the north end of the Finger Lakes. The ducks and geese are making their way north and congregating on the ponds. Supposed to be great weather so we're hoping to get some good pictures.