Forth and Back

Whew! Long day today. Both in time and distance. I drove up to the Bolt Hole early this morning, checked the house, barn and garage and then drove home. Round distance was 425 miles. All was well and the ground had just a very small layer of snow and ice (maybe 2 new inches of snow on top of old, crusty, frozen junk).

I checked my records and discovered I hadn't been up there since October 5th when Terry and I went up to pick up the Tundra that had been left behind when I injured my knee back in August. THe house looks like it too. I'll need to spend a couple of days just vaccuuming, dusting and washing the next time I go up. I figure, weather permitting, that will be in a couple of weeks.

Then I had to go back to the Iditarod forums and catch up on not just last night's comments but today's as well! There were close to 100 new PAGES of comments to read.

As far as I can tell, the race is on!

1 34 Seavey, Dallas
2 44 Burmeister, Aaron
3 14 Zirkle, Aliy
Only 4 miles or so between Dallas and Aliy as they head up the coast from Unalakleet toward Shaktoolik.

Behind them areL
4 11 Baker, John
5 35 Seavey, Mitch
6 28 Kaiser, Peter
7 2 Redington Jr, Ray
8 17 Jonrowe, DeeDee
9 21 Smyth, Ramey
10 59 Lindner, Sonny
11 24 Ekran, Sigrid
12 39 Anderson, Ken

In other news, Jeff King faced some recalcetrant dogs about 10 miles short of Unalakleet and after many hours of enduring a sit down strike, he was forced to scratch.

Jake Berkowitz also scratched after slicing his hand ope while cutting sosme frozen fish for his team. (Yeah, same thing happend to Mitch Seavey last year.)

Lachlan Clarke also scratched in Galena when he found himself with not enough dogs. His team had shrunk to less than 10 ready, willing and able critters.

Same for Pat Moon. He's the guy who was air lifted out a couple years back after hitting his head on a tree while negotiating The Steps. Since he hadn't finished he was still considered a rookie this year. Well, he's still a rookie after his team was reduced to jut 7 dogs. And he was still in Ruby with 400 miles to go.