My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [10]
Two friends from the paper, Mary Beth and Anna, were in charge of my personal food. They came up with a delicious assortment of precooked meals, breads, brownies, and cookies, but it took precious hours to assemble the packets. Anna’s efforts, cooking dozens of steaks and pork chops, fell behind when her propane stove quit.
For heating water out on the trail, I planned to use a fancy cooker borrowed from another local musher. But when I tested it against the Coach’s battered old unit, Mowry’s cooker boiled water in about 25 minutes, or roughly 30 percent quicker, despite the fact that it used toilet paper for a wick. Of course, I wanted that faster heating unit, and that meant another run to town for 50 more rolls of toilet paper.
The Coach concentrated on the real athletes, leaving me to deal with the food drop—and with Rattles, a strutting peacock of a dog man with a handlebar mustache, who’d become a constant presence as the race drew near.
Mike “Rattles” Kramer had earned his nickname working a jackhammer in a hard rock mine. That was before he took up dogs and became a boisterous fixture in the Two Rivers mushing scene. Now he bounced between washing dishes and seasonal farm or construction work. He, his new wife, and their infant son were among the 20 percent of Fairbanks-area residents who lacked running water at home. He didn’t seem to mind hauling around water jugs; it provided a good excuse for visiting the neighbors and, perhaps, peddling a few eggs gathered from his chickens.
I enjoyed Mowth’s company as long as he didn’t get started talking about the Feds, the gold standard, or the threats to personal liberty posed by Social Security numbers. Rattles knew a lot of tricks about tuning snowmachines or rigging sled lines. In his excitement about the race, however, the old musher was getting on my nerves, following me around, but lifting nary a finger to help as he relived his own doggy deeds.
“Rattles,” I cried at last, “if you’re not going to help, get the hell out of here.”
The old musher chuckled, amused by my jitters.
I hit the panic button with 36 hours remaining until supplies were due at Iditarod’s Fairbanks collection drop center. I called Anna, my photographer friend Nora, Sam the editor, Wilda and her husband, Charlie, everyone I knew—begging for help. Sunday, the yard was full of helpers bagging toilet paper, fish, spare underwear, batteries, headlamp bulbs, and runner plastic.
Wilda dragged along her dad, who was visiting from Kentucky. He pitched right in, chopping meat with an axe. Our whole operation fascinated him: the dogs watching from the woods; the sleds leaning on the shed; even the cabin interior, strewn with harnesses, lines, and cold-weather gear. The day spent helping an Iditarod musher became the highlight of his Alaska trip.
By nightfall, the work party had filled 60 sacks, each color-coded for one of the 21 checkpoints where we mushers could expect to find our provisions waiting. The next day friends and I delivered the sacks to a local freight company that was assisting with the race. My contributions were weighed, sorted, and added to the pallets bound for various checkpoints. Freight handlers waited until the pallet loads reached about 6 feet tall, then stepped forward to seal them with giant rolls of plastic wrap. Fairbanks handled only a third of this year’s Iditarod field, yet the sheer tonnage was immense. My team’s load alone weighed 2,094 pounds and cost me $523 to ship.
Rounding