My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [25]
Damn wolves with collars, that’s what the ranchers in Colorado called Tom Daily’s sled dogs. Real dogs wouldn’t raise the unholy howls that were heard coming from the hippie’s place. The simmering resentment was getting to the easygoing, long-haired musher. Tom and Fidaa, his Saudi Arabian-born bride, were itching to move to Alaska, where Tom dreamed of mushing the Iditarod. But where were they ever going to get the money?
The snow was on the way out. Daily figured his season was over, when a four-member group booked rides. The party included the owners of Track ’N Trail, a sport-shoe company. Daily had his hands full, keeping his dogs in line while answering their usual questions. The Iditarod came up, of course. Daily admitted that competing in the great Alaskan race was his personal goal. He described how he had once spent a few months helping at Redington’s huge kennel in Knik. It was nothing he hadn’t told tourists a thousand times before. He almost hated talking about it. The dream felt tainted by such small talk. Daily didn’t take it seriously when the clients mentioned that they might be interested in sponsoring him.
“It costs a lot of money,” he snorted. “Thirty thousand or so. You don’t even want to think about it.”
Two days later, the shoe-company owners called Tom and offered him full Iditarod sponsorship for two years. It was like winning the lo tery, only he hadn’t even bought a ticket. It was karma. Fate. The gods were speaking through his dogs. Packing their lives aboard a truck, the Dailys moved to Alaska.
As Iditarod’s opening day for registration approached, Tom began to panic. He and his wife were penniless. They were living in a cloud of mosquitos, surrounded by hungry dogs, and they hadn’t seen a dime of that promised money. Tom wondered, Have I been faked out? Was this whole thing some kind of rich man’s joke? Full of doubts, Tom went into town and called the sponsors collect. He described his preparations for the race and demanded a check to cover the $1,249 entry fee. The check arrived on schedule, followed by others. Daily’s sponsorship was real. Moonshadow Kennel’s driver was bound for Nome.
Hectic months later, the musher and his wife were entertaining Tom’s shoe-company sponsors in Anchorage. It was the last thing they wanted to be doing the night before the race. The couple hadn’t slept in two days. The packing wasn’t finished. But the sponsors suddenly turned up in Anchorage, eager to see their musher start the race—made possible by Track ’N Trail’s money. What choice did Daily and his wife have? The meal dragged on for hours. Fidaa’s self-control was strained to the limit. After dinner, she and Tom pulled an all-nighter finishing preparations for the race.
Daily had drawn position number 20. His pit crew was weak beyond his wife and Big Larry, a bouncer from The Bush Company, a local topless joint. The rest were inexperienced helpers from the shoe company.
“Oh no,” Fidaa cried, watching one of their volunteers fumbling with a dog harness, “we have to train the handlers.”
Kershner’s inspection added to the stress: the handle on Daily’s axe was shorter than the 22-inch standard specified in the race rules. The race marshal could have forced the team to wait until a legal substitute was found. Instead he ruled that Tom could leave Anchorage on time, but the team wouldn’t be allowed to continue past the first checkpoint until Tom’s gear met Iditarod standards. The crisis appeared resolved when friends in Eagle River promised to meet the team there with the necessary replacement.
“Still ahead of Butcher and Swenson!” I shouted, playing to the trailside gallery lining the first miles of city streets, parks, and power-line trails. A lot of people knew who I was