My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [4]
Mushing experience? All I could list was the Montana Creek Cheechako Race, a 2.3-mile run for novice mushers I had chanced into several years before. At the time, I was working for the Frontiersman in Wasilla, a booming highway town of about four thousand located an hour’s drive north of Anchorage. Mowry, our stocky sportswriter, was writing a first-person story. I was on hand to shoot photos of his debut as a sled-dog racer.
It was a crisp, brilliant December morning. The temperature was holding in the high 20s. One by one, dog trucks claimed spots near the mushers’ clubhouse. The snouts of curious dogs poked through holes in the boxes mounted on the rear of the trucks. Some barked frantically; others harmonized in a howling chorus.
Iditarod veterans Ray and Diana Dronenburg had brought over a dozen dogs to the track that morning, planning to let one of their kennel sponsors compete. Afterward they would take larger teams out on a serious training run. The sponsor was late. The Dronenburgs went ahead and drew for him, pulling the third position. With time running out, he remained a no-show. Diana asked if I wanted to fill in.
No one could challenge my credentials as a “cheechako,” a gold-rush term for newcomers to the North. Originally from the East Coast, I was just starting my second winter in Alaska. I’d never touched a dogsled. My professional driving experience consisted of two and a half years of driving a cab in New York City.
Within moments, I was wearing the number 3 bib and testing my balance on the thin sled runners. Diana coached me on the dogs’ names. Ray held them back.
“Three! Two! One!” The sled jerked forward, and we were off.
I wobbled around the opening turn, precariously maintaining my balance. Then I nearly fell off trying to imitate a real sled-dog racer, kicking my heel backward to spur on the dogs. I didn’t dare shout “Gee” or “Haw,” uncertain which of those fundamental commands meant right and which meant left. Instead I yelled “Hike, hike, hike,” a mushing term for “go.”
Tongues flapped. Paws flew. Aside from my idiotic cries, the only sound was the panting of the dogs and the whisper of sled runners slicing through the snow.
“Now this is Alaska!” I cried, feeling exultant.
I covered the looping 3-mile trail in 12 minutes, 7 seconds. Good enough for thirteenth place. Better yet, it was 2 minutes faster than Mowry. In the story that resulted, Tim compared his defeat at the hands of this “tall, skinny political reporter” to “a cowboy losing a bull-riding contest to an accountant.”
“A dark day for the sportswriters around this country indeed,” he wrote.
That had been four years ago. Driving dogs leased from Joe Redington, Sr., the founder of the Iditarod, the Mowth had gone on to race in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and two Iditarods, winning the “Most Improved Musher” award for a twenty-seventh-place showing in his second trip to Nome. I’d reported on more big races than Mowry had, but I hadn’t mushed dogs more than a handful of times. It was madness to even consider running the Iditarod. But if I didn’t try, the missed opportunity would torment me forever. Aware that I was taking action more significant than anything likely to occur on the Senate floor, I signed the application, listing myself as “driver” for a dog team I didn’t yet possess.
Those who live in dog country dissect the Iditarod’s entry list like the Yankees’ batting order on opening day. So I wasn’t surprised by the question that greeted me as I entered Blackie’s Goose Bay Bar in Knik on the return trip from Juneau. “Brian, whose dogs are you using?” yelled Marcie, who was working the bar.
Drawing a brew, she quizzed