My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [46]
Then again, Rainy might be sniffing out a mountain-goat path, leading us toward a cliff. There was no way to know.
This had to be Harley’s first trip. Minto, the big dog’s village, boasted champion sprint mushers, but no one that I knew of from the village had ever attempted this trail. Harley supplied the engine that night, but Rainy held the steering wheel. I wondered how far I dared trust the little lesbian.
I was glad when Ace finally caught up. With my team leading, we continued for about another hour, until the veteran, too, had doubts.
“We should have found that shelter by now,” he said.
Bowing to the elements, we hastily made camp. The dogs immediately pawed cozy niches in the snow. I staggered up the gang line, plowing through waist-deep powder, and tossed each dog a chunk of beef and a six-inch piece of Kobuk sausage fat. Not much of a meal, but it was too windy to fire up the cooker, and the dogs needed something. Right now, navigation was the problem. There was no telling what this storm might bring. Or how long this forced shutdown might last.
I flipped my sled on its side, dumping the contents. I’d packed everything in stuff bags with just this sort of emergency in mind. Placing the sled upright, I stripped off my snow-machine suit, shook it off, and stretched it across the bottom of the toboggan for insulation. Next, I unpacked my sleeping bag—a Tangerine Dream expedition-quality bag from North Face, supposedly warm to 40 below zero—and laid it across the suit. Kicking off my bunny boots, I slipped into the sleeping bag. Sitting with my back to the stanchions supporting the handlebar, I took off my headlamp and clipped it to an inside pocket, angling the beam to light the sled’s interior. Almost done now, I grabbed the open flap of the sled bag and pulled it overhead. Then I pressed the Velcro strips together and sealed myself inside. My sled bag had become a survival cocoon.
Wedged inside the tight shelter, I congratulated myself for buying sledmaker Tim White’s extra-long-model Iditarod toboggan. The situation would be far, far worse, I told myself, if I had skimped and bought White’s standard sled, which was six inches shorter. Focusing on the small triumph was more comforting than dwelling on the big picture.
At the beginning of the race, two scenarios scared me: falling through ice into open water on a cold night, or getting nailed by a storm in an exposed section of the trail. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way to Nome and already I felt like a lamb tied to the dark gods’ altar.
Living on the Lower East Side, the biggest threat from the environment had been being mugged. I always left the cab garage on Ninth Avenue with a camera bag slung over my shoulder, and $75 to $100 cash tucked in my right sock. I worked too hard to stuff $8 in another cabbie’s pocket. Instead I caught the subway at Times Square, which was still a lively place at five o’clock in the morning.
Over time, I grew careless. Trains were few, and long delays were common at that time of the morning. I began to stray farther and farther from the protected area near the token booth, seeking more comfortable places to sit, with better light for reading the newspaper. My favorite spot became the fourth or fifth step of an unused staircase