My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [47]
One morning, a voice intruded on my reading.
“You know it’s not very safe here,” said a young black man, standing so close I could have reached out and touched the gold chains around his neck. He smiled, introduced himself as “The King,” and welcomed me to his dominion.
Two of his friends quietly approached from opposite sides of the platform as the King and I bantered. I calmly stood up and stretched, taking stock of the situation. The platform ahead of me was empty. Standing on the staircase I had the advantage of height. But I was also cornered by the hand rails and the fence behind me.
“What’s in the bag?” The King said, pointing at my camera bag. The bag contained three Olympus 35-mm camera bodies, several lenses, and a powerful flash—my entire life, or so it seemed at the time.
Instead of answering the King, I smiled. Not because I saw a way out. I smiled because I was an idiot, because my back was to the wall in the confrontation every city dweller fears, because there was no avoiding any fate, and because, mainly because, surrender wasn’t an option.
The King and his friends sauntered away.
My breath was loud inside the sled bag. So was the ticking of my watch. The wind was a divine fist, rocking my sled with each blow. Each gust sent tiny jets of snow through gaps in the Velcro. Illuminated by my headlamp, snow crystals rained down on my sleeping bag in shimmering streams. I pried the Velcro strips apart and squeezed them together more carefully, shoring up my defenses.
Madden had talked me into buying a dozen packets of processed salmon. He swore that it would taste like candy on the trail. And the salmon is so oily that it remains soft enough to eat, regardless of the temperature.
Two packets of the salmon were stowed in the sled bag’s inside pocket. I dug one out and cut it open with my folding Buck knife. The fish was cold and stiff, but it crumbled easily into bite-sized bits. I chewed slowly, savoring the intense flavor. Then I licked the greasy wrapper clean. Madman knew what he was talking about.
Carefully opening the sled bag, I checked the dogs. Those I could see were curled in tight balls, mostly covered with blankets of snow. Resealing the cocoon, I dug my toes into the sleeping bag and wiggled inside. Then I switched off the headlamp and huddled in the dark, listening to the wind.
Strange to say, I felt peaceful stuck on top of Rainy Pass. There was no escape. I was again cornered. So what? I wasn’t beaten. And I wasn’t close to surrendering. This was a delay. Nothing more. For the first time in weeks, there were no decisions to make, and no schedules to keep. The storm had me in its grip, and all I could do was ride it out.
Iditarod’s leader was furious.
Instead of taking his 24-hour layover in Rohn, Nikolai, or McGrath, where the other front-runners halted, Terry Adkins kept his dogs on the march, gambling on his mountain-conditioned dogs’ ability to grab an insurmountable lead. The veteran’s strategy hinged on two factors, both of which were beyond his control. To delay the pursuit, he needed a storm, preferably on the 90-mile trail to Iditarod, the ghost town that gave the race its name. He also needed the support of Iditarod’s trailbreakers, the volunteer snowmachiners who open the lead musher’s trail. The timing of their work was crucial. If the snow-machines got too far in front, their work could vanish in drifts. If they weren’t far enough ahead, the trail might not “set,” or harden, in time for the lead musher’s passage.
Adkins got his storm, but the trailbreakers were running too far ahead. He battled drifts in the final miles leading to Ophir. Continuing on alone was out of the question. He filed an official protest with race officials. He angrily told reporters that he might even scratch. The mushing Montanan, with more Iditarods under his belt than anyone else, vowed to make this race his last.
“It’s like living with a woman for