My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [91]
The plywood cabin was sparsely furnished with a pair of bunks and a fat stove. After tending dogs, mushers filtered inside. The tensions of the morning were gone, and everyone was in a sharing mood. Lenthar gave me a roll of film. I joined the mushers providing Herrman’s dogs with extra food, giving the light-traveling trapper a big chunk of lamb.
My own acute shortage was in personal food. When I had shipped out supplies, I hadn’t planned on two-and three-day treks between checkpoints. I hadn’t sent out enough juice or snacks. My main-course menu was not only insufficient; it was sabotaged by flawed packaging. Two of my staples, Anna’s meat-loaf, as well as her potatoes, were sealed in plastic baggies which disintegrated in hot water. I had to chuck them, or nibble on icy half-thawed portions, another sorry testimony to the importance of prerace field-testing. I had more success with the precooked steaks and pork chops. Each was individually wrapped in tin foil. To heat one up, I merely set the wrapped foil on a hot wood stove. By Kaltag, I was developing a reputation as a carnivore.
My provisions had seemed extravagant when Mary Beth and Anna spread them all out in the newspaper’s lunchroom. Yet I was running on empty at Old Woman Cabin. More was waiting in the supply sacks at Unalakleet, but here I was down to raiding the shelter’s emergency stocks: peanut butter, stale crackers, and a pile of dried salmon scraps someone found in a corner of the room. Daily, likewise destitute, joined me in delving into the meager rations.
Trading stories by the stove late Monday night, I dug out the surviving bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Plettner, Cooley, Herrman, and I toasted our impending arrival on the coast.
The Nome banquet had been delayed. Too many teams remained out in the storms pounding the coast. The postrace party was finally held Monday, March 18, day 17 of the race. While Daily and I gobbled stale crackers and scrutinized withered fish scraps, searching for edible chunks of salmon, 26 mushers and some 850 fans were moving through a buffet line at the Nome armory.
Accepting a $32,000 check for third place, Susan Butcher, her face puffy from windburn, graciously praised Swenson’s unprecedented achievement—restaking his claim as Iditarod’s all-time champ.
Martin Buser’s three-year-old son, Nikolai, sang impromptu trail songs into the microphone as his heavily scabbing father collected a check for $39,500 for his second place finish. It wasn’t the prize Martin had hoped to gain that final night. Hearing from a snowmachiner that Swenson was reported missing, Buser had slipped on a white windbreaker, what he liked to call his “stealth shell,” and sought to steal the lead. But Swenson, taking nothing for granted, had arranged to delay reports of his arrival at Safety, the final checkpoint before Nome.
As he presented Rick Swenson with a silver cup and the first-place prize of $50,000, Nome’s perennial checker, Leo Rasmussen, recalled the musher’s first appearance on stage as an Iditarod winner. The year was 1977, and the grand prize stood at $9,600, which, even then, hardly covered the expense of fielding a competitive team.
“He was so enamored with the race he couldn’t stop talking. He must have talked for 24 hours to whoever would listen,” Rasmussen said.
Swenson’s Goose and Major were voted joint custody of the Golden Harness Award given to Iditarod’s best lead dog.
Mere blocks from the finish-line arch, Nome musher Matt Desalarnos had the $14,000 check for seventh place in his grasp. Alas, his dogs veered toward an alley, and Dee Dee Jonrowe passed him. That last-minute move from seventh to eighth place cost him $1,000. Chief vet Morris also presented Dee Dee with the Humanitarian Award for displaying the best dog care among the competitive drivers.
Barve had regrouped after finding his lost dogs and finished