Ceremonial Start

Today was the ceremonial race start on 4th St in downtown Anchorage. It is the "fun" start with lots and lots of press, fans, autographs, food vendors, and costumes. I got there around 7am, well before the sun here, and before anyone had really arrived. There are a lot more pictures that will be posted on facebook later, but here are just a few for now.

The start at 7 a.m.

Sam Deltour (R) with a fellow Yukon Quest musher (L) and a fan (I think) in the middle.

Yes I met Sam today. To catch most of you up: I stumbled upon his website before leaving for the Iditarod when I googled "Iditarod MS" to see if there was any kind of corporate, fundraising, or musher presence there related to MS research. I found his site because his mom has MS and he has been mushing to raise money for MS research. Also, he is the only Belgian to finish the Iditarod, 25, finishing med school, and very attractive. I signed his guest-book, he wrote me back just saying some kind words and that he hoped to see me there. So today I'm wandering around the approximate 7-block stretch of mushers (including parked on side streets) and snapping pictures, not really thinking about meeting him specifically, because there are just so many people. In the end, I actually ended up passing him four times: once not realizing it was his team because he uses Seavey's kennels, twice hearing his accent when he was sticking out of a car and being pretty sure that was him but too scared to introduce myself, a third time being really sure that was him, having heard someone call his name, but still chickening out, and the fourth time (after completely walking away and almost giving up) I grew a pair and introduced myself. At the very beginning of the conversation he offered me a chance to be one of his handlers tomorrow at the restart, even giving me an official musher armband to make sure I could be on his team. Then we chatted for a bit and he introduced me to some people who's names I, of course, don't remember, and then I had to get to my post so I said good luck and see you tomorrow and walked away beaming.

Wow that was a lot longer story that I expected... sorry to get all fangirly on ya.

Some very good dogs! And this isn't zoomed too much, I was really this close to them.

Lance Mackey, currently the most famous name in mushing. He beat cancer before winning three consecutive Iditarods.

Aliy Zirkle! I really like her. She's a good musher and she's said some things I very much agree with about women in the sport. Specifically that they are not women-mushers, but just mushers that also happen to be women. It didn't even occur to her at first when she won the Yukon Quest that she was the first woman to win it, because that's just not how she, or the other mushers, think of her.

So that was the gist of the ceremonial start. Tomorrow is the re-start or official start, which is in Willow about an hour north of Anchorage. It is not for show, but for serious preparation, which is why it's an even bigger deal that I'm helping Sam :D The dog lot is on a frozen lake, which will be the first time I've been on one, for good reason. But it will be snowy and very chaotic, so I'm sure I'll forget to think about falling through.

Oh! I ate at the Fancy Moose tonight, which is the more casual of the two restaurants in the Millennium, and ended up sitting next to a table of pilots and their families where I decided that three things in life should be equally hard to do: have children, get a pilot's license, and bear firearms. These also happen to be three things I think those people did all too easily. ("His dad was hilarious! He crashed more planes than all of us put together have owned!") mmhm.