The Trip

I haven't been bitten by the inspiration to blog this year. Our trip has been great, and is winding to a close. I've gotten some good pictures and video, but the slowness of the machine I have to work on has prevented me from posting anything. I'll try posting one of the better ones to sum up the trip:

Mackey won the Iditarod again. I had the chance to shake his hand, get an autograph, and congratulate him. He's won the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod two years in a row now, which is an amazing accomplishment. It will be hard for anyone to match that kind of record for long distance dogsled racing!

Martin placed 5th, and I have some good video of he and Ken Anderson coming up off the sea ice onto Main Street, racing for 4th. Martin was only 40 seconds behind at the finish line. After a 1,000 mile plus race, that's kind of hard to believe!

Tonight is the musher banquet, and we're looking forward to lots of good food and stories. Tomorrow we will ride snowmachines to Cape Nome and maybe out into the countryside a bit...we'll see. It's hard to believe this week has gone so fast.

That's it for now...until next time (and maybe next year?)....

Here we go...Iditarod 2008 is here!

Hello, and welcome back to my version of the Iditablog, 2008. We're going up a bit late this year...this coming Saturday. Much of the Iditarod will have been run by the front runners by that time, but we should get there in plenty of time to see the first musher pass beneath the burled arch in Nome.

This year there is a new development for couch potato mushing fans like myself. A company called Ion Earth is helping to bring the race excitement to your computer through the use of tracking devices (GPS transmitters) installed on approximately 19 of the top mushers' sleds. I have been watching this in use since Monday, and I really like it. Just click on the link at the Iditarod home page, be sure to use either the Firefox or Internet Exploder browser, and you're set. It allows you more of a detailed look at the race in between checkpoints, and if you're industrious you can figure out how to use it interactively in 3D as well. There have been a few apparent anomalies so far (like Lance Mackey magically transporting ahead of Jeff King a few minutes ago), but I am sure that as with any new technology, it will take a little while to get the bugs ironed out.

With that, I'd better hit the sack. Four more days until we're in Nome, and I can't wait! Stay tuned for more updates.