Twenty-seven-thousand feet above the trail, Dick Mackey listened on a radio.

Down below, his 36-year-old son, Lance, was making Alaska history, becoming the first musher to win the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race in the same year.

"I'm picturing my dad with a bucket full of tears, waiting underneath the burled arch," Lance said before he left White Mountain and on the last leg of his run to victory."

Instead of dad, he got exuberant brother Jason who wouldn't stop hugging the race winner. Dad, who now winters in Arizona, was stuck on an Alaska Airlines jet somewhere between Kotzebue and Nome. A broken jet in Seattle, he said, had delayed his arrival in Nome.

"Where's my dad?" Lance asked his wife, Tonya, beneath the burled arch.

"He's on his way'' was all she could say.

A disappointed Lance walked down Front Street toward Iditarod headquarters where he was to eat dinner on stage in front of a couple hundred fans and answer questions. That didn't last long.

Not five minutes after starting his first sit-down meal since leaving Anchorage nine days earlier, someone in the crowd yelled, "Look who's here!"

And there, barreling through the thick crowd as if he was still being chased to the finish line by Rick Swenson in 1978 was Lance's 74-year-old father, a fellow Iditarod champ.

Lance dropped his fork; abandoned his New York steak, baked potato and salad from Fat Freddie's Restaurant; left the purple sack of his Crown Royal bottle and jumped off the stage to give pops a giant bear hug. The two cried. Both had ear-to-ear smiles.

"You started it," Lance said about the crying. "I'm damn glad to see you."

"It took me forever to get here," Dick said.

"Yeah, me too," Lance replied.

The crowd roared. Then Lance told everyone he was wearing the same ratty wool sweater dad wore when he won the Iditarod. Lance used to wear the parka, too, but not anymore. The beaver mittens Dick wore when he won are hanging on the wall as a trophy. Lance said he would never use those.

"This means a helluva lot, dad," Lance said. "I just won myself a new truck."

"You will forever be an Iditarod champion," Dick said. "Damn, I'm so proud of you. Mission accomplished."

Then Dick sat down and rested his feet as Lance answered questions about how he felt about the special victory.

"You know, I said it three years ago, 'This can be done,' " he said. "I've been making moves for the last two years."

Dick wasn't convinced Lance truly recognized the monumental nature of his victory yet.

"I don't think it's sunk in what he's accomplished," Dick said. "Winning the Quest and turning around to win this? No professional dog musher in their wildest imagination could think of doing this."

Though many in Alaska were pulling for Lance to do the impossible, his father had his doubts it could be done. He followed the race closely from his home in Quartzsite, Ariz., clicking up travel times hour by hour, minute by minute on the internet.

"How can he make these 80 to 90 mile runs, stop for a few hours and do it all over again and not even lose speed, lose momentum?" Dick wondered. "I was just scared to death they were going to crash (the team)."

Perhaps, though, he was more frightened Tuesday when his flight from Seattle to Juneau was delayed by mechanical problems. He sat in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, wondering what to do. If he stayed grounded any longer, he would miss a connecting flight to Anchorage for which there was just a 20-minute opening.

He called Iditarod race director Joanne Potts at Iditarod headquarters in Nome and explained the situation.

"I'm screwed," Dick panicked.

"Call me back in five minutes," Potts told him.

Potts dashed to the Alaska Airlines desk inside headquarters and explained the problem. Alaska Airline officials tried to book Dick on a direct flight from Seattle to Anchorage about to take off, but his bags were already in the busted plane.

"We can't do it," the Alaska Airlines official told Potts.

Potts wouldn't settle for "No." This was history in the making, and Lance needed to see his father on Front Street.

The Alaska Airlines official called Seattle again.

"Richard Mackey's son is about to win the Iditarod," the official said.

Dick boarded the plane, which was waiting for him, and headed directly to Anchorage.

"Everyone on the airplane knew why they were waiting," he said. "So the whole airplane was all Iditarod."

Once Dick landed in Anchorage, he grabbed a flight that goes first to Kotzebue then Nome. Potts tried convincing Alaska Airlines to switch the route, going to Nome first, but that wasn't possible.

On the way from Kotzebue to Nome, the pilot announced over the intercom that Lance had reached Front Street, then crossed the finish line.

"Everyone on the airplane was just cheering," Dick said. "It was a great day.

"We just missed (the finish), but that's OK. We got here."

But that wasn't Lance's initial reaction.

"My dad never thought I'd never amount to be anything," he confessed before leaving White Mountain. "To be quite honest, years ago they didn't have much hope for me. For me to change my way of thinkin', my bad habits, my lifestyle and actually accomplish something ... this is as rewarding as the new truck I'll be driving."

At the same time, Dick was thinking of how proud he is of his son.

"This is going to change the whole way people run dogs," Dick said. "(Robert) Sorlie started it the first year he ran, running and running and running.

"Everybody thought it was a fluke. Well, they won't think it's a fluke now."

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Daily News reporter Kevin Klott can be reached at kklott@adn.com.