But Saturday's ceremonial start in Downtown Anchorage -- most fans' best chance to see mushers and their dogs up close before they disappear into the Alaska wilderness -- still has the power to send chills through the saltiest veterans.

Reigning Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion Lance Mackey described what it feels like behind the sled: "People everywhere, loud. High-fiving me. Rooting me on. Just cheering for me."

"It brings tears to your eyes. ... And I had some all day today," he said.

The race clock starts ticking today with a staggered restart at 2 p.m.

But first, thousands of fans lined Anchorage streets and trails to watch 71 mushers wind 11 miles from Fourth Avenue to Campbell Airstrip. Tons of snow, trucked-in for the race, paved the street. Kids stretched through wooden fence posts to touch howling dog teams as the smell of reindeer sausage steamed from curbside vendors.

Here's look at the beginning moments of Iditarod 38:

DRUMROLL!

"I'm telling people my team is like a Toyota. It has unexpected bouts of acceleration." -- Dubois, Wyo., musher Billy Snodgrass.

FAST FRIENDS

Mary Brower, 70, of Barrow met 84-year-old Lillian Nelson of Washington state Saturday morning on teeming Fourth Avenue.

Both women are short and were looking for places they could see dog teams over all the heads in the crowd, said Nelson, a retired nurse visiting family in Alaska. "We just sort of decided to stick and walk together."

Side-by-side they watched as Kasilof musher Colleen Robertia tended to her team. .

Brower's father relied on a dog team to move the family of 12 inland from the Arctic coast each year when she was a girl in the 1940s, Brower said. Before Saturday, she'd never watched the start of an Iditarod.

A Nuiqsut man in a North Slope Borough ball cap spotted Brower and stopped, beaming, to say hello. They spoke quickly in Inupiaq and the man walked along.

"I told him to send me fish," Brower said.

MUSHING 101

One of the final mushers to leave the starting line, Robertia fielded questions from roadside fans, teaching Sled Dogs 101.

"As they're seeing things happening, they're like, 'huh,'" Robertia said of the crowd. "Until you're actually living it, you just don't think about all these little things," she said with her team lying in straw on the street."Like, the guys don't want to (lie) on snow for hours. They want to get off, they want some straw."

Coffee cups and posters covered the hood of Robertia's Ford while, blocks away, the crowd cheered musher after musher.

A 33-year-old Iditarod rookie, Robertia was as calm as she's ever been for a race, she said. "The things that I have any control of, I've done what I can. Which is having the dogs trained up. I know my dog care, I know my dogs."

For her inaugural run, she'll carry a special memento on the trail, she said: The ashes of a friend's sled dogs, Isis and Thor, to scatter along the Iditarod.

HOW DO THEY GET THE SAMPLES?

New this year: Drug-testing for mushers. Old this year: Drug testing for dogs.

Race officials have long tested dog teams for substances that might build muscle or mask pain. The plan was to test a third of the dog teams at the start of the race, a third on the trail, and the top 20 finishers in Nome, chief veterinarian Stuart Nelson said Friday.

TRADE SECRETS

FYI. Downtown hot dog vendors don't want to tell you exactly how many reindeer sausages they have sold, no matter how nicely you ask.

SMOOTH START

After the trot to Campbell Airstrip, mushers planned to spend Saturday night catching up with visitors, making last-minute changes to their 16-dog rosters and, most of all, sleeping as much as possible before the marathon push to Nome.

As teams arrived in a parking lot ringed with dog trucks at the airstrip, Mackey posed for picture after picture.

"I'm available for photos over here," joked someone from Colorado musher William Pinkham's team, parked nearby.

Making his sixth Iditarod run, Pinkham finished the start without any mishaps, he said, though another team appeared to arrive at the airstrip nursing an injury.

That dog was hurt in a fight, said Stuart Nelson, the chief vet. "I'm just not sure where the other dog came from."

Otherwise, he said, it was a smooth start.

FIGHTING WEIGHT

A noticeably slimmed down Rick Swenson said he's feeling much better after hip-replacement surgery.

"He weighs about one dog less than he used to be," said Swenson's partner, Kelly Williams.

The five-time champion said he's running with a veteran team of 5- and 6-year-old dogs. "I'm not looking for a good race," he said. "I'm back because I want to finish first."

IDITAROD BUFFET

The unadvertised perk of being an Idta-rider: All the trail-side snacks you can eat.

"People were giving us cookies and hot dogs and bloody marys," said Bob Smith of Virginia, who rode on a 1970s trailer cushion in the sled of Two Rivers musher Tom Lesatz.

Bloody marys?

"It ended up in the snow, most of it," Smith said.

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Read Iditarod Live, the ADN's sled blog, at adn.com/iditarodlive. Twitter updates: twitter.com/iditarodlive. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.