TAKOTNA -- Resting dog teams practically outnumbered local residents Wednesday in this bitty riverside village, where retired pathologist and 69-year-old musher Jim Lanier sat in the tribal hall after finishing a burger.

Before arriving in the early morning darkness, Lanier had slept about half an hour since Sunday. "I laid down a couple of times," he said. "But sleep didn't come."

The Chugiak musher -- oldest in this year's field -- slowly rubbed his face, the tips of the index and middle fingers on his left hand shorn by old frostbite.

Like many of the more than 30 mushers in Takotna on Wednesday night, Lanier took his 24-hour layover here, eating pie while dogs slept curled in the shadow of the wood-paneled community center. Inside, framed pictures of Iditarod all-stars Jeff King and Susan Butcher circled the walls, and half-eaten cake littered red-and-white checkered tablecloths.

A widescreen Samsung hung above boxes of instant coffee and cans of pie filling, displaying the Iditarod leaderboard. This is a place for war stories, and as a veteran of 13 Iditarods who first ran the race in 1979, Lanier has a tale for every scar.

He once separated his shoulder on the treacherous trail just after Rohn. Another time, in the same area, he broke an ankle. He now wears hockey pads under his parka until he gets to Nikolai, he said above the dinner-time chatter of mushers and volunteer: "Iditarod is a contact sport."

In his right boot, he's missing a toe. That's from an earlier Iditarod, Lanier said, when he was leaving Rohn and got a boot wet at 40 below.

The fingers are mushing casualties too, though not from the Iditarod. In the 1985 Coldfoot Classic, he spilled white gas for his Coleman stove on his hand, flash-freezing the ends of each finger.

"Frostbite has not been kind to me," Lanier said.

Even the race's pokey, feel-good ceremonial start in Anchorage isn't safe.

One year, Lanier's wife was riding in the second sled that mushers pull to slow their speed during the short stretch from Fourth Avenue to Campbell Airstrip. She was whipped into a tree during a turn, launching Lanier over his own sled, he said.

Lanier thought he was fine until he got home and found his boots and pants filled with blood. He'd gouged his groin, he said.

Doctors dressed the wound and, with the Iditarod starting for real the next day, told him not to do anything strenuous. The bandages soon began to come undone, so Lanier duct-taped his entire pelvis for the 1,000-mile trip to Nome.

It looked like a medieval chastity belt, he said.

And reports of a dog fight during this year's start on Saturday?

Guess whose team that was?

"I was passing a team at the start, and one of the dogs in the team grabbed one of my team in the flank," Lanier said.

The encounter ripped a chunk of skin from his dog, Vaca, who finished the ceremonial run with a patch of exposed muscle the size of two grapefruit, he said.

Vaca should be fine for future races, though she's staying home this year. It's Lanier, once again, who is taking his chances.

At about 5 a.m. this morning, he's off to the next checkpoint.

"It's supposed to be 45 below at Cripple," he said.

WIDE-OPEN RACE

"The first 10 teams that came in here, any of those 10 are easily capable of winning this race and we're all within just an hour of each other," defending champion Lance Mackey said as he ladled food into dog bowls in Takotna. "I came in here with two guys, literally minutes apart.

"So oh yeah, we still got a chance."

CRANKY CANINE

McGRATH -- As Colorado musher William Pinkham began his mandatory 24-hour rest here Wednesday morning, one of his dogs sat apart from the others.

Rincon, a particularly sensitive 2-year-old, slept tied to the bumper of a faded, snow-covered Ford pickup behind the McGrath community center while the rest of the team snoozed in the sun a few yards away.

Rincon was in the dog house. His boss, Pinkham, needed time to think.

The trouble began with a bang soon after the 51-year-old musher, racing in his sixth Iditarod, arrived and began preparing the team for a long rest. A loud noise -- a door slamming shut in the cold? -- from the combination wash-house/courthouse/race headquarters next door sent the dog bolting upright in his straw bed.

Pinkham moved Rincon to what he hoped would be a more comforting spot in the middle of the pack.

It turns out that's where he would do the most damage. Moments later, as Pinkham went for water, the dog chewed straight through the gangline that connects the dog team to the sled.

It's a little like someone eating the chain on your bicycle or the drive shaft on your car.

Pinkham tried to patch the line before stopping into race headquarters for a meal. He'd slept three hours since leaving Willow, he said, and struggled to remember which day he left Nikolai as he ate forkfuls of omelet and ketchup.

A tall man with blue eyes and a face burned red from the plunging morning cold, he said he'd take another look at the rope after grabbing five hours of sleep. It was too hard to think about now. His right foot was cold to the touch and he feared frostbite. One of the lenses of his glasses fell out the first day of the race, and he's already dropped four dogs.

Pinkham rubbed Burt's Bees ointment on red, swollen fingers. Mostly, he said, stress and fatigue flattening his voice, he wanted to talk to his wife.

"I've never felt like talking to somebody close to me as much as this year," Pinkham said.

'A PROBLEM IN THIS RACE'

Mushers had dropped about 80 of the roughly 1,150 dogs running the Iditarod this year at checkpoints along the trail by 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, said chief veterinarian Stuart Nelson.

Mushers start the race with 16 dogs but commonly leave animals at towns along the way because of injuries or when inexperienced dogs are slowing the team. The dogs are checked by vets at hub communities and flown to Anchorage.