Iditarod Adventures: Tales From Mushers Along the Trail
By Lew Freedman with illustrations by Jon Van Zyle; Alaska Northwest Books; $17.99
The blurb: In "Iditarod Adventures," mushers explain why they have chosen this rugged lifestyle, what has kept them in long-distance mushing and the experiences they have endured along the 1,000-mile trail between Anchorage and Nome.
Former Anchorage Daily News sports editor Lew Freedman profiles 23 mushers -- men, women, Natives, seasoned veterans and some relatively new to the sport -- many of whom are so well-known in Alaska that fans refer to them only by their first names. The book also features interviews with administrators who organize the event and make sure it happens every year, volunteers and others whose connection to the Iditarod is evident, even if they don't have an official title.
Excerpt: Martin Buser
For me, the watershed year was 1991. That was an unbelievable year. It changed a lot of people's lives from the front of the pack to the back. Rick Swenson won his fifth Iditarod that year, but before the race began everyone thought Susan Butcher would win her fifth Iditarod to set the record.
She was ahead leaving White Mountain and then we had that big storm and she and some other mushers turned back to wait it out. [The worst weather of the 1991 race occurred near the end, between White Mountain and Nome over the last seventy-seven miles of the trail. The temperature was approximately minus 25, and a blizzard roared in from the Bering Sea with winds of about 50 miles per hour. Mushers faced frostbite and virtually no visibility.] Rick went through the storm and I chased him. That's how I finished second. I tell everybody that I learned how to win in the 1990s.
Some people were so freaked out in that storm along the coast that they never came back. They never ran another race again because it was pretty impressive. It was a game changer, all right, and of course if you're talking about championships, it totally turned Susan Butcher's life upside down. It turned Rick Swenson's life around, too. It was wild.
I'll always remember that race ... I almost had a head-on collision with three mushers. I have told the story lots of times where out of this storm Susan materializes and yells at me that it can't be done, that it's too dangerous. Swenson is freezing his hands off up there. He lost his headlamp. Susan, Tim Osmar, and Joe Runyan are going back because it can't be done. They turned back to White Mountain.
I kept going. You put years into the Iditarod and you have a storm like this that makes it harder. I think while it is happening, it's kind of like raising kids. While it's happening you don't even know how big of a job it is until you have a little breathing room and you can reflect upon it. I mean right now, four championships later, and twenty-some years later, you can start thinking about it and you wonder how in the world does anybody ever win a race.
Somebody has to every year, but the complexities, how difficult it is to win that race is almost incomprehensible. Then, when you finally do it, in 1992 in my case, hey, it's pretty cool. I won again in 1994. How did that happen? It's pretty neat to think back on it.
The 2002 race was pretty special, a record year. The first sub-niner. In the long run we compare that to the first four-minute mile. Everybody knows Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, and a lot of sports followers will know that. Most sports followers don't know that Roger Bannister only had that record for a few weeks. His time has been bested over the years by about fifteen seconds, but it's always a first. It's always that he is the one that broke the four-minute mile. And in Iditarod lore, I'm always gonna be the one that broke the nine-day barrier. In my case, the record stood for almost 10 years. That was the year I was sworn in as a US citizen. We started it in Anchorage and finished it in Nome. So for years I say I had the fastest Iditarod and the slowest swearing-in ceremony.
Before the Iditarod started, the Immigration and Naturalization Service people met me in Anchorage to start the process. Then I put the paperwork and my little American flag into my sled and carried them to Nome. I called up the late Sen. Ted Stevens and told him what I wanted to do and Uncle Ted helped, though I didn't need much help. My citizenship plan dated back to 9/11—September 11, 2001, when the terrorists attacked. That's what prompted me to become an American. There was not the need for anything but for me to prove to my family that this was the soil I wanted to be on and would defend. So I said, "Senator Stevens, can you give me a hand?' He said, "What legislation do you need me to enact?' I said, "A simple letter of recommendation would suffice." Long story short, we started the ceremony in private with a few individuals in downtown Anchorage and I carried that little flag all the way to the finish line. Then Nikolai, my oldest son, met me just before the finish line with a big American flag and I carried that across the finish line. Of course a judge from Nome did the swearing-in ceremony under the burled arch.
Leonard
By Priscilla Delgado; Xlibris; $19.99
The blurb: Rose Lynn Kelly, young widow of Stryker Brigade Sgt. Bill Kelly, has a priceless heirloom violin the unscrupulous Leonard is determined to have. With action from her Fairbanks home to a remote cabin near the Arctic Circle, he becomes increasingly desperate, as well as ruthless, as time after time his plans are thwarted. By the time Rose fully realizes that her nagging mistrust of Leonard is valid, she has a knife at her throat.
Excerpt: Rose Lynn couldn't get over the feeling that something wasn't right about this brotherly visit. He came back Saturday night as promised and took both of them out to dinner. This time to Gamberdella's Pasta Bella, a nice little restaurant right downtown. He complemented them on their appearance, opened all the doors, pulled out chairs for each of them, spoke softly and politely, included a generous tip on the bill which he paid in cash. In other words, he was the perfect gentleman to the last detail, but she still couldn't figure him out.
He didn't talk much about the consulting work he was involved in. Nevertheless, he was well dressed, and appeared financially secure, so it must be a lucrative position. He had majored in business at NYU, had never been military, and had never married. Rose was his only sibling. Other than that, he spoke little about himself, but seemed genuinely interested in everything about her life. Over eggplant parmesan, she told him about teaching in Bush schools for two years before going to work on Fort Wainwright. He couldn't imagine being "stuck out in the boonies," as he called it, for two years, or even two weeks without so much as a road to town.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that the only way you could come home after work was on one of those little prop planes?"
Even Kathy laughed aloud at this.
"In New York," Rose explained, "I realize that people often commute long distances to work and back. But here, after work meant at the end of the school year. Home was teacher housing at the school. In Arctic Village, it was a log cabin with electricity but no plumbing. I paid local high school boys $5 a barrel to haul crystal clear drinking water directly from the Chandler River. From there, I came into town only at Christmas time. The next year, at Steven's Village, I had an apartment adjoining the school and it boasted electricity and indoor plumbing. From there I made it into town three times."
"Wow. A real gadabout!"
He did have a sense of humor, and he was trying to show them a pleasant evening. His eating habits seemed to lean toward beef and he enjoyed a huge chunk of prime rib, rare, served with soup and salad. Every time the waitress came by, it seemed his coffee cup needed filling. Funny how attentive a waitress can be to a handsome man.
"What's on the agenda for tomorrow?" he asked. "That may be the last day that I have much spare time. Maybe a little sightseeing."
Rose Lynn hadn't considered him a part of any agenda she had planned for Sunday, and she surely didn't intend to take him sightseeing.
"Sorry, but I'm going to be busy tomorrow. I have to run out to the base after church to pick up some student grades, then get reports typed for all their units. With both morning and afternoon classes, I have 40 of these to type. Surely you'll still be around for a while."
He hadn't indicated how long he planned to be in Fairbanks.
"Say, here's an idea," he said. "I'd like to see the base. How about my tagging along? Promise to stay out of your way while you work. There wouldn't be a problem of getting on the base would there?"
She hesitated, but unable to come up with a quick excuse, she gave in.