Dr. Tim, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iditarod

Let's back up: Tim and I drove to Two Harbors, Minnesota Tuesday to pick up our friend Colleen Wallin, who is helping us drive up to Anchorage, flying back to Minnesota, flying back up again and then helping us drive home. She is as strong as an ox, sings like a bird and just finished her rookie UP 200, shortly after finishing sixth in the Beargrease Marathon while suffering from the stomach flu. This woman is tough as nails.

So besides Colleen, we brought Professor, Mr. Kite, Eleanor, Penelope, Sexy, Toonces, Scatman, Buddy, Sadie, Steve, Husky, Laguna, Spots, More Spots, Henry and Top along for the ride. Some are veterans and a few have never even ran a race or rode in a car before, but they're all eating, drinking and wagging their tales and that's what makes a successful dog team. That being said...

All this to-ing and fro-ing is going on, of course, because Tim is running the Iditarod this year. He'd vetted the race a few times, but never really expressed an interest in running it, so when he called me to the computer this fall to look at their website ("HEY! Check out who signed up for the Iditarod!"), I felt as though I'd been hit square in the back of the head with a 2 x 4; I knew our home would become an ant farm of preparation in the ensuing months. But Tim felt this was the year to do it and the stars were lined up just right, so who am I to tell him it's not the dawning of his age of Aquarious?

Suffice it say, then, that this fall and winter have been a wasps' nest of activity and a few weeks ago was the Taj Mahal of wasps' nests. We had to prepare 2 or 3 drop bags for the 22 or so checkpoints along the trail and they have to be in Anchorage by a certain date or they just don't go and you're up a creek, literally, with nothing. Tim made umpteen "mental" lists of what he wanted at each checkpoint based on his run/rest schedule, the terrain and a hundred different variables and finally resorted to having Emily (our daughter-in-law) make up spreadsheets to sort the whole mess out. For an entire week we spent our evenings in the garage loading ointments and instant coffee and boot liners and dog jackets and powders and zip ties and you name it in bags that went into bags that were precisely labeled and guess what? When all was said and done and on the barge to Anchorage, we realized he will have to wear the same underwear for the entire race or think outside the box (not to be taken as a euphamism). What a thing to forget.


So here we are. Fear grew into anticipation and then excitement, and now I find myself in a hotel room in Whitehorse, Yukon Territiories, typing while Tim and Colleen run dogs on a leg of the Yukon Quest trail.