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Rookie’s Journey – Ceremonial Start
May 1, 2006
Eric's dogs on
4th Avenue waiting for breakfast
before the Ceremonial Start. Photo
by Bonnie Foster |
The Ceremonial Start was just flat fun.
I had expected to be nervous just because I’m that type of person,
but Lexi Hill took care of all the details and everything went very
smooth.
The day actually began the night before. We intended to be on 4th
Avenue by 7:30 AM, which meant we left the house before 7 AM. That
would have us loading very excited, read noisy, dogs at 6 o’clock
in the morning. Not the best way to keep my neighbors happy. So my
daughter, Andi, loaded the 12 dogs we were running at 9 PM the night
before and they slept in their boxes. The first order of business
on 4th Avenue was to drop and feed the dogs breakfast. I have some
shy dogs and was worried about how they would handle the crowds and
excitement, but it never fazed them.
It was hard to pick the dogs that got to run the ceremonial start,
but after some thought we chose Bass and Lycos in lead followed by
Dash and Platinum in swing, Picard and Belle, Balu and Dijon, Dukat
and Sisco, and Mocha and Jewels in wheel. Dijon didn’t make
the race team, but he works so hard and has so much fun we let him
run the start. Keiko, Basil, and Rom didn’t get to do the start
because we’ve had some problems with them passing other teams
in the past and wanted a smooth start to the race.
Catered Breakfast
for R Northbound Dogs crew
provided by Trish and Dale Keefe. Life doesn't
get much better than this!
Photo courtesy of Jan DeNapoli |
Marti has a good friend Trish Keefe who,
with her husband, runs the restaurant at the Best Western Motel across
from the Millennium. Trish is a real Idita-nut and offered to cater
a breakfast for 20 for us on the Avenue. Man what a treat that was!
She had hot coffee, hot chocolate, juice, breakfast burritos, breakfast
biscuit sausage sandwiches, and fresh fruit at 7:30 in the morning.
So picture this situation. My daughter Dawn and her kids have flown
up from North Carolina, my sister-in-law Marietta has flown up from
Oregon, my good friend Jan has driven down from Two Rivers, Marti
is there, my fellow travelers in this journey, Lexi Hill and Jim and
Bonnie Foster are there, I’ve got my best four legged friends,
I’m surrounded by Iditarod friends and family, I’ve got
a catered breakfast, and I’m about to fulfill a dream to drive
a dog team down 4th Avenue in Anchorage. Lexi and Bonnie have taken
charge of all the details and all I have to do is schmooze and enjoy
myself. It just doesn’t get much better than this!
My Idita-rider was Terry Weaver, whose significant other bought him
the ride as a surprise 60th birthday present. She didn’t even
tell him he had a ride until they were on the airplane on the way
up. I asked her what she was going to do to top this!
Eric staging
to the starting line on 4th Avenue.
Idita-rider, Terry Weaver, is in the front
sled with one grandkid, the second grandkid is
in the tag sled with Bonnie Foster driving and
her husband Jim helping. Between our handlers
and the Iditarod handlers we had one
handler per dog. Photo courtesy of June Price |
One funny story, Bob Buntzen a good friend
and bib number 22, who has run 8 Iditarods, is parked across the street
from us (I had decided my bib number should match my age – 21
;-). The Iditarod staging coordinator hadn’t told us when we
were going to stage to the start line. You back up from that staging
time to schedule harnessing, booting, and hooking up dogs. Normally
you watch the person who starts ahead of you, but bib 20 was staged
at the opposite end of the side street from us and we couldn’t
see them. So Lexi asked Bob, the 8 time veteran, when he was going
to start getting his dogs ready so we could start a couple of minutes
earlier. Bob gave her an odd look at said two minutes after you do
of course!
3,2,1...and we
are off!
photo by T. Daily
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Lexi has worked the start many times
before, so she decided to “wing it”. As the start folks
came to get us, worried about getting a rookie to the line on time
we were ready and waiting to go.
Before I knew it we were at the starting line and they were counting
down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go – and off we went. The crowd was incredible
– everyone shouting and wishing us well – the dogs were
running like the proverbial Swiss watch. I might not have been the
fastest musher on 4th Avenue, but I sure had to be one of the happiest.
Eric coming down
Cordova Hill. Bass and Lycos in lead,
Platinum and Dash in Swing, Picard and Belle, Dijon
and Balu, Sisco and Dukat in team and
Jewels and Mocha in wheel.
Photo courtesy of Jan DeNapoli |
I worried a little about the corner where
you turn from 4th Avenue onto Cordova, but the dogs handled it like
pros. I wasn’t too worried about the culverts because we have
those at Beach Lake where we train, but the pedestrian bridges were
something new that the dogs had never seen before. You’d never
know it by the way the dogs ran. We crossed over Northern lights,
around Goose Lake and the campus then past the Native Hospital. People
had their race guides out and were cheering me by name, but then two
friends held up signs that said “Go Eric” and just blew
me away.
The dogs ran up the pedestrian bridge over Tudor like they had been
doing it all their lives, down the sidewalk and up a power line. There
were barbeques and the muffin stop along the power line – everyone
had a party in their back yard to celebrate the start. Being part
of that was very special. All too soon we were at Cambell Airstrip
and the ride was over. We said farewell to Terry and Kathy and had
started to unharness the dogs when Jeff King came in. Jeff is using
a long trailer (toy hauler) with inside loading dog boxes. The handlers
dropped the ramp to the trailer and Jeff drove the dog team inside.
It was one of the wildest things I have ever seen. As they unharnessed
the dogs, the dogs jumped into boxes and were snapped in. Jeff closed
the ramp / door and drove off. What a show to end the day.
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
© 2006 All rights reserved
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