All Keyed Up and Now Must Sleep in Still Listening to Spirit

The Iditarod continues with Aliy Zirkle ahead of Jeff King very near the end of the trail. Aliy is in Safety, not very far from Nome and Jeff is out on the trail reportedly with a dog team that is refusing to budge...

The trail is now glare ice, on or near sea ice. A storm has blown up, visibility is not good. Aliy apparently passed Jeff on the trail and did not see him at all so was surprised to find he hadn't reached Safety, Alaska when she arrived. She is going to wait out the worst of the storm, rest and rest her dogs before making the final run for Nome.

Jeff reportedly spent an hour and a half untangling his dog team from some driftwood they ran into in the blowing snow and on the ice. When he got done with the untangling, the dogs refused to move.

This happens, they decide they are tired, or it is dangerous, or who-knows-what causes them to lay down, curl up, and ignore their musher. Hugh Neff's team did that the year before at White Mountain in the Yukon Quest race.

The local NBC station out of Anchorage has been running a crawl periodically all evening that they would interrupt programming to show the live finish of the race. Last crawl I saw at 11pm indicated they expected the first musher to arrive around 1am.

I checked FB and the website and got updated information from Alaska Dispatch news and it seems I will be safe in going to bed to sleep. I will, of course, check one more time all sources on the web to make certain I will not miss the finish if I do so.

We had about 12 inches of snow total over the past 48 hours. Wind blowing dandruff flakes around. It was hard to tell if I was seeing snow falling or just the same snow blowing around. It was fluffy enough that after Hub took the shovel to the accumulated overnight fall, I could keep up with it with a broom.

I awoke this morning wondering what the hell happened to the snow...warmer temps in the 40's plus some rain had washed it all off the deck, stairs, etc. The snow banks were greatly diminished also.

Tonight we were forecast another blizzard. However, it is raining huge raindrops coming down fast enough to soak the dogs and me between the front door, down the stairs, and into the garage. Hopefully the temps will stay up enough that the blizzard is just a rain. Either way it will be a mess as the ground is frozen and the water in the yard and on the drive has nowhere to go.

Hub discovered that the IRS had issued refund check on Friday and it was sent. Hurrah, now we just need to wait for the mail to get it to us. I am counting blessings even though the money is not yet in our hands. This week also Hub should get his first social security money.

We are far from out of the woods or caught up, but we can certainly relax a wee bit.

Oh, crawl on the TV still says they will break in with the live 'dramatic' finish as they expect the leader sometime after 1am. Well, it IS sometime after 1am, so I will end this, check the web, and decide on sleep.

Blessed be!

UPDATE: The wind blew Jeff and team into the driftwood! After untangling the dogs and resting a bit, Jeff decided to 'scratch' for his own safety and the safety of his dogs. He notified a passing snowmachiner who is helping him make his way to checkpoint Safety. Safety is 37 miles from Nome but Cape Nome is notorious for the wind and ground blizzards that are brutal and kill people.

Aliy dropped several dogs at Safety, was going to take off, thought better of it and is hunkered down until the wind abates. News reports are saying the race is 'shut down' for now. However, there are plenty of other mushers along the trail behind who are not being subjected to the winds (I believe, I didn't read this...) who are not shut down but possibly catching up.

So, I shall pray hard for the mushers on the trail, as I have since the start of the race, and try going to sleep. it's only 1:20am, I could get a good bit of sleep before dawn.