Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (90 page)

As Pony Express riders had done decades earlier across the American West, mushers and their dogs were waiting and ready at relay stations that had been built along the trail. Over the next four days, 20 dogsleds took turns hauling the serum to Nome. Frostbite was common in the drivers and one reportedly needed hot water poured over his hands at the end of his run in order to unfreeze his gloved hands from his sled. Several dogs died of cold and exhaustion along the way, but four days later the first batch of emergency serum arrived in Nome.

In addition to commemorating the 1925 “Serum Run,” the first race was also intended to celebrate Alaska’s centennial, revive a near-dead sport, and generate enough publicity for the Iditarod to receive National Historic Trail status. The gambit worked. Dogsled racing was back, and the Iditarod Trail was designated as one of 19 National Historic Trails.

Although the creators of the race, Dorothy Page and Joe Red-dington, had sponsored a much shorter 56-mile competition in
1967 and another in 1969, the first 1,100-mile Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome took place on March 3, 1973. Thirty-five sled teams started, and 22 completed the race. It took Dick Wilmarth, the winner that year, 20 days to get to the finish line.

Getting ready for the Iditarod can be a full-time job. Besides training dogs into a seamless team, mushers have to raise money for huge quantities of dog food, vet bills, and equipment. Most obtain multiple sponsors, as does the race itself.

The rules are pretty loose about what kind of “sled or toboggan” can be used, only that it has to be big enough to haul injured or fatigued dogs, it must have a braking device that doesn’t extend beyond the back of the sled runners, and it can’t be equipped with sails or wheels. The rules are much more specific about what has to be
inside
the sled: an arctic parka, eight extra booties for each dog, a heavy sleeping bag, an axe, snowshoes, a pot, a cookstove and enough fuel to boil three gallons of water, food for both musher and dogs, and promotional material provided by the race organizers. Competitors may have extra sleds dropped off along the route, as long as they don’t use more than three different sleds during the race.

To qualify, mushers must have competed in three approved long-distance races of 300 miles or more and never been convicted of animal neglect or abuse. They also need money—in 2009 the organizers lost a major sponsor, causing them to raise the entrance fee from $3,000 to $4,000 and drop the total prize money 35%.

The entrance fee, it turns out, is only a small part of the cost of competing in the race. Additional costs typically include $50,000 for a year’s supply of dog food and care during training, and $7,000 for race supplies (food and supplies for dogs and mushers along the route). In addition, there’s the cost of transportation, which can be significant for a person coming from the lower 48 states with sleds and a dozen big dogs.

During a ceremonial welcome dinner that takes place the night before the race, the contenders draw for starting positions. But being in the front at the beginning isn’t necessarily an advantage.
Although organizers “break” the trail with snowmobiles before the race begins, storms can drop new snow, and wind can blow drifts across the path. As a result, dogs at the front may expend energy creating an easier path for those behind them.

The race begins with a ceremonial “start” in Anchorage that doesn’t really count. It gives crowds and TV cameras a chance to see the racers and the dogs, creating excitement around the world for a sporting event that’s measured in weeks. (The Anchorage event is a ritual many contestants would prefer to skip, because the crowds can agitate and distress their dogs, who are more used to wide-open expanses than big cities.) The next day, the competitors reconvene in nearby Willow for the actual start. The race used to start in Wasilla, but that changed permanently in 2008 because of a lack of snow in recent years.

It would be an impossible mess if all the dogsleds lined up at a long starting line and took off at the same time. To avoid tangled leads and snarling dogs, racers leave at two-minute intervals in the order that they drew at the welcome dinner. To balance out the staggered starts, officials adjust the leaving times from the first 24-hour mandatory layover. Any penalties—up to two hours per infraction—are also added during the mandatory layovers.

In even-numbered years, the race takes a northern branch of the Iditarod Trail for a distance of 1,112 miles; in odd years, a southern branch measuring 1,131 miles.

Who has the right of way if one sled overtakes another? Surprisingly, the one behind. The one in front must stop the dogs for up to one minute and let the other pass. More rules: Mushers—and dogs—are subject to random drug testing throughout the race. Also, a musher blood-alcohol level above .04% is grounds for disciplinary action.

And yes, dog drivers really do say “Mush!” (That’s why they’re called mushers.) The command, the equivalent of “Giddyup!”, came from a misunderstanding. French fur trappers riding on dogsleds across the Canadian snow shouted
Marchons!
(“Let’s go!”). Obscured by the ever-present sound of barking dogs, English speakers heard “Mush on!” When they trained their own dogs, they shortened the command to “Mush!”

A good dogsled, tricked out with a harness, gang lines (the leashes that hold the dogs together), and a snow hook (the Arctic equivalent of an anchor), can cost $600 or more. Cold-weather dog booties cost $1–2 per paw. They’re designed to protect paws from cold and “ice balling” between the toes while still allowing dogs to feel the terrain as they run. Made of cloth, they tend to need replacing every 100 miles.

Mushers aren’t allowed to use any navigational or communication device beyond 19th-century technology. A watch, magnetic compass, pencil, map, and math skills are allowed; cell phones, GPS devices, night goggles, and speed/distance calculators are not. One exception: Mushers are allowed to carry emergency devices that broadcast a signal if they need help; however, it is their last resort, because at the moment they push the signal button, they are disqualified from the race.

Iditarod racers represent a wide range of abilities and skill levels, which sometimes sparks conflict. At the top are the genuine contenders, the serious athletes, one of whom is almost certain to win. In the middle are the less experienced or less skillful contenders, who vie to place in the top 30 and win some money. At the bottom? The ones who just hope to finish: the inexperienced, the old-timers past their prime, and the amateurs, usually from the lower 48 states, who want the experience of running in the famous race and the bragging rights that come with it. The members of this last category are most likely to take unwise risks and get into life-threatening situations that require rescue by emergency snowmobile or airplane.

About 1,000 dogs make the run each year. Siberian Huskies, Samoyeds, and Alaskan Malamutes have been bred over centuries for the job of pulling sleds. They are comfortable buried in snow, and they sleep with their tail over their nose for extra insulation. They are still the engines that power most dogsleds in the Iditarod.

An Iditarod dog team must consist of 12–16 dogs at the beginning
of the race. Those dogs must be either on the towline or, if injured or exhausted, hauled in the sled until the next “dog-drop” site at a checkpoint. At least six of the original dogs must be pulling the sled’s towline at the finish of the race. What happens to the dogs that are dropped off at the drop sites? They’re transported by air to a prison in Eagle River, where inmates take care of them until their owners claim them.

At least one dog has died in almost every Iditarod race. The worst ever: 1985, when nine dogs died. To try to prevent that from happening again, organizers require certificates of dog health before the race, and rest stops and veterinary checkpoints during. However, in 2009’s run, six dogs died along the course as the weather turned unusually cold. This may be the beginning of a trend. Because winter weather has been warming in Alaska, some racers have begun gambling on dog breeds that are faster or stronger, but not quite as cold-resistant as the traditional breeds.

• The first 30 finishers get a share of the prize money. Total purse for for 2010: $610,000. Any finisher after the 30th gets a consolation award of $1,049 to help get them and their dogs home.

• The most finishers at the end of a single race: 77 in 2004.

• Fastest winning time: 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, and 2 seconds, by Martin Buser in 2002.

• Slowest winning time: 20 days, 15 hours, 2 minutes, and 7 seconds, by Carl Huntington in 1974. (Delays from weather conditions can make a huge difference in the race.)

• First woman to win the race: Libby Riddles in 1985. (Susan Butcher won the race four times—in 1986, ’87, ’88, and ’90.)

• Often, the winner is hours ahead of the second-place competitor. That wasn’t true in 1978, when two men raced to the finish neck and neck. At the end, Dick Mackey finished first, one second ahead of Rick Swenson.

• Slowest competitor ever: John Schultz, who arrived at the end of the 1973 race after 32 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes, and 1 second.

• Organizers keep a red lantern burning at the finish line until the last competitor arrives. The lantern is then extinguished and presented to the last musher to finish.

The movie poster for the 1976 film
Rocky
had the tagline “His
whole life was a million-to-one shot.” It turns out that the
real
million-to-one shots took place behind the scenes.

If you’re old enough to remember when the sleeper hit
Rocky
arrived in theaters in November 1976, you may also remember how quickly the film’s star, Sylvester Stallone, burst from obscurity to become a major Hollywood star. Before
Rocky,
not many people had heard his name; then, overnight, everyone was talking about his performance as Rocky Balboa. Suddenly the whole world knew who he was.

Though Stallone may have seemed like an instant success, he had struggled for years to make a name for himself as an actor, first in New York and then in Hollywood. But few casting directors had been able to see past his swarthy looks and muscular build to give him decent roles. On those rare occasions when he actually did land a part in a film, he was invariably cast as the heavy—in Woody Allen’s 1971 film
Bananas,
he plays a thug who attacks an old lady on the subway; in the 1975 film
The Prisoner of Second Avenue,
he plays a man that Jack Lemmon mistakes for a pickpocket. And when he finally got his first supporting role, in the 1974 film
The Lords of Flatbush,
he was cast as yet another thug.

As Stallone was turned down for good parts in one film after another, he came to believe that the only way for him to get a good movie role was to write it himself. He was particularly inspired by the 1969 cult film
Easy Rider,
starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. Stallone didn’t think much of the screenplay, which was written by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern. But he figured that if something as flawed as the
Easy Rider
screenplay could find its way onto the screen, he could write something as good (or better) and it, too, would have a decent shot at getting made into a film.

Stallone quickly learned that screenwriting is a lot more difficult
than it looks. His earliest scripts were so bad that he never tried to sell them.
Cry Full and Whisper Empty in the Same Breath,
for example, was about a rock musician whose career is destroyed by his insatiable craving for bananas.

As he gained experience, the quality of his work improved.
Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy,
and other films of the period were dark and filled with doomed antiheroes—in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, there was a lot to be pessimistic about, and these films fit the public mood. Stallone did his best to produce a gloomy script that the major Hollywood studios would buy, but at some point he realized that the only reason he was writing such negative stories was that they were popular, not because he was really interested in them. Besides, with every screenwriter in Hollywood producing these sad stories by the bushel, there was very little in Stallone’s screenplays that was unique, original, or interesting.

Stallone’s own taste in films was more old-fashioned: He liked uplifting movies with
heroes
—films where the central character is a noble figure who, when challenged, struggles and wins in the end. Such films had been popular in the 1930s and ’40s. Director Frank Capra, for example, spent most of his career making feel-good films like
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
(1936),
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939), and
It’s a Wonderful Life
(1946), and he had won six Academy Awards for his efforts. But by the mid-1970s, such films were decidedly out of fashion and dismissed as “Capra-corn.”

Stallone decided to write one anyway. He wanted to build a story around a theme that was close to his heart: a common man’s battle for recognition, dignity, and self-respect. But he didn’t think his own life story, that of an actor who has trouble landing parts, and a screenwriter who has trouble selling scripts, would make for a very compelling tale. He had to find a better angle.

Then in early 1975, Muhammad Ali, the reigning World Heavyweight Champion boxer, announced that he would be fighting an unknown fighter named Chuck Wepner, a.k.a. “The Bayonne Bleeder,” a nickname he earned from all the cuts (and more than 300 stitches) he’d received over the course of his 51-fight career. Wepner would be no match for Ali; both Wepner and the champ knew it. But Ali was looking for an easy fight (and a quick
$1.5 million paycheck) between his more serious title challenges, and Wepner was happy to take the $100,000 he was offered, which was more than 10 times what he’d ever been paid for a fight. For the first time he could afford to train for a fight full-time, instead of just on weekends and before or after work.