Target Iditarod Teacher on the Trail^™ Racers

by Jane Blaile

It's a lot of fun being here in Nome to see the finishers. The festivities last for days. The town offers a wide variety of special Iditarod week events, such as a native craft fair, basketball tournament, 3-dog sled races, and Girl Scout pancake breakfasts. I will definitely try to do as many of those as I can!

Today brought in another round of finishers. Yes, the crowds of cheering fans have diminished, and that is unfortunate. Now, mushers will get a focused group of people waiting and cheering for them, the people who are close to and mean a lot to them included. It's emotional to see them being greeted by wives, children, friends, etc. There are long hugs and big smiles. One notable finish was when Sebastian Schnuelle slid into the chute just feet in front of Zack Steer. It was somewhat important in that it delineated Sebastian as in the top 10, and Zack not. Later, Rick Swenson came in 12^th. That's so good for him because his last 2 races he placed 25^th and 26^th.

I missed Jessie's finish. That's because I was flying down the river on the back of Jeff's snow machine! He invited me to go along with him, so I did. I put on all my layers and drug out the Arctic mittens. Boy, was I glad I did! We had to race down the trail to catch up with Jessie Royer and then zip on a bit further to find Dee Dee. It was a ton of fun, but honestly, I was holding on as tightly as I could, and still felt like I was about to bounced off a couple of times. And when we stopped, I saw that I was frosted with snow

It is such a different world out there on the trial. The mushers and the team move quietly; all you hear are gentle commands, dogs breathing, and sled runners sliding along. It is really quite peaceful.

We zoomed back toward the finish, launched up a snow bank, stopping just beside Front Street. We jumped off in time to see Dee Dee enter the chute. Very cool!

writing assignment: study the various words that describe our movement on the snow machine. Pick an overused action verb such as: say, talk, walk, lift, look, and use a thesaurus to make a list of more descriptive synonyms for it.

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