Mike Dillingham - Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers - The Adventures of Balto, Back of the Pack, Honor Bound, Rivers

Quite unexpectedly, I’ve become caught up in the fever of mushing. Until a week ago I hadn’t been on the back of a sled since my cheechako race in 1978. I wasn’t even worrying about getting a full team together until this fall. Now that’s all changed and I can’t wait to get going.

Last week I took the four dogs Diana gave me on a 10-mile run over our local trails. Ron loaned me old Smith, his main leader, and I couldn’t have gotten lost if I’d tried, but it seemed like a glimpse into a magical world I’d only heard about. To watch and feel the dogs running smoothly and silently through the soft spring snow was like nothing I’d ever known. It seemed my odyssey to Nome was beginning on an auspicious note.

And now, just like that, I have a complete team for next year. My friend Bert Hanson, a longtime Iditarod pilot, has run the race twice (in 1990 and 1993) and is looking for a place to board his dogs for the next year or so. He’s not planning to run in 1995 because of an injury, and he has offered me the use of his dogs if I will look after them at Montana Creek. Ron agrees to this arrangement, since the dogs will technically be in his kennel.

Bert’s only proviso is that his daughter, Kim, can pick 10 of them to run the Junior Iditarod the week before the Iditarod itself. I readily agree, since the Junior Iditarod will serve as an excellent training run in its own right. Besides, Kim and some of her friends will come up on weekends to help with the dogs. Bert also agrees to help me out with sleds, ganglines, and lots of other important accoutrements I can’t even identify yet. I’ll still drop 6,000 bucks or so over the next year (maybe a lot more), but it could be worse: some people willingly pour 20 or 30 grand into a run to Nome.

But I have a sneaking suspicion I might be in this for more than one trip. I already look at the four dogs Diana gave me — Weasel, Blues, Eddie, and Bear — as something of a family (I’m not married). Everything is rapidly becoming much more complex than I first thought. It’s obvious I didn’t figure on my relationship and commitment to the dogs themselves. Nobody warned me about this, but I can’t see turning back now.

The coveted Iditarod belt buckle is awarded to mushers when they finish their first Iditarod. Mushers receive only one buckle no matter how many times they make it to Nome. The buckle cannot be bought or acquired anywhere else. There are many more Super Bowl or World Series rings than Iditarod belt buckles.

Every musher who makes it to Nome receives the distinctive Iditarod finisher’s patch. Unlike the belt buckle, mushers receive a patch every time they finish the race and can buy more if needed. However, only Iditarod finishers can receive or buy the patches.

For better or worse, I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’ve told everyone I’m going to run, and now it’s time to make it formal.

Ron and I made the trip to Iditarod Headquarters in Wasilla this morning for the first day of sign-ups for the 1995 race. Ron has agreed to run the race with me; he said he had so much fun he wants to do it again. However far into his cheek his tongue may have been, we’re both in line now with our $1,750 entry fees because we want to commit ourselves before we change our minds.

We’re in good company: Martin Buser is here, as are Diana Dronenburg and many top finishers from this year’s race. When I walk up to fork over my money to race director Joanne Potts, with whom I’ve worked for many years, she does a world-class double take: “I didn’t think you were really going to run!” she exclaims, as I produce the hard cash to back up my intentions.

As I pocket my receipt, it dawns on me I’ve really stepped off the deep end. Joanne certainly isn’t alone in her disbelief. I’m the last person anyone thought would run the race. In fact, I’m the last person I thought would run the race. But on the ride back to Montana Creek with Ron, the reality starts to sink in. I’d better learn how to spell m-u-s-h-e-r, because in a few months I’m going to have to be one.

Diana and Bruce are getting married today. I’ve known them both for a number of years and I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

They both ran the race this year, he with a team of her second-stringers mixed with some of Bert’s dogs, the same ones I’m now starting to train. Bruce ran the four dogs Diana has given me and they did quite well. Of course, Diana finished 19th and Bruce finished somewhere around 55th, but that wasn’t the point.

About halfway through the race, after Diana had pulled far ahead of Bruce, he proposed marriage to her on his knees on the runners of his sled — in front of a CNN camera team. His bended-knee plea became the talk of the race and got national news coverage for several days.

Diana was still on the trail and didn’t find out about it until she got to Nome a couple of days later. The CNN folks played back Bruce’s televised proposal for her in the finish chute under the burled arch. On national TV she accepted, and sent Bruce a fax at Unalakleet, 250 miles back down the trail, that simply said “YES!”

Since Bruce was an Iditarod Air Force pilot for some years, those of us in the IAF contingent at Unalakleet tried to think of something appropriate to do with Diana’s fax when we saw it come in. We considered dropping it to him while he was still on the trail from Kaltag, and even thought about changing the “yes” to “maybe” or something equally tantalizing. In the end, though, we just put it up on the bulletin board in the checkpoint, carefully folded to conceal its contents, and put Bruce’s name on it.

Anyway, today is the big day and the church is full of mushers, pilots, and other race people — a good cross-section of the Iditarod “family.” A Channel 2 news team is here and they get their camera’s worth when Diana comes down the aisle preceded by Ruby, her lead dog, who is decked out in a frilly lace harness. During the vows, Ruby steals the show as she wanders through the audience to everyone’s great amusement, apparently more interested in finding a handout than watching her owner get married.

The ceremony is over quickly and most of the wedding party repairs to the reception. The balance of the celebrants — namely, the race pilots — head for Lake Hood airport and seaplane base, where a multi-ship fly-by is quickly organized. I hop aboard a friend’s plane as a passenger since my big Cessna is based all the way across town. Once everyone is airborne and assembled into a loose formation, we head for the new municipal golf course, where the festivities are underway in the expansive clubhouse. As we roar over the tees and greens (scrupulously maintaining the appropriate altitude required by FAA regulations, of course) I can see a score of jerked putts, shanked drives, and one-finger salutes.

We zoom past the clubhouse in a manner to suitably arrest everyone’s attention and then pull up into a reasonable facsimile of the Air Force Thunderbirds’ “bomb burst” maneuver. After we return safely to terra firma (or aqua firma, as the case may be) and put the airplanes away, we rush back to the reception. A good time is subsequently had by all.