Iditarod 2014 is over...

 still have dog pictures to post but i think i'll split those in with more recent shots.  i never tire of dogs but that doesn't mean everyone else enjoys them.

 the last teams came in saturday and tonight they had their big banquet.

 tired today.  lots of shoveling and today walked with the pups in the snow.  not deep enough to snowshoe the main trail but still soft so it was like walking on a sandy beach.

 blossom had a great time out there.  she built up loads of snow balls.

 i was a sitter all night last night.  thankfully i had my kindle.  great little thing to carry around for just this such occasion.  reading Malala's book slowly on these nights.  i just load that one with non-fiction/technical so i can pick it up after weeks or months and continue on where i left off.

 it is tough to keep awake in a room where it's dark and you are trying to be totally quiet so that the person you are sitting with doesn't wake up...there is a reason you are sitting with them and if you wake them you may create quite a lot of work for yourself.  let sleeping psych lie i always say...i also say, you wake em you take em.

 lots of little hot flashes these past few nights.  i am getting the feeling these are cyclic...still preferred over the alternative. strange though.  our bodies are pretty odd things.  always evolving.

 so far a great year for dogs in the Iditarod.  that is always a relief.  hoping everyone travels safely back to their pre-iditarod homes.  it's a great deal of people in that small town.  so many volunteers make this run happen.  many of these volunteers fly in to Alaska year after year.  the mushers all had great things to say about the positive energy and support from the volunteers out on the trails

 that huge jet is still not found. very disturbing.  the families of those missing must be exhausted and devastated.  i can't imagine not knowing the fate of your loved one for so many days. most on board are from China.  who knows if they will ever have the answers they so need.

 the city plows were out this morning on my street.  they really do an amazing job out there...at least from my vantage point.

 chatted with my niece for a bit this morning before i crashed. i did warn her that if i started to not make any sense it was due to lack of sleep.  she's had a stressful year but seems to be doing quite well.  we are rewarded when we are able to adapt to the things that life throws our way.  many find themselves totally unable to adapt and as the years go on you can really see the impact it has on their lives.  life is change and you have to be able to roll with it.  the good, the bad and the ugly...eventually the good wins if you do i think.

 so many people stay in bad situations be it jobs, relationships, religions, friendships...you name it.  they stay due to fear of the unknown.  it's always been so odd to me that people will stay miserable for years out of fear, but that is what it is ultimately.

 fear is powerful.  i find in times of change i tend to be excited and nervous.  those first months or whatever are tough, but that passes.  you give up too much by not going through it to see what lies on the other side.

 life never seems to follow the course you seemed to think it would but again you have to adapt.  i always thought that was tough for my mom.  she'd somehow pictured in her mind how her life would be at this age or that age as a teenager and never seemed to adapt to what her life actually was.  just always had that bit of disappointment.  it was always a bit sad.  embrace the change.

 my life now is not at all what i envisioned when i was young.  i just assumed it would follow the cookie cutter path. it did anything but that.  i took the path less chosen and it has made all the difference.

 a 73 year old man was attempting to kill his wife of many years because she was planning on divorcing him.  i'd read about couples that were together for years and how more and more of them are divorcing rather than sticking it out.  the piece i was reading was saying people are living longer, healthier lives and that seems to be making people re-evaluate these marriages.  i mean if you are not happy at 60, do you really want to stick it out with this person for another 20+ years. i think too many, especially women, feel more empowered to leave.  they have more confidence that they can make it on their own...unless of course, their husbands attempt to kill them.  he had no criminal record...save it up for something big though.

 gets back to my point though of how folks are miserable and just stick it out, first for the kids and then cause it's become a habit and they are afraid of the change.

 people pity me for not being married or having kids. i would have done those things if they had come up as a good option.  being a single mom ultimately didn't appeal to me.  it's a lot of work by yourself.  i was never one to be feeling that desperation to have kids i guess.  have a lot of nieces and nephews so maybe i got my kid time in with them.  some days i'm curious as to how kids i raised would have turned out. in the end curiosity isn't enough reason to have a child and i suspect i would have done just fine as a parent.  better than some, less good than others.  it's a reasonable assumption.

loved Mitch Seavey's bit tonight, he was congratulating his son on the win and talking about Dallas and Aily being great mushers, then said something like "but i can't get used to being beat by women and children".  haha.  the Seaveys also took the Jr Iditarod...how many kids are in that family anyway.  Dallas, Danny and the kid that won the Jr iditarod..any more?

 "The Big Bang" has been renewed for 3 more seasons.  :-).  such a fun and easy to watch show.

 there was an article today with some interview from Hugh Neff.  Sebastian really reamed him.  he was claiming that he'd pushed the panic button and hours and hours went by without any sign of rescue.  the race officials have come out to say his SOS button was never activated.  he never pushed it.  it may be some mushers just turned it off for fear they would accidently hit it and end their race. if you activate it your race is over. it could also be Neff was in a state of hypothermia and thought he activated the things.  cold can make you crazy.  your brain doesn't work right with hypothermia.

 so neff was pushing the pushing the SOS button but it was never on.  ultimately, the Iditarod crew were watching out the old way.  time between checkpoints and now no gps movement.  they sent someone out to look for Neff as he was too long on the trail between the checkpoints.  they guy they sent saved his arse apparently, according to Neff. Hugh's girlfriend posted a scathing note on Facebook slamming the race officials for abandoning him out there.

 the thing is too, in Alaska weather you could push a button like that 1000 times and that doesn't mean anyone can get out to you.  if the weather is bad, the weather is bad.  like i said in the last post we had our time at Shuyak Island extended by 3 nights due to bad weather.  nobody was getting us.  we didn't conclude we had been abandoned.  it's just how it works. you have to be prepared and make decisions based on your own safety and his case the safety of the animals.  you can't rely on a button to just send some huge crew out to save you...up here you can't rely on 9-1-1 all the time either.  they can try, they can plan and organize a search but they can't actually go on one if the weather is too dangerous to travel in.

 thankfully, in the end he and his team didn't come to any permanent harm.  i think his girlfriend was out of line for posting her nasty remarks without really thinking it all through.  he didn't sound as scathing in this article in the ADN.

 several teams worried about being blown with their teams into open ocean water which would have meant fairly immediate death.  thankfully that never happened.  wind is nothing to fool with.  serious business.  you just get so cold that your ability to function mentally can really  be impacted.

 they interviews Aily for the paper today as well.  she was really worried when she got to safety and King wasn't there.  when he did show up she was relieved.  she expressed to him how happy she was to see him there safe and then he said that his dogs weren't there.  in time jeff returned with a crew to pick up his dogs, they were all okay thankfully.  she felt relaxed enough to take a short nap and kinda get herself together i guess. she woke when Dallas was seen coming in.  i guess conditions had improved enough his headlamp was visible in the distance.

 he came and went and she knew then it was much safer conditions out there.  she began the chase.  she said her "race" ended in Safety.  those last 22 miles were just a victory lap after having survived what she'd been through i think.  she had fun those last miles.

 she was close and came close to catching up to him, but that Dallas is fit and competitive.  he thought it was his dad, then he thought it was a snowmachine and then again he knew it was a team of dogs and he assumed it must be his dad so he kicked it up a notch.  she came in to Nome just minutes after he did.  he was visibly wiped from that extra push he gave to beat his dad.

 Aily pulled a hamstring when her leg got jammed in an iceberg, enough that it stopped her team.  she also got frostbite on her hand.  apparently her one pair of overgloves were in a tangled knot and when she unzipped her sled to get her other pair out the wind just grabbed them and off they went to sea.  end of that.

 saw this same group out there on the lake last year...kids are a bit older now

 was laughing today as there was an anonymous comment on a post of the iditarod from 2010.  it was pictures from the ceremonial start and i had headed the blog note as such.  this person just wrote, "the iditarod doesn't start in anchorage".  really?  haha.  people crack me up...so many need to be experts

 i am in not way an Iditarod expert, but i was aware that there is the fun run in Anchorage and then the restart in Willow the next day.  i do enjoy comments though.

 love all those long tongues.

 there is Karen in the background.

 will feel great to sleep all night tonight. need to get some crap done tomorrow.  monday walk will probably not be too well attended.  everyone is elsewhere.

 one of the twins.  both made it in.  strange that they didn't seem to travel as closely as it seems they usually do.  go figure.

well, my bed is calling me and i don't like to keep my bed waiting.