The Iditarod, while not a spectator sport of any kind, definitely has a strange grip on the minds of most Americans. People see it as the ultimate endurance test, man versus nature, and whatever other crazy Jack London style crap you can think of. It also can severely warp your wind if you're actually competing in it, since mushing dogs for a week in the bitter cold will do that to you. Let's have current Iditarod leader (through 2/3 of the race) Lance Mackey tell us what it's like:
Fatigue can do funny things to long-distance mushers, Mackey said. On Thursday night, he was riding the sled and saw a girl sitting by the side of the trail doing something, probably knitting.
"She laughed at me, waved, and I went by her and she was gone," Mackey said of his hallucination. "You just laugh."
Uh, keep in mind this is all going on while these guys are trying to prevent themselves from getting lost in a barren desert of snow.If you think Mackey's story is unique, it isn't at all. A site for helping sled dogs has collected a few trippy moments that riders have experienced over the years. Here are some of the weirdest:
- "I was exhausted and had already begun to hallucinate during the last hour of traveling, seeing the small people of the woods, hearing low-flying airplanes in the middle of the night."
- "I've seen villages, freight trains and cabins that were not there"
- "I saw animals-a rock pile became a bison, a stump became a moose."
- "I was home from school, about 7 years old, standing in my grandmother's kitchen with my chin just about counter height, watching, smelling while Granny slathered a slice of homemade bread with bacon grease."
- "And then I began to hallucinate. I saw people standing beside the trail, never anyone I recognized. They talked and laughed among themselves like they were waiting for my arrival at a nonexistent checkpoint. I turned and as the light of my headlamp swept over them they stopped talking and turned their heads to stare at me as we passed. Sometimes they were back from the trail and I only heard voices, catching snippets of conversations, never any intelligible words, but I assumed they were talking about me."
Defending champ Mackey reaches Eagle Isle [AP]
The Low-Grade Acid that is the Iditarod [Deadspin]
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