Why dog sled racing is a better sport than golf

This morning I had to listen to stories about Tiger Woods’ return to golf and the Masters’ Tournament. It was on the morning news. Then I got out of bed, turned on my computer, went to the home page of the Anchorage Daily News and learned that Lance Mackey again won the Iditarod. It got me thinking.

Why is dog sled racing is a better sport than golf even though it receives so much less attention from the press?

First off is the strongest argument, I think. I know nothing about Lance Machey’s sex life and could I bet I can find out more details about his dog breeding than about his own. That is as it should be. A search on Google for “Tiger Woods sex” and “Lance Mackey sex” return 16,100,000 and 37,800 results respectively. The first page listed for the Mackey search is a sports news page that mentions Tiger. The second one is about his dogs. So I was right. Dog breeding is news worthy since it affects the strength of upcoming teams; human breeding attempts are not news.

Women compete directly with men. There’s no separate league for women. Alaska’s motto used to be “Where men are men and women win the Iditarod.” The sport always has several top female competitors from Libby Riddles, to Susan Butcher, Dee Dee Jonrowe, Jessie Royer, and so many others. There are even husbands and wives who compete in the same race.

Dogs are infinitely more interesting than golf clubs. I don’t think any golfer has ever had anyone ask permission to pet his or her clubs. Nor are there many fans out there taking photos of clubs. They are famous in their own right. Dogs even get their own awards. For the Iditarod they can win the Golden Harness Award, for example. Clubs don’t bark and jump around and show their own excitement for the sport. Now I will admit that no golfer has had to walk miles to track down a loose club nor has to scoop up gallons of golf club excrement every week.

Locations are more interesting. Mushers, even in local races, travel trails not often seen by others. Augusta, Georgia or the Yukon River, which is more fascinating and has a richer history? Do any golf tournaments commemorate anything historic, let alone something like the 1925 serum run to Nome?

Competitors wear better clothing. Many will argue with me over this one. But I think parkas patched with duck tape are more fun to look at than plaid pants. I prefer the Taco Bell logo plastered over Dee Dee’s butt to the Nike swish on a cap.

The action is more exciting. Watching excited dogs and exhausted mushers or watching people follow a ball around, which would you choose any day of the week?

The fans are more fascinating. Does anyone wear eccentric clothing to golf tournaments? I mean fun and eccentric clothing. Mushing fans stand around for hours waiting in the freezing cold and have been known to be served donuts cooked in bear fat (at the Beargrease). They serve as volunteers and suffer with freezing temperatures, long drives, boredom, smelly dog booties, hungry mushers, and tired vets. Golf fans might only stand in the rain, drinking espresso.

The competitors have better stories. I mean this year there was a Jamaican, Newton Marshall, racing the Iditarod. And you can’t just enter that race without finishing other races to qualify. He may have trained in Jamaica on a wheeled sled pulled by stray dogs from a local shelter, but he managed to finish the Yukon Quest. Remember when Colonel Norman Vaughn was racing in his 80s? How about mushing families with multiple generations of competitors and winners? Dick, Rick, and Lance Mackey have all been winners. Martin Buser named his son Rohn after an Iditarod checkpoint and the son is also a musher. And who can resist someone like Herbie Nayokpuk, “The Shishmaref Cannonball.”

An seven course meal cooked by a famous chef on a cook stove is a lot more tantalizing than another silver cup. And the winner hasn’t even had to finish the race yet. In fact, the winner might not be the ultimate winner of the race. Now that keeps things interesting. There are also almost always awards for sportsmanship and for dog care.

I rest my case. But I’d love to hear your opinions.

Small town girl

Originally posted March 6, 2010 and somehow lost.

You can go home again. Everything just looks so much smaller and March is probably not the best time to go. But I had a great time seeing my little home town again and showing parts of it to my husband who wasn’t even alive during the years I was there.

I grew up in Roseville, Illinois, population around 1,100 in the late 60s and early 70s. Don’t think hippies and free love. Girls wore their shirts super short. A few babies were born to high school kids. I’m sure some sons went to Vietnam; there were no protests. I think some kid died from inhaling Bactine fumes. But I don’t think flower power really made much of an impact here. My older sister might remember things differently. I recall it as a very quiet and safe time.

Mostly I remember riding with my sister as she drove our donkey around town, and biking with my friends to one of the ice cream shops in town. These opened and closed regularly, but there was always at least one in town. I remember walking the railroad tracks with the dogs and picking wild strawberries. I remember jumping out of the haymow. I remember walking through back yards to get to school. And I remember the great fun of the county fair held in the local park where we showed our ponies for 4H, where Mom sold her heavy-on-the-vinegar “church slaw” at the food tent, and where you could ride the Scrambler.

Some things haven’t changed. The small library is still there and has regular hours. The elementary school serves fewer grades and probably fewer students, but the playground hasn’t changed much. The seats of the swing sets have been replaced, but the dangerous ocean wave and the slides are still there. The one with wooden sides that Jalaine slid over the side of and got a huge splinter just before my very first attempt at going down myself is gone. The field were Candy and I were allowed by the boys to play soccer with them is still there, but so much smaller. My favorite tree with the exposed roots is gone. There was too much snow to know if you can still find fossils in the gravel around the basketball hoops.

Downtown still boasts most of the buildings I used to peddle my bike past. But commerce has dried up. There’s no dime store, no jewelry story, no whatever other stores were there that didn’t interest me as a kid. I didn’t even see a grocery store. But the bowling alley is still there, as is the roller rink where my parents met.

The house I grew up in is still there, but changed. The porch is enclosed, trees have died and been removed, the balcony and widow’s walk are gone, the slate roof and one chimney are gone. Those last two make great sense. I remember rain sliding down the wall of my bedroom and dripping onto my sister’s head in hers. And the chimney in the kitchen held an oven that Mom covered with a quilt in the winter to keep the cold from coming in too readily. Barn cats, horses, rabbits, and iris are also all missing. But the pump where I had to strip down to my underwear so Mom could wash the mud pies off of me is still there. And so is the clothes line, the barn and the well cover.

The best part of the visit was returning to my neighbor’s home. It, too, has changed greatly. But I remembered the parlor where they always had the tallest of Christmas trees and the porch we crawled under and almost set on fire, and the fireplace which has grown so small and short. And the little girl tormented by her older siblings and by me was there with a huge smile and great hospitality. I rang the doorbell but no one heard and I thought about just going in the back door and hollering like I did as a kid. But luckily Linda saw me pointing out changes in the yard and lot next door. We reminisced and looked at photos and I enjoyed the time immensely. Her mother, the lady who used to give us snacks and let us dig up half the yard for our Matchbox cars, also greeted me warmly. HabMoo was a good sport and listened and took the house tour with us.

No trip to rural Illinois would be complete without a catfish dinner. I couldn’t convince HabMoo to order any, but he did share the “world famous” onion rings from Club 41. And, as you can see by the photo, I got a real catfish dinner. The stuff you get anywhere else, except oddly enough in Oklahoma City, is not made correctly and usually features a catfish caught too large. I can get good sow belly around here, but not good catfish.

I loved growing up in this small town. When we’d visit after moving away we’d sit as a family on the front porch of MeMe and Papa’s, like many of the neighbors, and wave at the other neighbors out biking around town. I loved having the freedom to wander and am thankful for the adults who chewed me out when I did something exceptionally stupid. I knew my friends’ families and they knew mine. As as adult, knowing that everyone knows your business probably isn’t so great, but as a child it’s secure. I’m thankful that we moved away and I got the advantages of going to a good school in an urban area where I could see plays, attend a symphony, watch African dancers, etc. But I grew up among the cornfields and no stories worthy of the nightly news. That shaped me more than I sometimes realize and I’m grateful. I love my home town.

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Small town living

As a reminder for the next time he comes home

HabMoo was at Fort Gordon for 14 weeks learning how not to lead. He missed holidays and my birthday. Now he’s home and I want to recall how the end of this first week feels for the next time he’s deployed or off for weeks of training.

It’s not the relief and joy I expected. Is has been both of those things, but not today. Today things just feel wrong and out of sync. By next week I’ll probably forget the frustration of today. So I’m recording this so I won’t be surprised or alarmed the next time.

He’s in the way. That’s what it really boils down to. Months of living alone means taking over all the space in the house. It means creating a new rhythm and routine. It means being able to ignore your own messes. And it means a new routine. For example, I miss the nightly phone calls. They were something I looked forward to every day. Now he wants to talk when he gets home from work and its time to eat. It used to be time to think about dinner and anticipate his call.

It’s funny how while he was gone I would make sure to unplug the coffee maker because it bothered him if I left it plugged in. It doesn’t bother me a bit. But I unplugged it as a reminder of his presence. I did not lock the doorknobs or close all the curtains like he did and like he’s doing now. I’ve cursed him just a little when having to use my key twice at the door–once for the deadbolt and for for the knob. No big deal really, and something easily adapted to. Like I said, in another couple of days I’ll forget that it even bothered me. It’s just that today it does.

One of the things I really looked forward to was just having him in the house, being able to talk to him whenever I wanted, receiving a caress as he walked by, simple familiarities. I’m enjoying that but I’m also having to adapt to things like him getting up earlier than I want to and being in our tiny kitchen when I am. The stuff I miss and the stuff that bugs me are very much related.

I feel like the wife who complained constantly about her husband’s snoring and then couldn’t fall asleep after he died because it was too quiet.