One Man's Alaska

2011 Iditarod News (March 8, 2011): When I was without electricity earlier this morning, I was able to read on my phone that Lance Mackey was down to twelve dogs, and I was concerned that something really bad had happened. Now I'm glad to read some quotes from Lance Mackey about his dogs, and what has happened.

Here's a quote from the story on the Anchorage Daily News website:

... three dogs weren't pulling or eating well. They seem sore, Mackey said.

Iditarod Standings, March 8, 2011: Now that my power is back on ... I read on my iPhone this morning that something happened with Lance Mackey, and he is down to using twelve dogs. In the current standings he's fallen back to sixth in the 2011 Iditarod race, and Mitch Seavey (one of my favorites) has moved up to seventh place.

Yikes, half of my apartment electrical power has been out all day, including power to my computer systems. I was baking some tollhouse cookies in the over this morning, and next thing I knew, all the lights were out.

Fortunately I have a UPS system connected to my computer, and it kept it from any damage. The electrician showed me what happened about twenty minutes ago: A breaker switch outside exploded. He said the lights flickering right before the outage had to do with some arc-ing in the breaker before the explosion.

2011 Iditarod Race News: Digging around between the Official Iditarod website and the Official Iditarod Race Guide, I've reproduced the table below of the Iditarod race checkpoints and the distances between the checkpoints.

There are a couple of differences in the Iditarod checkpoint distances between the website and the guide, so I've used the distances from the official website wherever there was a discrepancy. I'll try to figure out which source of information is correct.

2011 Iditarod race standings: Four-time defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey took the lead in the 2011 Iditarod race on the run from Skwentna, Alaska to Finger Lake, and then left Finger Lake 15 minutes ahead of Robert Bundtzen. This is according to the Anchorage Daily News website.

2011 Iditarod photos: I just ran across this photo from my Iditarod photos collection, and couldn't resist adding a caption to it. If you've ever seen the movie Up!, or just tried to train a dog, I hope you find it funny also.

Yours in funny 2011 Iditarod sled dog photos,
Al

Lance Mackey 2011 Iditarod news - Some times you're just in the right place at the right time. Here's a video of four-time Iditarod Champion Lance Mackey taking off from the starting gate at the 2011 Iditarod Restart in Willow, Alaska, on March 6, 2011:

2011 Iditarod photos: I spent a lot of time watching the Iditarod sled dog handlers today, and after seeing a lot of sled dogs coming out of their trucks, I was curious what the inside of the trucks looked like. So, after some serious wandering around I found these photos.

First, here's one sled dog in the process of getting back into its truck:

2011 Iditarod photos: I just got back from my first-ever Iditarod start, the 2011 Iditarod restart in Willow, Alaska, and despite having a little cold myself, it was a blast. The weather was terrific, and I'm very glad I went.

I'll try to start trickling some of my favorite photos out here, and hopefully some videos as well. I happened to be at the Iditarod starting line right when Lance Mackey was taking off, and I hope some of that video works out well.

I'm a little behind schedule, but nonetheless, I am getting my new computer programming and web design business set up in Palmer, Alaska this month. The business is currently named Mat-Su Valley Programming. The reason for the delay is that some of my websites are doing so well, I need to upgrade my web servers to keep up with the increasing traffic. The devdaily.com website gets millions (and millions) of page views every year, so it's usually the big one, but my other websites are doing very well also.