This year I
was also lucky enough to have 3 able bodied
assistants – last year I had Mark with his broken
leg and the year previous Janet Mattos with her
broken collar bone as my sole helpers – so things
moved right along.
The total this
year was 1489 lbs of stuff divided into 51 bags to
cover 20 checkpoints.
Stuff in there
includes –
-
over 450
lbs of Eagle Ultra kibble
-
over 528
individual frozen herrings
-
300 lbs of
lamb sausage
-
over 30 of
my meals (featuring shrimp Cajun pasta, penne
alfredo, shepherd’s pie, lasagna, banana bread,
summer sausage, tuna casserole and eggs &
sausage)
-
about 100
mini stretch gloves (thanks Deb and Lee!)
-
6 spare
headlamps
-
9
disposable cameras
-
16 spare
harnesses
-
9 bottles
of Mountain Ridge’s emu massage liniment
-
13
neckwarmers
-
23 pairs
of socks!
The list goes
on (and on actually) – but those are some of the
highlights!
Once sorted,
bagged and sealed up it was time to turn them over
to ITC folks. Each year I am overwhelmed by the
magnitude this task that Iditarod takes on. Each of
the 83 mushers in the race will deliver between 1200
and 2100 lbs of drop bags, each of those 83 teams
will have a bale of straw and HEET fuel waiting for
them in each checkpoint – and all the volunteers
will need food and supplies for the time they are
out at the checkpoints. That’s a lot of STUFF – all
ferried out to remote locations across the state.
Although the
USPS delivers a lot of the stuff, think of the
checkpoints like Rohn that are stocked by only the
ITC airforce. I’m told it takes over 20 flights into
that little airstrip just to get the 83 straw bales
in there. WOW!!!
Anyway, in
typically slick food drop style, we were backed into
an unloading bay, unloaded, bags weighed, sorted,
money paid and on our way in well under an hour.
More soon….
Karen
