Posted on 03/08/2023 11:19:50 AM PST by Morgana
t was 11 degrees when Nicolas Petit and his team of 12 dogs roared into the checkpoint at Nikolai a little before 7 a.m. Tuesday, the sky beginning to stain with a slow orange sunrise over the south fork of the upper Kuskokwim River.
Then, he did something unusual this early in the race: he declared he’d be taking his mandatory 24-hour rest, just 263 miles into the nearly 1,000-mile race route.
Wiley mushers will sometimes “declare” they are taking their 24 at a checkpoint to start the clock, then change their minds and head up the trail to take their daylong rest elsewhere — a hedging-of-bets kind of maneuver. But Petit appeared committed, asking for a long-term parking spot in the dog lot. And by Tuesday afternoon, more than nine hours after he first arrived, he had not budged.
“That’s kinda big news,” Iditarod Insider’s Greg Heister said from Nikolai on Tuesday morning. “It appears that Nic may be seriously considering staying here for his 24-hour rest. We haven’t seen that out of a winning team since 1992.”
Through the 1980s and into the first years of the 1990s, mushers typically took their big rests earlier in the race, often at Rohn. In 1992, Martin Buser pushed the envelope by driving all the way to Nikolai to take his 24-hour rest and won that year’s race.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
I forgot who has the Alaska ping...I will be posting today
The Annual Madonna Memorial Race.................
The what?
The Annual I-Did-A-Rod......................
WAW WAW WAAAAW
*grown*
The Huskies are cute...Madonna, not so much anymore. She’s strange and freaky.
She’s strange and freaky.................When was she not?...................
Point well taken.
😜👍..................................
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