Speaker 1: Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hi, and welcome to car Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Scott Benjamin, and I am also your host,
Speaker 1: Ben Boland. We are not alone. We are joined, of course,
Speaker 1: with our good friend Kurt Garn. Hello everyone, Holy smoked Scott,
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin. Is it good to see you man? You're back?
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that. It's good
Speaker 1: to be back. It's you kept the seat warm. We
Speaker 1: kept yeah, we kept the seat warm. We had a
Speaker 1: number of strange adventures, you know. Uh, Kurt and I
Speaker 1: are always getting into uh some some weird conversations. We
Speaker 1: learned about the Testlas cyber truck, which I would love
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on. One day we did a
Speaker 1: piece on the evolution of the El Camino, remember that one.
Speaker 1: That was a good one, like all caminos, you know.
Speaker 1: The thing that we got caught on was that the
Speaker 1: name of that translates to just the road. That's that's
Speaker 1: not too inspiring, and really, I mean and maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit, but uh, but yeah, it's it's good to
Speaker 1: be back. Anyway. I really appreciate it, and thank you
Speaker 1: guys for keeping the show a float here while I
Speaker 1: was gone. I really do thank you for that. And uh,
Speaker 1: just a quick explanation. I just took some time off
Speaker 1: to kind of get things pulled together in my own
Speaker 1: personal life. You know that Insomniac show that have been
Speaker 1: working on that. Uh, well almost said the word that's
Speaker 1: stuff is is real. Um, I was a kidding around that.
Speaker 1: Really I messed with my sleep, messed with my whole life,
Speaker 1: you know, from in here and outside of work, and uh,
Speaker 1: and it was a disaster. And I just took some
Speaker 1: time off to kind of pull some things together and
Speaker 1: get back in uh, in the right mindset to do
Speaker 1: this show and uh and be clear and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot more present here with you guys. And I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about getting back into car stuff and just
Speaker 1: making it the best show that we can. I'm really
Speaker 1: really happy to be back behind the mic. Likewise, you know,
Speaker 1: the powers that be would not have let me back
Speaker 1: onto the show if circumstances have been different. I kind
Speaker 1: it's snuck back in here, you know how Well it's
Speaker 1: a bit of a reunion for us, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, before it was Kurt and I and that
Speaker 1: was great, but then when I'm back here. It's like
Speaker 1: it feels comfortable again. It's like we never stopped doing
Speaker 1: the show that was years ago. Now it was a
Speaker 1: long long time ago, and we stopped doing that show together.
Speaker 1: But but we're here, we are again. We got Kurt
Speaker 1: joining us, who is fantastic, and we're all in this
Speaker 1: tiny little room staring at each other. There might be
Speaker 1: some awkward silence. You never know. We'll see what happens,
Speaker 1: but uh, it's it's I think it's a good team.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with this.
Speaker 1: Well said, Well said Scott. Indeed, So today's episode is
Speaker 1: fascinating because as you would establish, you know, uh you,
Speaker 1: Kurt and I have been doing some variety or subversion
Speaker 1: or iteration of this show for the better part of
Speaker 1: a decade and for a peek behind the curtain. Folks,
Speaker 1: long time listeners you'll know this, or anyone with your
Speaker 1: own podcast us. After about year five or six, on
Speaker 1: some shows, you start saying, well, you start forgetting what
Speaker 1: you we covered, you know, in previous episodes, and wondering
Speaker 1: what you're going to do. And Kurt, you recently you
Speaker 1: had a fantastic idea. There was such a good idea
Speaker 1: that I was convinced we had covered it before at
Speaker 1: some point in the past nine plus years. And I
Speaker 1: was wrong. We had never covered it, which baffles me.
Speaker 1: I think it baffled you two. Scott's surprising yet. So
Speaker 1: we decided that we would cover sleddog races, most notably
Speaker 1: the Iditarod in Alaska. Now, some people are gonna say,
Speaker 1: what the heck, this is car stuff, right, but if
Speaker 1: you remember car stuff of the past, we have always
Speaker 1: covered just about any form of transportation, just about everything really,
Speaker 1: and and the funny thing is that can even be
Speaker 1: spun off into other things, like I remembered yesterday. We
Speaker 1: we've even done like the Pinewood Derby cars time with
Speaker 1: Derby races, everything that floats, fly, swims or drives exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean every form of transportation. And I think this
Speaker 1: is the perfect time of year to talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: something like this, you know, some some way of getting
Speaker 1: around that maybe not everybody is familiar with. But it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating. I mean when you dig into it and
Speaker 1: how into uh you know, the sleds these people get
Speaker 1: into the dog teams, of course, they get um just
Speaker 1: the whole lifestyle that goes along with us, the history
Speaker 1: of it. It's all very rich, isn't it. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It's also one of those races, one of those events
Speaker 1: that takes us to the limits of what our bodies
Speaker 1: can like endure, and it takes us to the limits
Speaker 1: of what we call civilization. You're very much in the
Speaker 1: front here. I have either of you ever been to Alaska?
Speaker 1: I have you have? Okay, where'd you go? Well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you it's not you know, the wilderness experience that
Speaker 1: you might think. I I took an Alaskan cruise many
Speaker 1: years ago. This is probably seven years ago, that's right. Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I remember, and we did talk about this, so there
Speaker 1: and and you know, it goes to the usual reports.
Speaker 1: It was a celebrity brand cruise and we're not getting paid,
Speaker 1: don't worry. That's the celebrity brand cruise. So that tells
Speaker 1: you The ports that we went to, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember all of them, but it was like catch a
Speaker 1: can um gosh, I can't even Skagway was one. I
Speaker 1: know because I'll tell you this. When we went to Skagway,
Speaker 1: and we did go a little further north to but
Speaker 1: we went to Skagway, and one of the excursions that
Speaker 1: you could take and we did do this. One was
Speaker 1: to go to a dog sled training camp and I
Speaker 1: did that and we talked about that and it was fascinating.
Speaker 1: It was a you know, I don't know, maybe a
Speaker 1: forty five minute or an hour bus ride to get
Speaker 1: to this thing. You're seeing things like bald eagles on
Speaker 1: the way, and you know, it's just pristine, beautiful um
Speaker 1: Alaskan countryside, you know, my little boutanous you know, lots
Speaker 1: of trees and things like that. And it wasn't like
Speaker 1: a blizzard or anything like that. It was it was
Speaker 1: their off season. So they're in training camp, right and
Speaker 1: you get the opportunity to go and sit in a
Speaker 1: training dog sled and have them haul you for a
Speaker 1: one mile trek around this mountain course that they have
Speaker 1: and maybe should I hold onto this for later? Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about it right now? It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty quick. So at the time, if you remember when
Speaker 1: I got back from this, I was so fired up
Speaker 1: about this because it's almost like if you can picture
Speaker 1: a golf cart, like an elongated golf cart, so it's
Speaker 1: on wheels. Obviously, it's not on skis, and it has
Speaker 1: a kind of a runner in front, like a bump
Speaker 1: bump guard maybe or something like that. It's it's it
Speaker 1: holds six people sitting. There's seats kind of built into
Speaker 1: this thing. It's an aluminum frame, I believe, or metal frame.
Speaker 1: And then the musher would stand on the back and
Speaker 1: they have a dog team in front of you that's
Speaker 1: pulling and they pull in this this kind of mountainous,
Speaker 1: rocky road right and I'm sitting in this cart with
Speaker 1: you know, all these other tourists from the boat. And
Speaker 1: we're not small people, you know, we're adults. My daughter
Speaker 1: was with the shoes small, but everybody else's adults, even
Speaker 1: even the musher. So seven people. When those dogs took off,
Speaker 1: I mean it slammed me back in the seat. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a forceful takeoff, and they pulled and pulled
Speaker 1: old and pulled, and you thought they were never gonna stop.
Speaker 1: And then the funny thing is like these dogs were
Speaker 1: I mean, they were jacked about pulling that sled. They
Speaker 1: loved it, and you think, no, there's no way, there's
Speaker 1: no you know, there's a there's got to be cruel
Speaker 1: in some way, which we'll get to that, because there
Speaker 1: are people that think that. Right, you see these dogs
Speaker 1: they are and I know it's hard to believe, but
Speaker 1: they're genuinely excited about pulling that sled, and I think
Speaker 1: it's it's I did. I didn't understand it until I
Speaker 1: was there and and felt it in person, saw it
Speaker 1: in person, witnessed all this and it was it was
Speaker 1: really cool day. It was. It was like a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks at the time. It's more now to do this excursion,
Speaker 1: but it was so worth it. It It was so much
Speaker 1: fun and just um a real eye opening experience, gave
Speaker 1: you a little bit of history, gave you some of
Speaker 1: the You could stand on a real and actual dog
Speaker 1: sled that they had retired, you know, a wooden one
Speaker 1: and check that out. It was really cool all the
Speaker 1: parts of it, and um, it just it gave you
Speaker 1: a greater appreciation for what the sport is, about the
Speaker 1: history of it that you know, the um the truth
Speaker 1: behind it. Really right, yeah, this is this is the thing.
Speaker 1: So I just went to Alaska earlier this year for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life. I was there for
Speaker 1: about ten days. I wasn't too far out in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: but I was captivated by how close to the wild
Speaker 1: people are. Like it doesn't even big, like the the
Speaker 1: biggest city in Alaska is still gonna have moose that
Speaker 1: run the town because moose are just huge. I would
Speaker 1: not be surprised if there's a moose in downtown Anchorage
Speaker 1: that has like a mortgage business or something, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh So I was. I was amazed by how close
Speaker 1: a while we are. And this even goes into the
Speaker 1: rules of the idea Rod, which will will discuss in
Speaker 1: a little bit. Let's first separate two important things here.
Speaker 1: Although the race is often called the idea a rod,
Speaker 1: right there is it goes on a route for the
Speaker 1: majority of the time that follows a trail, the Dinerad trail,
Speaker 1: which is a different thing, and it's it's very old.
Speaker 1: It was used for centuries before the first Europeans arrived
Speaker 1: to use it. And the first people who identified and
Speaker 1: used this trail from you know, from the European side
Speaker 1: of the ocean where Russian fur traders way back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Native people in Alaska First Nations would
Speaker 1: use this, uh this trail system right to travel to
Speaker 1: different villages and eventually it became one of those things
Speaker 1: like a what do you call it, like a desire path.
Speaker 1: It was just the best route from point A to
Speaker 1: point B to point C and so on. And so
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, government employees cleared the Iditarod Trail,
Speaker 1: which made it a little easier to navigate. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, someone found gold and that changes everything in
Speaker 1: the town, if i'd it or yeah, okay, well it
Speaker 1: did change everything because you know that that town I
Speaker 1: guess kind of blew up overnight, right, They became boom towns.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of these in Alaska, as
Speaker 1: we all know just from our history classes and you know,
Speaker 1: elementary school, you can kind of learned about the gold
Speaker 1: rushes and what was going on there. But what happened
Speaker 1: is then a lot of the uh, the what are
Speaker 1: they called veins I guess of gold dry up. You know,
Speaker 1: they they go away. You know, the gold is no
Speaker 1: longer found. It's not profitable to do that. The town
Speaker 1: kind of drives up along the way with it. The
Speaker 1: town remains, it remains maybe uh, you know, a shell
Speaker 1: of itself. It remains kind of a skeleton of itself
Speaker 1: and becomes eventually, um, a ghost town. If if it's
Speaker 1: allowed to go that far. Some of them just kind
Speaker 1: of remain with a few residents here and there. But
Speaker 1: you know what, since we're talking about towns, we kind
Speaker 1: of glossed over your trip to Alaska. Where what towns
Speaker 1: did you go to any of the towns that might
Speaker 1: have been on the trail or were you a cruise passengers? Well? No,
Speaker 1: mainly Anchorage and I had to add to send the
Speaker 1: team the Cordoba and then they also went to Hitchinbrook Island. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I traveled up to Willow, Alaska. You see,
Speaker 1: you had to send a team. Okay, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know you went to Alaska, so I'll
Speaker 1: have to ask you about this later. A lot of
Speaker 1: water under the bridge band, A lot of stuff happened.
Speaker 1: It's like an undercover He's like, it's like a Navy
Speaker 1: seal or something Sea five somewhere. Oh man, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like, maybe it's a story for another day,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the the boom and busts that you're talking
Speaker 1: about is very real and it's happened around the world.
Speaker 1: When a town rises up based on a single resource,
Speaker 1: it is therefore dependent on that resource. The cold dries
Speaker 1: up than a cold town dies, right, and the same
Speaker 1: with gold. Uh. Before the gold actually dried up, the
Speaker 1: Goggenheims bought up a bunch of the smaller scale mines
Speaker 1: in the area around Flat and I did a odd
Speaker 1: and they introduced a little bit more of like a mechanized,
Speaker 1: large scale way of mining, so it didn't take as
Speaker 1: many individuals like sitting there, you know, trying to strike
Speaker 1: gold in various places. So it kind of took away
Speaker 1: the need for mail deliveries and food deliveries and travel
Speaker 1: along the trails in between. So the gold may have
Speaker 1: dried up later, but before that happened, like kind of
Speaker 1: like a large I guess company or conglomerate came in
Speaker 1: and started doing all the mining, so it needed less individuals.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting is they they had less individuals, and
Speaker 1: it took away the need for food and the need
Speaker 1: for all that too, took for many many people. It
Speaker 1: means that they never were quite established the point they
Speaker 1: could have been. They didn't get the roadway systems that
Speaker 1: they would have had. They didn't get um, you know,
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that we would normally think of would associate
Speaker 1: with a larger town a small airport. Even a lot
Speaker 1: of things were happening railroads, for example, around this time
Speaker 1: or kind of starting to be built in Alaska. So
Speaker 1: I think human travel along the trail is just kind
Speaker 1: of a lot of different things happen at once to
Speaker 1: make this perfect storm. If you don't use these trails,
Speaker 1: they just go into disrepair sort of. That's what keeps
Speaker 1: them there. It's a frequent travel. Yeah, this is exactly
Speaker 1: what happened to the Bates Hotel. And that's that's exactly
Speaker 1: what could lead to bad things. That's what a Hitchcock
Speaker 1: called it. Uh So, one question we have to address
Speaker 1: here at the top before we get in the nuts
Speaker 1: on the bolts of the race itself. We need to
Speaker 1: explore the role of dog teams in general in this
Speaker 1: part of the world. Nowadays, we're very fortunate there are
Speaker 1: airplanes all over the place. They like there are tons
Speaker 1: and tons of cessments in Alaska, right and they make small,
Speaker 1: you know, like puddle jumper flights because it's the best
Speaker 1: way to access uh point A to point B. In
Speaker 1: some cases, before there were airplanes delivery mail and supplies
Speaker 1: and so on, two very remote areas of Alaska, people
Speaker 1: used dog teams. It was the best way to transport
Speaker 1: yourself and goods, uh, you know, game, food, water, so on.
Speaker 1: And many people lived a subsistence lifestyle where you know,
Speaker 1: you were so familiar with your dog team. They it
Speaker 1: was like your daily driver, just like horses would have
Speaker 1: been back then in areas further south. Sure, and you
Speaker 1: you take care of them extremely well because that's your
Speaker 1: only way to get around. They're they're extremely valuable to you, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're like gold in themselves. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't want anything to happen to your dog team.
Speaker 1: You don't want anything to happen to your horse team.
Speaker 1: Of course. Um, they become like family members, really, a
Speaker 1: lot of them, I would bet. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like they're not just work animals. They're also part of
Speaker 1: the family, similar similar to your cars. You yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: so they have to take care of it. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it depends on the car. You know, some some you
Speaker 1: grow out of favor with quickly, more quickly than others. Right,
Speaker 1: But this is this is a critical party here, right,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about delivery of goods and services. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess goods via dog sled. So you know what
Speaker 1: can you take You can only take small items, really,
Speaker 1: But what happens when there's maybe an emergency? Ah, excellent question, Scott.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if you're setting me up for something,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, it's true. And this leads us directly
Speaker 1: to the story of the race that we call the
Speaker 1: ident a rod today also called the last Great Race
Speaker 1: on Earth. Well that's from my didad dot com. They're
Speaker 1: a little biased. So in ninet there were twenty mushers.
Speaker 1: Have we even talked? You mentioned musher? What's a musher?
Speaker 1: Musher is the person driving the sled, riding the sled,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, driving, piloting, pilot. Captain shouts
Speaker 1: the commands the dog, Yeah, mus mush. So in a
Speaker 1: team of twenty mushers commanding about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: sled dogs, had to travel six hundred seventy four miles
Speaker 1: that's one thousand a five kilometers for everybody outside of
Speaker 1: the US and like two other countries. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: traveled this tremendous distance in five and a half days.
Speaker 1: And they were on a mission like some real superheroes stuff.
Speaker 1: What were they doing? They were delivering a serum to
Speaker 1: cure dip theory outbreak that they were having a Gnome
Speaker 1: at the time, how's there going from wherever the I
Speaker 1: think initially wasn't there. There was a plane I think
Speaker 1: that took the initial um serum right to a certain train,
Speaker 1: a train the first little bit, yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: train could no longer go the rest of the distance,
Speaker 1: and the dogs were able to accommodate that. And of
Speaker 1: course we we said there were twenty mushers, that means
Speaker 1: twenty dog teams. Yeah, yeah, like a big relay race.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's like, you know, hand off the serum,
Speaker 1: get it on its way and off to see them
Speaker 1: get on the way. And the reason they need the serum,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we even said this. It was diphtheria, right,
Speaker 1: there was. There was a diphtheria outbreak in Gnome and
Speaker 1: the surrounding smaller communities, and it was a It was
Speaker 1: an epidemic, There's no two ways about it. The authorities
Speaker 1: and Gnome realized that the diphtheria anti toxin they did
Speaker 1: have was bad. It was yeah, bum antitoxins that and
Speaker 1: expected to have efficacy, So they needed this stuff in
Speaker 1: a hurry, and that's why there's a relay because the
Speaker 1: dogs are still fresh, right, and so they can pass
Speaker 1: it off to one another. This became known spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: They successfully completed the run, the dip theory anti toxin
Speaker 1: was delivered, the town was saved. This is now known
Speaker 1: sometimes as the Great Race of Mercy or the Serum Run,
Speaker 1: and these people and their dogs became heroes. They were
Speaker 1: celebrities overnight, so much so that okay, we've gotta remember
Speaker 1: this too that we're talking about um um Wait, okay,
Speaker 1: we know where Alaska is right? How far away Alaska
Speaker 1: is from New York? Yes, okay, there is a statue
Speaker 1: in h in Um Central Park in New York City
Speaker 1: of one of the dogs that they considered to be
Speaker 1: like the hero dog. It's the lead dog that finally
Speaker 1: brought the serum into Gnome. Right, it's the last dog.
Speaker 1: Um it is um. His name is Balto Balto, Balto
Speaker 1: the Dog. And you can go see Balto the Dog
Speaker 1: statue in Central Park. And you have seen it, right, Ben, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's still there, still there and uh and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people had There was a little bit
Speaker 1: of con versity over Balto Balto. If you can believe
Speaker 1: this or not, I mean the musher of course, and
Speaker 1: I don't even remember the guy's name it right now,
Speaker 1: but he's also a hero. Um. But there was a
Speaker 1: particular dog and musher that they thought should have been
Speaker 1: given all this credit because it was the one that
Speaker 1: took the most difficult leg of the journey. And I
Speaker 1: don't recall from what town to what town that was.
Speaker 1: I read that yesterday and I should have written it down,
Speaker 1: but I didn't, So it's there. There was someone somewhat
Speaker 1: of a controversy between, you know, between Balto and this
Speaker 1: other dog, because this dog just simply was the last one.
Speaker 1: There were twenty along the way that that probably deserve
Speaker 1: equal credit. The one you're referring to a dog named Togo.
Speaker 1: Okay and um. He was the lead dog for Leonard
Speaker 1: sa Paula, who competed in a race that they had
Speaker 1: sled dog race that they had in Alaska pre World
Speaker 1: War One. So he wanted the last four times that
Speaker 1: they did this race, it was called the All Alaska
Speaker 1: Sweep Steaks. Give us some background real quick on on
Speaker 1: what Sappola and Togo did. They did cover, as you
Speaker 1: guys said, the most hazardous leg of the journey. They
Speaker 1: made a round trip of two sixty one miles from
Speaker 1: Nome to shock Tulik and then back to Golovin. And
Speaker 1: this means they delivered the serum a total of nine miles,
Speaker 1: which is almost double the distance that any other team did. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they really they put it out there, they delivered.
Speaker 1: Balto just had a better pr team. I guess they got.
Speaker 1: They got they were the ones that they had finish. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't there a thing? I mean, it's probably a bumper sticker.
Speaker 1: But you know, unless you're the lead dog, the view
Speaker 1: never changes. Oh that's what did you write that? No,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. No, well it's uh, it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny too if you think about it. It also makes
Speaker 1: me think that if you're unless you're the lead dog,
Speaker 1: you're always looking at another dog's But that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what That's why I always take it. But I
Speaker 1: think it's it's kind of deeper meaning as well. I believe,
Speaker 1: you know, unless bud centric meaning. There's also a statue
Speaker 1: of Balto in downtown Anchorage. Can I up you for
Speaker 1: a second. Okay, since we're talking about this, I just
Speaker 1: have to say this one of the most shocking parts
Speaker 1: of the trip that the the one mile trip that
Speaker 1: I was on the dogs training camp is that well,
Speaker 1: we're this so gross, and don't let this discourage you've
Speaker 1: from doing this if you get a chance. The dogs,
Speaker 1: well they crap while they run. They don't stop, so
Speaker 1: like they don't wait until it's breast time to go
Speaker 1: off in the woods and go they go while they're running.
Speaker 1: And yes, and it gets flipped up and you don't
Speaker 1: realize it right as a passenger until you're done, and
Speaker 1: then you're like, what is that. You know, you may
Speaker 1: or may not experience this. I don't know. It kind
Speaker 1: of depends on you know, what happens when. But these
Speaker 1: dogs like they just they just go as they're like
Speaker 1: full speed ahead, and of course it gets thrown all
Speaker 1: thrown all over you. It's a shocking one. My kid
Speaker 1: was just, I don't know, just upset about that. I
Speaker 1: also was upset. It's not like it's it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so gross. It's just like it's like as
Speaker 1: if somebody was riding a bicycle in front of you
Speaker 1: and you know, mud gets flipped up on you or something.
Speaker 1: It's like little drops of mud and rocks and things
Speaker 1: like that to get thrown up. But then you realize
Speaker 1: later like, oh wait a minute, some of that dog crap.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, so just be aware, but don't again,
Speaker 1: don't let that discourage you. Okay, that's incredible insight. I'm glad.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm shocked. I didn't think of that, Kurt,
Speaker 1: did you? It makes sense. Well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell my girlfriend until we're on the sled and now
Speaker 1: you know, and again maybe just bring some goggles. Great,
Speaker 1: all right, I interrupted. That's perfect, and that's valuable information
Speaker 1: for anybody's planning on going sledding after hearing this story.
Speaker 1: So we said there were two different kind of competing stories, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Many people will claim that the Gnome and from is
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the Iditarod that happens annually today. We
Speaker 1: do want to say one other thing about the Nome run.
Speaker 1: They helped inspire an inoculation campaign throughout the US for diphtherium.
Speaker 1: It's always positive. Yeah, so it even had a better ending.
Speaker 1: There's another story that you will find from the Iditarod's
Speaker 1: own website, and it differs. Uh, it differs a little
Speaker 1: bit because in this version of events, There's a guy
Speaker 1: named Joe Reddington's senor who has lived in Alaska, spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time using dog sled teams himself and
Speaker 1: his day to day work. And their story is that
Speaker 1: in nine seventy three, uh, Joe Reddington launched the Iditarod
Speaker 1: Race as a way to preserve the culture of dog sledding,
Speaker 1: especially in Alaska. And that's because machines were taken over, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: an Henry situation there for a moment, I think so too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about what they call them snow machines.
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of people call them snow machines,
Speaker 1: but I've always my life called them snowmobiles. So snowmobiles
Speaker 1: are taken over. And and I think we can all
Speaker 1: picture this time and frame. You know, in early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: or at least you know of them. You've seen snowmobiles
Speaker 1: in that era, and they look essentially like they do now.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're a lot more sleek now, a lot
Speaker 1: more you know, they look like a high powered motorcycle
Speaker 1: now or something. Yeah, they are. But but back then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, they were finding that, Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got these machines and they can do it, and it's
Speaker 1: it's easier on you know, of course easier on the dogs.
Speaker 1: Dogs stay at home, you know, by the fire or whatever.
Speaker 1: They do. Um, it's faster, but they're not as reliable,
Speaker 1: not nearly as reliable as the dogs are. And they
Speaker 1: found that, you know, we've got to preserve this part
Speaker 1: of our history. It's not just for the historical aspect
Speaker 1: of it. But here's something that's gonna work every time,
Speaker 1: and we know we've known it for centuries. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the people who are there so far before Alaska became
Speaker 1: a US territory, let alone a state, have been dog sledding.
Speaker 1: So Joe eventually gets everybody on board with this. The
Speaker 1: first I Did a Rod race occurs in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: The winner is a fellow named Dick will Marth. It
Speaker 1: takes him twenty days, forty nine minutes and forty one seconds.
Speaker 1: So that so you will also hear um again from
Speaker 1: I Did a Rod. They'll say that the Gnome Run
Speaker 1: of five inspired a different race called the Serum Run
Speaker 1: that Joe also started. So these these events, there's there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of contradiction there, but every everybody agrees
Speaker 1: on the following fact. The first I did a rod
Speaker 1: race official race was in nineteen seventy three, which is
Speaker 1: maybe a little younger than I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people associated with because we have to remember, we've seen
Speaker 1: all these images from the eighteen hundreds and so of
Speaker 1: dog sled teams, because dog sledding had already been very
Speaker 1: well established before someone decided to make it a race.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, and you know this is this is the
Speaker 1: very public version of of dog sledding. Of course, dog sleds,
Speaker 1: as you said, have been used for many, many purposes
Speaker 1: for centuries before this. But but to put it out
Speaker 1: in front of everybody and say, here's here's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're doing this incredible test of human endurance. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say dog endurance too. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's not measured often do you want to put that?
Speaker 1: But twenty days, twenty days is what it took to
Speaker 1: make this course. And you know, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: as we'll get too later, that that record has has
Speaker 1: dropped and dropped and dropped, so it's it's become much
Speaker 1: faster race. Um. People are getting a lot more competitive
Speaker 1: about the whole thing, and I thought they weren't competitive before.
Speaker 1: But you know how this goes. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: our quest to the four minute mile thing. You know,
Speaker 1: like when everybody was trying to beat the four minute
Speaker 1: mile and it was like they're shaving off, you know,
Speaker 1: just fractions of a second here and there, and finally
Speaker 1: someone broke it. And then now that's been shattered, you know.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about records being shattered, I mean
Speaker 1: you look back toe and the current record, which will
Speaker 1: tell you later dramatic difference, huge, huge difference. But it's
Speaker 1: not so much the desire to get there as fast
Speaker 1: has changed or anything like that. It's just that maybe
Speaker 1: there's some improvements in food for the animals. Material higher energy,
Speaker 1: material science is a big thing. Um. I don't think
Speaker 1: aerodynamics plays into this really not that much. Um. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll weigh in on some of these factors that we
Speaker 1: think of have led to greatly reduced times prize money
Speaker 1: later in this prize prize money is a is a
Speaker 1: huge kick in the butt, isn't it right? It makes
Speaker 1: it It It makes you get up early in the morning
Speaker 1: and head out and try to make it to the
Speaker 1: next stop. More aerodynamic that could be. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know what, you know, what's maybe even something else that
Speaker 1: no one has ever really heard of outside of you know,
Speaker 1: if you're I did ride follower, somebody who tracks them
Speaker 1: on GPS every here, and there are people that do that.
Speaker 1: There are two routes. There's one that does go through
Speaker 1: I did arride, the actual town if I did ride.
Speaker 1: And there's another route as well, and they run them
Speaker 1: in different years. So there's the there's a North south.
Speaker 1: There's a north route and a south route and what
Speaker 1: is it the the north route I believe is run
Speaker 1: in the even numbered years, okay, And and that route
Speaker 1: the total distance from what anchorage to know him uh,
Speaker 1: somewhere around nine hundred and seventy five. That's the ballpark
Speaker 1: because it changes a little bit here and there based
Speaker 1: on current conditions. You know, if there was a rock
Speaker 1: slide or you know whatever of snow sometimes makes the
Speaker 1: change the route. Yeah, absolutely, avalanche or whatever, bad weather,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, um uh. And then there's a south route
Speaker 1: and that's run on the odd number years. So in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen that we ran on the or they ran
Speaker 1: on the south route, and that one's a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: It's nine miles. And what I find maybe even I
Speaker 1: keep saying what I find most interesting, but it's it's
Speaker 1: what I find interesting about this is that they typically
Speaker 1: just round the mileage up to roughly about a thousand.
Speaker 1: I think, in fact, they go as far as to
Speaker 1: say a thousand. What's what's the significance of that. It's
Speaker 1: because Alaska is the forty nine U. S State, so
Speaker 1: and and in all likelihood, and these guys are probably
Speaker 1: going that far or farther. Really, I mean, you have
Speaker 1: to there's gotta be some variants to the trail. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, like like Kurt was saying, you know, the
Speaker 1: bad weather, can a tree could fall, you have to
Speaker 1: go around and maybe a tree a bad example. It's
Speaker 1: a short distance around, but you have to take an
Speaker 1: alternate route around as long as it's allowed. There's there's
Speaker 1: also this idea of distributing the impact of the race
Speaker 1: across these small villages by alternating the route, because some
Speaker 1: of these places have you know, maybe a few hundred inhabitants.
Speaker 1: So this can be a big deal when when folks
Speaker 1: come through, huge economic impact when the idea goes through
Speaker 1: your town the year, right, It's it really is because
Speaker 1: people fly in for this. People want to come in
Speaker 1: for uh you know, these these package experiences that they purchase.
Speaker 1: You know, they want to ride along with somebody, or
Speaker 1: they want to you know, stay at a certain hotel
Speaker 1: and watch the people come in, or they even get
Speaker 1: an opportunity to sign in some people that are checking
Speaker 1: in for the night. You know, things like that. They
Speaker 1: offer some great perks if you want to buy into
Speaker 1: one of these these package deals. But just the overall
Speaker 1: growth of like you know, being able to put these
Speaker 1: people up for the week or however long they're going
Speaker 1: to stay, maybe even longer. The meals that they serve, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people are buying clothing, they're buying souvenirs. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all kinds of taking their own dogs
Speaker 1: let home. I don't know, oh man, don't imagine what
Speaker 1: an amazing president, What a useless president if you don't
Speaker 1: have at least like six dogs already. But this there
Speaker 1: is so much more to this story. We have to
Speaker 1: decided to make this a two part episode, so we
Speaker 1: just it's so weird, you guys. We just started getting
Speaker 1: to the specifics of the race. But I think the
Speaker 1: history was interesting. I I learned. Uh, I learned several
Speaker 1: things that I did not know. I was barely aware
Speaker 1: of the sweepstakes until you had told us about it. Kurt,
Speaker 1: Uh what what's what do you say to this guy's?
Speaker 1: What if we paused our story here and we return
Speaker 1: in part two of our episode on the idit a
Speaker 1: rod look, taking a closer look at the equipment, taking
Speaker 1: a look at some more stuff about the race itself,
Speaker 1: as well as, of course the dogs other than Balto
Speaker 1: and Togo. We barely got to them. I also want
Speaker 1: to mention a few of these rules because I went
Speaker 1: through the entire rule book yesterday. I read it's fifteen
Speaker 1: pages and you think that's really boring. But this is
Speaker 1: not a boring rule book. It's interesting. I think there's
Speaker 1: some some standouts here that I want to share with
Speaker 1: our audience and with you guys. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure if you even know these rules. Um. But the equipment,
Speaker 1: to I mean, the dog sleds themselves, there's more to
Speaker 1: the sled than you might think. It's not. It's it's
Speaker 1: not the simple, uh you know, wooden structure that you
Speaker 1: think it is. There's there's far more to it. And
Speaker 1: they're pretty fascinating really, and you can learn more. You
Speaker 1: can continue the conversation in part two of our upcoming episode,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to wait for that. Just just
Speaker 1: between just between the four of us, uh, Kurt, Scott,
Speaker 1: myself and you listening. Uh, you can hop onto the
Speaker 1: internet and find us there to continue the conversation. We're
Speaker 1: on Facebook as car Stuff, We're on Instagram or on Twitter.
Speaker 1: All the hits, all the good ones, and of course
Speaker 1: we want to give a huge thanks to all of
Speaker 1: our regular listeners who tuned in. Scott. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you noticed, but on Facebook, Kurt and I were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of people who are starting to brew
Speaker 1: this conspiracy Scott, where you'll hiding. Scott, Well, I'm back
Speaker 1: and I'm safe and uh, and I was in no danger,
Speaker 1: no danger, So conspiracy theorists you can rest easy, right,
Speaker 1: all right, We'll well, I guess we'll check in with
Speaker 1: you next time. And uh, and thanks for listening to everybody.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. Car Stuff is a production of I
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