Last Great Race and Jerry Reed

Saturday marked the start of my favorite 9ish days of the year - The Last Great Race - the Iditarod. Currently Lance Mackey is in first place. He is quite the character and one of my favorite mushers. This year my friends and I trailgated (yes, trail, that's not a typo) the ceremonial start in Anchorage. For $10 we got a koozie and all the beer we could drink and all the hot dogs we could eat. Probably the best idea ever.

Anyway, back to Lance. When he came by our trailgate, someone tried to hand him a PBR but he missed it. Lance is not one to give up a beer, so he stopped his sled (generally not done) and grabbed the beer then continued on. He nearly caused an accident, but I suspect he thought it was worth it. I assume it was that PBR that put him in first place. You're welcome, Lance.

People riding in the sled during the ceremonial start are called 'iditariders'. It's one of my goals in life.

Martin Buser caused quite the stir this year, after speed-racing to the Rohn check point, he decided to take his mandatory 24 hour rest. Normally teams wait until much later in the race before they take their layover. According to the Anchorage Daily News he's been planning this strategy for 8 months. He was in 30something place while the other mushers raced ahead. Now he's in 8th and everyone ahead of him still needs to take their 24 hour layover. Seems like his strategy might be working. The Iditarod is serious business.

Click to see it larger. Mushers take the southern route at Ophir this year.

I'm rooting for Matt Failor. He was in second place until the Rohn check point, where, like Buser, he took his 24 hour layover. During the ceremonial start Matt also got off his sled at the trailgate. But instead of stopping for a dropped PBR, he stopped to shake hands and say hello to everyone. He could have been a senate candidate - if senate candidates travel with 12 dogs and a large parka.

In the spirit of long distance racing, the hot jam of the week is Eastbound and Down by Jerry Reed. Yes, the theme to Smokey and the Bandit. I heard this song on the radio twice this week. I took it as a sign. If I was an Iditarod musher this is all I would listen to. Screw getting diphtheria serum to Nome, the boys are thirsty in Atlanta. If that's not enough to inspire you, I don't know what is.

MacGyver and The Beach Boys

When my power went out a couple weeks ago, I wasn't too upset about it. I got a lot of reading done and rearranged my living/dining room, so it really wasn't all bad. Except that my car was trapped in the garage. I know what you are thinking, "Maggie, you idiot, there's a safety release on the inside!"

Pull that red cord to open it!

Ah yes, there is a safety release in my garage. BUT I CAN'T GET TO IT. There's no other door into the garage. Really smart planning.


So when Anchorage was under YET ANOTHER wind warning this week, I channeled my inner MacGyver. (He's really taught me everything I know about being resourceful.) Using yarn, duct tape, an exceptionally well-tied knot (thanks, Girl Scouts!), and the information in a Youtube video about breaking into your (or someone else's?) garage, I "fixed" it so I can get the door open power or no power.

Long story shortish: I want MacGyver to be my best friend and here's why:

1) He would have fixed my garage door. And made a generator. Probably out of the beer cans waiting to go to the recycling bin

2)  He ALWAYS has a knife and that's incredibly handy

3) His first name in Angus. ANGUS. 

4) He always seems to have gum around.

5) He made an electrophoresis machine while in a head trauma-induced dream in Arthurian England

6) Mullet. MulletMulletMullet.

This week's hot jam is Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys. When my parents first got a CD player The Beach Boys Greatest Hits was one of the first CDs we got. I highly recommend it. What's not to love about The Beach Boys? They sang mostly bubblegum pop songs about cute stuff like surfing and girls and love. Adorable.

Thanks to a deep love of Full House, I mostly picture The Beach Boys like this:

But look how cute they were in the 60's!

Seriously, what's not to love?

Dive Bars and Paul McCartney

Recently, Anchorage was voted America's Worst Dressed City, and based on subsequent news stories, residents appear to be wearing (no pun intended) the title with pride. (And for the record, Sarah Palin lives in Wasilla, not Anchorage.)

You want to see some really great Anchorage fashion? Head to one of the cities many dive bars. Fashion (or lack of) aside, there are a lot of things I love about dive bars (in Anchorage or elsewhere), including:

1) Bar games - Darts is my game of choice, but I've been known to play some shuffleboard too. If a bar has Big Buck Hunter (or any variation), it's all over, I'm moving in.

This is actually a bar trick rather than a bar game, but it's just as fun

 

2) Cheap beers - I've been known to buy a pricey 6 pack, but honestly, I'm just has happy to drink PBR or High Life. Maybe even happier?

At the Fairview in Talkeetna, you can get 3 sizes of PBR, 12, 16, or 24 ounces. All in a can.

3) Jukebox - They are full of classic rock and you know Bon Jovi is going to play at some point in the night. And who doesn't want to hear Bon Jovi? Good jukebox leads to awesome dance moves.

4) People watching - See Worst Dressed City.

5) Decor - I may not want my house to look like a dive bar, but I do love places with beer posters from 1987, decorated dollar bills stapled to the walls/ceiling, and neon signs.

This week's hot jam is Maybe I'm Amazed by Paul McCartney (who probably doesn't hang out at dive bars these days.) I realize it would be much more conventional to pick a Beatles-era Paul McCartney song, but it's my blog and I can do whatever I want. I'm a sucker for a love song and Maybe I'm Amazed is a great one. (According to Wikipedia, it's regarded as one of his "finest love songs." And if it's on Wikipedia, it must be true.)

Iditarod and The Hold Steady

This past weekend marked the end of the Fur Rondy festival. And Fur Rondy goes out with a bang – a 1,000 mile, trans-Alaskan bang – the Iditarod.

The Iditarod started in the 1970s to commemorate the importance of the sled dogs in the history of Alaska. Not only Balto leading the other sled dogs to Nome with the diphtheria serum, but also the dogs used in travel, mail delivery, and as part of scouting teams during World War II. Prior to airplanes and snowmobiles (or snow machines, as they are called here) dog sleds were the way to travel around rural Alaska.

The start of the Iditarod in Anchorage is ceremonial, but so fun. They start on 4^th Avenue in downtown Anchorage and eventually make their way 11 miles across town to the Campbell Airstrip.

The dogs are so excited to get going that they have to hook the sleds up to snow machines or the dogs will take off before it’s their turn.

While I enjoy the festivities of the start downtown, my favorite part is going out to the trail as it winds through Anchorage. You can stand right on the trail and cheer as the teams go by. There is something so amazing about knowing that in 8 or 9 days a good portion of the people and dogs are going to be 1,000 miles away, approximately the same distance as LA to Seattle, and they will have gotten there on foot (relatively speaking).

This week's hot jam is Certain Songs by The Hold Steady. The Hold Steady is a gritty indie-rock band from Minneapolis, and I love all their songs so it was really difficult to pick one to feature this week. But nevertheless, I went with Certain Songs. Lead singer, Craig Finn, has a weird talk-singing style and most of the band looks like mid-level government employees (Franz Nicolay, the former keyboardist, looks more like he should be tying ladies to train tracks) but somehow it works.

Fur Rondy and Streetlight Manifesto

This is my favorite time of year in Alaska. Yes, the summers are amazing, but February is a really exciting time. We're gaining almost 6 minutes of daylight every day and that means we are rapidly approaching a normal day. If you can make it to February without losing it to seasonal affective disorder, you can make it to summer. But the best part of the month is the Fur Rendezvous Festival.

You'll never see more fur products anywhere. And they are all amazing.

It's been going on for 77 years (longer than Alaska's been a state!) and it's purpose is essentially to keep Anchorage residents from getting cabin fever. It was originally a 3 day event that lined up with the time the miners and trappers came into town but has since spread into a 10 day festival turning Anchorage into a crazy town. There's dog sled races down 4th Avenue, running of the reindeer, outhouse races, snowshoe softball, blanket tosses, a beard and mustache competition, a beer chugging contest, snow sculpture contests, etc etc etc (some of those are sanctioned by the Fur Rondy organization, some aren't. You can probably figure it out.)

Getting ready for the World Championship Sled Dog race

All of the furs being auctioned were illegally poached, from animals that had to be put down, or animals killed in self-defense

At Rondy 2010, I had my very first reindeer dog. Pure heaven.

Wolf pack meeting

Nothing quite like a below freezing scrambler ride.

I love a good cover song. I think the key to a good one is to make sure not to copy the original. Folks, you aren't going to sound as good as Eric Clapton, but if you make Tears in Heaven sound like yours, you have a  chance.

One of my favorite covers is Streetlight Manifesto's cover of Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, this week's hot jam. They aren't trying to sound like Paul Simon which is why I think it works. (Not that a multi-piece ska punk band could sound like Paul Simon, but still.)



Want more Streetlight Manifesto covers? Try their cover of former hot jam of the week, Red Rubber Ball.

First Snow and All American Rejects

According to the National Weather Service it's supposed to snow tomorrow morning. While I'm not looking forward AT ALL to driving to work, I'm still pretty excited about the snow.

Side Note- Anchorage sees approximately 6-8 months of snow every year. It starts snowing usually around Halloween and doesn't melt until May, sometimes June. So one would think that people, on average, would have a handle on winter driving. But for some reason, every year people forget how it works. It's like that pregnancy amnesia business. Anchorage residents seem to have winter amnesia (probably to keep us here year after year.) Winter amnesia causes people to turn into idiots the instant snow hits the ground. I'm sure I'll see at least one car in the ditch tomorrow morning. Hence my lack of excitement for my morning commute across town.

First snows always see so magical. Everything is so clean and white. (Unlike snow in February when everything is gross and grey.) Snow forces you to slow down. You can't be in a hurry when you can only drive 30 mph. You have to work a little harder and plan a little more, but I think it's worth it to see a fresh blanket of snow. It's like living in a Thomas Kinkade painting.

This past weekend I was in Talkeetna, AK celebrating two of my friends' birthdays.

Happy Birthday Jim and Michaela!

We woke up Sunday morning to Talkeetna's first snow. It was beautiful. Especially since we stayed in an adorable, cuddly warm cabin and got to eat bomb.com biscuits and gravy at The Roadhouse.

This week's hot jam is The Last Song by All American Rejects. Earlier this week I heard an AAR song on the radio. I hadn't heard one in awhile and it reminded me that I kind of totally love them. Sure, they don't have spectacularly deep lyrics or intricate chord progressions. But they are poppy and fun and sometimes that's what you want. In high school I was an AAR super fan. I saw them 6 or 8 times, and even met the band twice.

I nearly died.

The emo lyrics of The Last Song are covered up by a fun pop punk arrangement and a totally unrelated video and it's just as great as I remember it.

Four Seasons and George Jones

I'm once again at a place in my life where I can decide to go pretty much wherever I want. (Assuming that someone will actually hire me, but that is one of my least favorite topics, so it certainly doesn't belong here.) In my search for a job, location is of the utmost importance to me. I've come up with a pretty good list of requirements, one of the which is having four seasons. (Other things on the list include: fireflies, thunderstorms, and relatively close proximity to a major airport.)

It's been a few years since I've lived somewhere with textbook seasons. You know, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, red/orange/yellow leaves in the fall, and rain and tulips in the spring. I like the balance of the seasons; as a reward for a surviving a cold and snowy winter, you get a hot and sunny summer. It all evens out. Here in Anchorage we have two seasons winter and not winter; dark and light, which has a balance of its own, I guess, but it's just not quite the same. For example, it's May 4th; it's raining, which is spring-y, but it's also 35 degrees, which is not.

This week's hot jam is He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones. Generally, I wouldn't consider a song this melancholy to be a hot jam, but I do love it. Released in 1980, it was George's first #1 song in six years, and it's often considered the greatest country music song of all time, although I'm not so sure about that. How do you judge such a thing? But it does have its own website (http://www.hestoppedlovinghertoday.com/) so that must count for something. Also I love any song that has talking in the middle.



Fun fact about George Jones: His alcoholism is/was well known, and apparently one time his wife got mad at him for being drunk all the time so she hid the car keys and left. The liquor store/bar was 8 miles away and she knew he wouldn't walk that far. Fueled by alcohol withdrawals and a stubborn streak, George rode the lawn mower all the way there.