The little circle picture is Karin.
Middle bottle.

I need to go back to yesterday, Thursday, a day I thought I was going to get caught up on blogging and relaxation and a day for which my sister said "Sure, I'll help and CJ will, too."  So we were down at the Millenium Hotel by 8 o'clock in the morning and met with a group working on the 'caches', which in this case is a packet that represents and commenorates the mail that used to be sent over the Iditarod Trail.  The cool thing was that we were in the mushers mandatory meeting with all 66 of this year's mushers and got to see the goodies they were given, i.e. tee shirts from Wells Fargo, althletic bag, carrier and hat from another sponsor, a couple of bottles of wine with their name on it.  Each mushers was given a 'cache' packet with 25 cards about the size of a business envelope on which is this year's design.  Each musher must sign each card as well as the 2 or 3 letters from elementary aged children from all over the USA and beyond.  We then collected the packets, all 66 of them and left for breakfast.  From there it was off to a business that does shrink-wrapping where we took each packet out of its envelope, marked it with the musher's name, put it a shrink wrap bag and sealed it.  That was then put in another shrink wrap bag with a return address label inserted, sealed and then the work began.  Each packet was then made as small as possible and taped with packing tape so that there are no sharp edges or  possible places to get snagged. Since the sleds occassionally get wet all the sealing is also to hopefulling keep the 'mail' dry.  We were finally back to the Millenium by 2 p.m. in time for the out-of-towner volunteers. 

Back to the house we had time for a brief nap before leaving for the Mushers' Banquet at the Dena'ina Convention Center downtown Anchorage.  Arriving about 5 p.m. we found the table marked with KARIN HENDRICKSON, bought an adult beverage, went over to the ExxonMobile table to get my free poster with a Jeff Schultz photograph and bought a raffle ticket.  Hobo Jim was playing his guitar and singing his Iditarod/Alaska songs as he does every year before the dinner.  Invocation was done by Mike Williams, a Yupiaq Eskimo, in his native tongue and then in English.  The national anthem was sung as well as the Alaskan state song.  Dinner was steak and surprisingly good with a to-die-for cake for dessert.  (Can you imagine getting more than 1000 -1500 dinners out with the food still hot nearly all at the same time?!)

Finally after a few speeches, recognition of the major sponsors and an auction, the mushers started lining up to draw their bib number.  As you know, Karin drew bib number #29.

For those of you that are new or need a review, the bib number gives the order for line up for both the start of the ceremonial start and the real start.  The honorary bib number is number 1 and is worn the winner of the Junior Iditarod at the Saturday race/parade of 11 miles: the Ceremonial Start.  The mushers are started at 2 minute intervals and same order is used on Sunday out at Willow for the real begining of the race.  I will explain how the time difference is made up in a couple of days when the madness of the activites calm down.

Today, Friday, I worked at the registration desk from 8-1 and we were busy.  At 1:30 I took advantage of a group that was doing massage for a dollar a minute for the Alaska MS (multiple sclerosis) - 30 minutes of bliss.  The gal was so good I'm going to see her Wednesday evening when I get off work and see if I can't get the knots out.  Ate lunch at the Fancy Moose again and then came home to start this.  Now we are running out the door to go to a reception at the Snow City Cafe where several mushers, including Karin, will be along with the photographer Albert Lewis who has done a beautiful book on the sled dogs.  www.SeeSpotRun.com

Later