Dog mushing and wet boobs.

Dogs, boobs, pho

[In an effort to not forget and accurately report I am writing this as I have time so excuse me if I switch tenses or if there are continuity problems.]

It is Iditarod time in town. Nome’s most famous cultural event, the yearly 1100+ mile dogsled race from Willow to Nome commemorating the 1925 diphtheria serum run to stop an outbreak, is underway. It is also one hell of a party. The town swells in size as tourists flock in. People rent out rooms in their house for $180 a night. The bars are packed, well more packed than usual. They are also open until 5 a.m.

The race itself couldn’t be better timed. The sun has left its seemingly permanent fixture at 10 degrees above the horizon and is high up in the sky glaring off the snow. The town has been cooped up for a long time and it is time to let loose and do what Nome does best - party until your liver hurts to the touch. Starting on Monday, the fire alarm sounds, loud speakers give color commentary and Nomeites and tourists stumble out of the bars to greet incoming mushers and then return to their stool to warm up in preparation for the next one.

The race technically has a winner by Tuesday when the first musher crosses, but in a race this long, large gaps are built so mushers keep coming throughout the week. This year, Lance Mackey won his forth straight Iditarod coming in at just under 9 days. It is amazing to live in a place where dog mushers are as highly regarded as, if not more highly regarded than, any “outside” professional athlete. Lance Mackey is cool too. He is 39 years old, has long stringy hair he keeps in pony tail, sports a goatee and is a throat cancer survivor. Until this year when they started drug testing mushers (a controversy all its own), he would smoke medicinal marijuana on the trail. There is basically no way you can be as cool or hard as this guy but he still has that down to Earth, drink a beer with vibe.

Speaking of mushers, this is a tough group of athletes. Nine days on the trail in desolate Alaska is hard. I built snowcaves for 24 hours outside and by the end I was a cold and pissy little bitch who wanted nothing more than to be back at my apartment drinking hot coffee and watching a Netflix. Yet, they have a warm caring quality because they work with dogs. Scratch that, they work for the dogs. They love these animals and deeply care for them. Mushers heat their food up in the dogs’ water. They sew booties for them. It is all about the dogs. That feeling of compassion doesn’t exist in most professional sports. It is lovely.

But enough with the dogs, let’s get to the events. There are a lot of them. There are art shows and craft fairs. There is snow sculpting, a snowmachine race, dog fur spinning, basketball tournaments, poker tournaments, and chili cook-offs. There are also lots of parties at the bars. They are a sight to be seen.

I started off my Iditarod experience by watching the start of the Nome-Golovin Snowmachine Race. It is a 200 mile round trip race held every year and the winner qualifies for the Iron Dog. It is a full on sprint. The guys and girls blast off the line and pound their way out and back banging up their machines and even flying off of them. A fittingly balls out event for a balls out week.
There are also more than a few parties throughout the week. Let’s pause and list some of these parties (these are lifted alphabetically from the Nome Convention and Visitors Bureau schedule I got in my PO Box): Alaskan Beers & Jack Daniels, Beer Tasting Extravaganza, Hula Girls, Husky Hoe Down, Idita-After Pary, Idita Mardi Gras, Karaoke, Make You Own Bikini, Safe Sex, Singles Night, St. Patrick’s Day, Wet Bun’s and Wet T-shirt.

In case you only skimmed that list, I will highlight some: MAKE YOUR OWN BIKINI, WET BUNS and WET T-SHIRT. These are advertised by the town. Outside of Sturgis, Bike Week and the Testicle Festival, where do you get that type state sponsored debauchery?

Monday, Nome sets the tone of the week with the Wet Buns’ competition. Who doesn’t love grizzled Alaskan buns? Nome isn’t Miami beach. Hell, by lower 48 standards, it is downright ugly. As an average looking guy, I love it. Modern technology allows humans to live a relatively sedentary lifestyle up here during the nine months of snow. We just ended four months of 20 hours of darkness. People are thick and, unless you have some Native blood in you, white – pasty white.

This makes for a great slate of contestants. The key to any good nudity based event is the pool that you get contestants from. Like Girls Gone Wild, the point is watching normal people go wild and not already wild people being wild. As Mac said on It’s Always Sunny, “We don't want wild girls. We want good girls gone wild. It's important to see the transition, watch the process...” Nome has lots of good average people willing to “go wild.”

I head over to Wet Bun’s, get inside, find some friends and realize I need to drink for this. A few beers in and I realized I needed to drink a lot more and started double fisting. The actual competition is preceded by an auction of t-shirts, hats, other booze related schwag and five front stage seats complete with water bottles for wetting things up. I am not sure if any of this money is donated to a cause or if it all goes to the winners. The auction takes a while so I am pretty gone by the time it starts. After it finally started I found out that the women of Nome are as crazy horny as the men. The crowd erupted. I have never heard more cheers and whistles for average physiques with bad tattoos. Awesome. I’m not really a fan of man-ass so luckily the drunkenness made the competition go quickly. Long story short, I make it home and pass out around 3 a.m.

I trained for Iditarod week. Last week I stayed up late every night and went to the bar for a few beers during the week, which I never do. I knew what my body was in for so I wanted to warm it up to the booze and lack of sleep so I didn’t miss anything. It worked. Tuesday morning I was hurting, but functional. My big life saver: pho. Pho, the delicious brothy and slightly spicy Vietnamese soup full of cilantro, green onions, rice noodles, and thin pieces of beef that I became addicted to in D.C. Twin Dragon in town has it and it is the best cure for hangovers in the world. It fills you up and gets your deprived body nutrients, but unlike greasy breakfasts it doesn’t sit in your stomach. Totally refreshing. A big bowl of that for lunch and I was on the way to full recovery. A post-work power nap later and I was ready for boobs.

I was cautiously optimistic about the Wet T-Shirt contest. I had heard stories of past events that included full frontal nudity and beer bottles in certain unmentionable places, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up only to have them dashed. I grew up on internet pron, hung out at hockey team parties in undergrad and rugby parties at law school and have been to many local, small town strip clubs, so I am no stranger to uncomfortable nudity. The shit I have seen, you can’t unsee. Two Girls One Cup, while gross as hell, is safe because you are watching it on a screen. When the stripper in front of you has track marks, it makes you question existence.

However, tits are tits, so off I went to Polaris. The place was butts to nuts packed. The night before the auctioneers had trouble auctioning off all the gear. Tonight, there was no such trouble. The money that drops at Iditarod is staggering. When a cheap beer like Miller costs you $5, things add up. Pregaming is a good strategy. With the goods gone, the contestants are called on stage and shit got real.

The contestants ranged from two perky and fit young girls to slightly hardened middle age women to big old drunken tundra mommas. Fantastic. Queue the music and let’s get this started.

Another insight into Nome is that it doesn’t seem to have a history of dancing. Traditional Native dancing is big up here, but let’s face it, a form of dance that portrays seal hunts is not going sexy. Erotic gyrations are not common place. Thankfully, the younger contestants seem to have spent some time at the bars in Anchorage and were able to muster some crowd please moves.

There were nine contestants to start. They all danced, then left stage and came back individually for their “routine.” There was then a vote by cheer, three were eliminated and the process begins again narrowing it down to the final three. Did I mention one contestant eliminated herself by passing out backstage after the first round of voting? That happened.

The final three, to nobody’s surprise consisted of the three youngest contestants: Lola – a thicker girl with bigguns; Lil’ Shorty – a cute and fit little girl who was the best dancer and stripped down to her saucy little panties; and Andrea, Azlea or some other A name I can’t really remember – cute but didn’t have the stage presence that the other two did. Lola, the crowd favorite of the entire night, won $1700. As far as I am concerned Lil’ Shorty was robbed. She took 2nd place winning $1000, but deserved first. She had moves and didn't even hesitate on the chant of “skin to win”.

Unlike the previous night, the contest was over early. I was successfully pacing myself so headed down to Breakers to finish off. Bedtime, after late night grub and gatoraide, was around 3:00 a.m.

Wednesday morning I actually felt alright, albeit a little tired. An easy day of work, another round of pho, and a five mile run and I was ready to pretend to be Irish.

To be continued...