December 17, 2019 • 33 mins
Referred to as "The Last Great Race On Earth," the Iditarod hearkens back to a time before the automobile, airplane and railroad; when travel over the frozen, far reaches of Alaska had to be undertaken with precision. On well-traveled trails cut through mountainsides, woods and open expanses, mushers and their trusty teams of sled dogs would glide in order to transport necessities. Join the Carstuff crew as they discuss some of the history of the worlds most famous sled dog race.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. Hi, and welcome to car Stuff. I'm
your host, Scott Benjamin, and I am also your host,
Ben Boland. We are not alone. We are joined, of course,
with our good friend Kurt Garn. Hello everyone, Holy smoked Scott,
(00:21):
Scott Benjamin. Is it good to see you man? You're back?
Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that. It's good
to be back. It's you kept the seat warm. We
kept yeah, we kept the seat warm. We had a
number of strange adventures, you know. Uh, Kurt and I
are always getting into uh some some weird conversations. We
(00:41):
learned about the Testlas cyber truck, which I would love
to hear your thoughts on. One day we did a
piece on the evolution of the El Camino, remember that one.
That was a good one, like all caminos, you know.
The thing that we got caught on was that the
name of that translates to just the road. That's that's
(01:02):
not too inspiring, and really, I mean and maybe a
little bit, but uh, but yeah, it's it's good to
be back. Anyway. I really appreciate it, and thank you
guys for keeping the show a float here while I
was gone. I really do thank you for that. And uh,
just a quick explanation. I just took some time off
to kind of get things pulled together in my own
personal life. You know that Insomniac show that have been
working on that. Uh, well almost said the word that's
(01:26):
stuff is is real. Um, I was a kidding around that.
Really I messed with my sleep, messed with my whole life,
you know, from in here and outside of work, and uh,
and it was a disaster. And I just took some
time off to kind of pull some things together and
get back in uh, in the right mindset to do
this show and uh and be clear and you know,
(01:46):
a lot more present here with you guys. And I'm
really excited about getting back into car stuff and just
making it the best show that we can. I'm really
really happy to be back behind the mic. Likewise, you know,
the powers that be would not have let me back
onto the show if circumstances have been different. I kind
it's snuck back in here, you know how Well it's
a bit of a reunion for us, right. I mean,
(02:08):
you know, before it was Kurt and I and that
was great, but then when I'm back here. It's like
it feels comfortable again. It's like we never stopped doing
the show that was years ago. Now it was a
long long time ago, and we stopped doing that show together.
But but we're here, we are again. We got Kurt
joining us, who is fantastic, and we're all in this
tiny little room staring at each other. There might be
some awkward silence. You never know. We'll see what happens,
(02:30):
but uh, it's it's I think it's a good team.
I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with this.
Well said, Well said Scott. Indeed, So today's episode is
fascinating because as you would establish, you know, uh you,
Kurt and I have been doing some variety or subversion
or iteration of this show for the better part of
(02:52):
a decade and for a peek behind the curtain. Folks,
long time listeners you'll know this, or anyone with your
own podcast us. After about year five or six, on
some shows, you start saying, well, you start forgetting what
you we covered, you know, in previous episodes, and wondering
(03:12):
what you're going to do. And Kurt, you recently you
had a fantastic idea. There was such a good idea
that I was convinced we had covered it before at
some point in the past nine plus years. And I
was wrong. We had never covered it, which baffles me.
I think it baffled you two. Scott's surprising yet. So
(03:33):
we decided that we would cover sleddog races, most notably
the Iditarod in Alaska. Now, some people are gonna say,
what the heck, this is car stuff, right, but if
you remember car stuff of the past, we have always
covered just about any form of transportation, just about everything really,
and and the funny thing is that can even be
spun off into other things, like I remembered yesterday. We
(03:54):
we've even done like the Pinewood Derby cars time with
Derby races, everything that floats, fly, swims or drives exactly. Yeah,
I mean every form of transportation. And I think this
is the perfect time of year to talk about, you know,
something like this, you know, some some way of getting
around that maybe not everybody is familiar with. But it's
really fascinating. I mean when you dig into it and
how into uh you know, the sleds these people get
(04:16):
into the dog teams, of course, they get um just
the whole lifestyle that goes along with us, the history
of it. It's all very rich, isn't it. Yeah. Absolutely.
It's also one of those races, one of those events
that takes us to the limits of what our bodies
can like endure, and it takes us to the limits
(04:38):
of what we call civilization. You're very much in the
front here. I have either of you ever been to Alaska?
I have you have? Okay, where'd you go? Well, I'll
tell you it's not you know, the wilderness experience that
you might think. I I took an Alaskan cruise many
years ago. This is probably seven years ago, that's right. Well, yeah, no,
I remember, and we did talk about this, so there
and and you know, it goes to the usual reports.
(05:00):
It was a celebrity brand cruise and we're not getting paid,
don't worry. That's the celebrity brand cruise. So that tells
you The ports that we went to, and I can't
remember all of them, but it was like catch a
can um gosh, I can't even Skagway was one. I
know because I'll tell you this. When we went to Skagway,
and we did go a little further north to but
we went to Skagway, and one of the excursions that
(05:21):
you could take and we did do this. One was
to go to a dog sled training camp and I
did that and we talked about that and it was fascinating.
It was a you know, I don't know, maybe a
forty five minute or an hour bus ride to get
to this thing. You're seeing things like bald eagles on
the way, and you know, it's just pristine, beautiful um
Alaskan countryside, you know, my little boutanous you know, lots
(05:43):
of trees and things like that. And it wasn't like
a blizzard or anything like that. It was it was
their off season. So they're in training camp, right and
you get the opportunity to go and sit in a
training dog sled and have them haul you for a
one mile trek around this mountain course that they have
and maybe should I hold onto this for later? Do
(06:05):
you want to talk about it right now? It's it's
pretty quick. So at the time, if you remember when
I got back from this, I was so fired up
about this because it's almost like if you can picture
a golf cart, like an elongated golf cart, so it's
on wheels. Obviously, it's not on skis, and it has
a kind of a runner in front, like a bump
bump guard maybe or something like that. It's it's it
(06:26):
holds six people sitting. There's seats kind of built into
this thing. It's an aluminum frame, I believe, or metal frame.
And then the musher would stand on the back and
they have a dog team in front of you that's
pulling and they pull in this this kind of mountainous,
rocky road right and I'm sitting in this cart with
you know, all these other tourists from the boat. And
we're not small people, you know, we're adults. My daughter
was with the shoes small, but everybody else's adults, even
(06:49):
even the musher. So seven people. When those dogs took off,
I mean it slammed me back in the seat. It was.
It was a forceful takeoff, and they pulled and pulled
old and pulled, and you thought they were never gonna stop.
And then the funny thing is like these dogs were
I mean, they were jacked about pulling that sled. They
loved it, and you think, no, there's no way, there's
(07:11):
no you know, there's a there's got to be cruel
in some way, which we'll get to that, because there
are people that think that. Right, you see these dogs
they are and I know it's hard to believe, but
they're genuinely excited about pulling that sled, and I think
it's it's I did. I didn't understand it until I
was there and and felt it in person, saw it
in person, witnessed all this and it was it was
(07:34):
really cool day. It was. It was like a hundred
bucks at the time. It's more now to do this excursion,
but it was so worth it. It It was so much
fun and just um a real eye opening experience, gave
you a little bit of history, gave you some of
the You could stand on a real and actual dog
sled that they had retired, you know, a wooden one
and check that out. It was really cool all the
parts of it, and um, it just it gave you
(07:56):
a greater appreciation for what the sport is, about the
history of it that you know, the um the truth
behind it. Really right, yeah, this is this is the thing.
So I just went to Alaska earlier this year for
the first time in my life. I was there for
about ten days. I wasn't too far out in the wilderness,
but I was captivated by how close to the wild
(08:18):
people are. Like it doesn't even big, like the the
biggest city in Alaska is still gonna have moose that
run the town because moose are just huge. I would
not be surprised if there's a moose in downtown Anchorage
that has like a mortgage business or something, you know.
Uh So I was. I was amazed by how close
a while we are. And this even goes into the
(08:40):
rules of the idea Rod, which will will discuss in
a little bit. Let's first separate two important things here.
Although the race is often called the idea a rod,
right there is it goes on a route for the
majority of the time that follows a trail, the Dinerad trail,
(09:01):
which is a different thing, and it's it's very old.
It was used for centuries before the first Europeans arrived
to use it. And the first people who identified and
used this trail from you know, from the European side
of the ocean where Russian fur traders way back in
(09:22):
the eighteen hundreds. Native people in Alaska First Nations would
use this, uh this trail system right to travel to
different villages and eventually it became one of those things
like a what do you call it, like a desire path.
It was just the best route from point A to
point B to point C and so on. And so
(09:42):
in nineteen o eight, government employees cleared the Iditarod Trail,
which made it a little easier to navigate. But in
nineteen ten, someone found gold and that changes everything in
the town, if i'd it or yeah, okay, well it
did change everything because you know that that town I
(10:05):
guess kind of blew up overnight, right, They became boom towns.
And there were a lot of these in Alaska, as
we all know just from our history classes and you know,
elementary school, you can kind of learned about the gold
rushes and what was going on there. But what happened
is then a lot of the uh, the what are
they called veins I guess of gold dry up. You know,
they they go away. You know, the gold is no
(10:26):
longer found. It's not profitable to do that. The town
kind of drives up along the way with it. The
town remains, it remains maybe uh, you know, a shell
of itself. It remains kind of a skeleton of itself
and becomes eventually, um, a ghost town. If if it's
allowed to go that far. Some of them just kind
of remain with a few residents here and there. But
you know what, since we're talking about towns, we kind
(10:48):
of glossed over your trip to Alaska. Where what towns
did you go to any of the towns that might
have been on the trail or were you a cruise passengers? Well? No,
mainly Anchorage and I had to add to send the
team the Cordoba and then they also went to Hitchinbrook Island. Uh.
And then I traveled up to Willow, Alaska. You see,
you had to send a team. Okay, this is interesting.
(11:12):
I didn't even know you went to Alaska, so I'll
have to ask you about this later. A lot of
water under the bridge band, A lot of stuff happened.
It's like an undercover He's like, it's like a Navy
seal or something Sea five somewhere. Oh man, you know, uh,
I gotta say, like, maybe it's a story for another day,
but yeah, the the boom and busts that you're talking
(11:36):
about is very real and it's happened around the world.
When a town rises up based on a single resource,
it is therefore dependent on that resource. The cold dries
up than a cold town dies, right, and the same
with gold. Uh. Before the gold actually dried up, the
Goggenheims bought up a bunch of the smaller scale mines
(11:58):
in the area around Flat and I did a odd
and they introduced a little bit more of like a mechanized,
large scale way of mining, so it didn't take as
many individuals like sitting there, you know, trying to strike
gold in various places. So it kind of took away
the need for mail deliveries and food deliveries and travel
(12:19):
along the trails in between. So the gold may have
dried up later, but before that happened, like kind of
like a large I guess company or conglomerate came in
and started doing all the mining, so it needed less individuals.
So it's interesting is they they had less individuals, and
it took away the need for food and the need
(12:39):
for all that too, took for many many people. It
means that they never were quite established the point they
could have been. They didn't get the roadway systems that
they would have had. They didn't get um, you know,
the infrastructure that we would normally think of would associate
with a larger town a small airport. Even a lot
of things were happening railroads, for example, around this time
(12:59):
or kind of starting to be built in Alaska. So
I think human travel along the trail is just kind
of a lot of different things happen at once to
make this perfect storm. If you don't use these trails,
they just go into disrepair sort of. That's what keeps
them there. It's a frequent travel. Yeah, this is exactly
what happened to the Bates Hotel. And that's that's exactly
(13:21):
what could lead to bad things. That's what a Hitchcock
called it. Uh So, one question we have to address
here at the top before we get in the nuts
on the bolts of the race itself. We need to
explore the role of dog teams in general in this
(13:45):
part of the world. Nowadays, we're very fortunate there are
airplanes all over the place. They like there are tons
and tons of cessments in Alaska, right and they make small,
you know, like puddle jumper flights because it's the best
way to access uh point A to point B. In
some cases, before there were airplanes delivery mail and supplies
(14:07):
and so on, two very remote areas of Alaska, people
used dog teams. It was the best way to transport
yourself and goods, uh, you know, game, food, water, so on.
And many people lived a subsistence lifestyle where you know,
you were so familiar with your dog team. They it
(14:30):
was like your daily driver, just like horses would have
been back then in areas further south. Sure, and you
you take care of them extremely well because that's your
only way to get around. They're they're extremely valuable to you, right,
I mean, they're they're like gold in themselves. I mean,
you don't want anything to happen to your dog team.
You don't want anything to happen to your horse team.
Of course. Um, they become like family members, really, a
(14:51):
lot of them, I would bet. I mean, it's not
like they're not just work animals. They're also part of
the family, similar similar to your cars. You yeah, I guess,
so they have to take care of it. Yeah, well
it depends on the car. You know, some some you
grow out of favor with quickly, more quickly than others. Right,
But this is this is a critical party here, right,
(15:13):
because we're talking about delivery of goods and services. Well,
I guess goods via dog sled. So you know what
can you take You can only take small items, really,
But what happens when there's maybe an emergency? Ah, excellent question, Scott.
It's almost as if you're setting me up for something,
(15:34):
you know. Uh, it's true. And this leads us directly
to the story of the race that we call the
ident a rod today also called the last Great Race
on Earth. Well that's from my didad dot com. They're
a little biased. So in ninet there were twenty mushers.
(15:54):
Have we even talked? You mentioned musher? What's a musher?
Musher is the person driving the sled, riding the sled,
I guess I don't know, driving, piloting, pilot. Captain shouts
the commands the dog, Yeah, mus mush. So in a
(16:23):
team of twenty mushers commanding about a hundred and fifty
sled dogs, had to travel six hundred seventy four miles
that's one thousand a five kilometers for everybody outside of
the US and like two other countries. Uh. And they
traveled this tremendous distance in five and a half days.
And they were on a mission like some real superheroes stuff.
(16:46):
What were they doing? They were delivering a serum to
cure dip theory outbreak that they were having a Gnome
at the time, how's there going from wherever the I
think initially wasn't there. There was a plane I think
that took the initial um serum right to a certain train,
a train the first little bit, yeah, and then the
(17:07):
train could no longer go the rest of the distance,
and the dogs were able to accommodate that. And of
course we we said there were twenty mushers, that means
twenty dog teams. Yeah, yeah, like a big relay race.
You're right, it's like, you know, hand off the serum,
get it on its way and off to see them
get on the way. And the reason they need the serum,
I don't know if we even said this. It was diphtheria, right,
there was. There was a diphtheria outbreak in Gnome and
(17:30):
the surrounding smaller communities, and it was a It was
an epidemic, There's no two ways about it. The authorities
and Gnome realized that the diphtheria anti toxin they did
have was bad. It was yeah, bum antitoxins that and
expected to have efficacy, So they needed this stuff in
(17:52):
a hurry, and that's why there's a relay because the
dogs are still fresh, right, and so they can pass
it off to one another. This became known spoiler alert.
They successfully completed the run, the dip theory anti toxin
was delivered, the town was saved. This is now known
sometimes as the Great Race of Mercy or the Serum Run,
(18:15):
and these people and their dogs became heroes. They were
celebrities overnight, so much so that okay, we've gotta remember
this too that we're talking about um um Wait, okay,
we know where Alaska is right? How far away Alaska
is from New York? Yes, okay, there is a statue
in h in Um Central Park in New York City
(18:35):
of one of the dogs that they considered to be
like the hero dog. It's the lead dog that finally
brought the serum into Gnome. Right, it's the last dog.
Um it is um. His name is Balto Balto, Balto
the Dog. And you can go see Balto the Dog
statue in Central Park. And you have seen it, right, Ben, Yes, yes,
it's still there, still there and uh and you know
(18:58):
a lot of people had There was a little bit
of con versity over Balto Balto. If you can believe
this or not, I mean the musher of course, and
I don't even remember the guy's name it right now,
but he's also a hero. Um. But there was a
particular dog and musher that they thought should have been
given all this credit because it was the one that
took the most difficult leg of the journey. And I
don't recall from what town to what town that was.
(19:18):
I read that yesterday and I should have written it down,
but I didn't, So it's there. There was someone somewhat
of a controversy between, you know, between Balto and this
other dog, because this dog just simply was the last one.
There were twenty along the way that that probably deserve
equal credit. The one you're referring to a dog named Togo.
Okay and um. He was the lead dog for Leonard
(19:40):
sa Paula, who competed in a race that they had
sled dog race that they had in Alaska pre World
War One. So he wanted the last four times that
they did this race, it was called the All Alaska
Sweep Steaks. Give us some background real quick on on
what Sappola and Togo did. They did cover, as you
(20:01):
guys said, the most hazardous leg of the journey. They
made a round trip of two sixty one miles from
Nome to shock Tulik and then back to Golovin. And
this means they delivered the serum a total of nine miles,
which is almost double the distance that any other team did. Okay,
so they really they put it out there, they delivered.
(20:22):
Balto just had a better pr team. I guess they got.
They got they were the ones that they had finish. Yeah. Yeah,
isn't there a thing? I mean, it's probably a bumper sticker.
But you know, unless you're the lead dog, the view
never changes. Oh that's what did you write that? No,
that's pretty good. No, well it's uh, it's kind of
funny too if you think about it. It also makes
(20:42):
me think that if you're unless you're the lead dog,
you're always looking at another dog's But that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
that's what That's why I always take it. But I
think it's it's kind of deeper meaning as well. I believe,
you know, unless bud centric meaning. There's also a statue
of Balto in downtown Anchorage. Can I up you for
a second. Okay, since we're talking about this, I just
(21:03):
have to say this one of the most shocking parts
of the trip that the the one mile trip that
I was on the dogs training camp is that well,
we're this so gross, and don't let this discourage you've
from doing this if you get a chance. The dogs,
well they crap while they run. They don't stop, so
(21:23):
like they don't wait until it's breast time to go
off in the woods and go they go while they're running.
And yes, and it gets flipped up and you don't
realize it right as a passenger until you're done, and
then you're like, what is that. You know, you may
or may not experience this. I don't know. It kind
of depends on you know, what happens when. But these
dogs like they just they just go as they're like
(21:45):
full speed ahead, and of course it gets thrown all
thrown all over you. It's a shocking one. My kid
was just, I don't know, just upset about that. I
also was upset. It's not like it's it's like, oh,
this is so gross. It's just like it's like as
if somebody was riding a bicycle in front of you
and you know, mud gets flipped up on you or something.
(22:07):
It's like little drops of mud and rocks and things
like that to get thrown up. But then you realize
later like, oh wait a minute, some of that dog crap.
That's great. Yeah, so just be aware, but don't again,
don't let that discourage you. Okay, that's incredible insight. I'm glad.
You know. I'm shocked. I didn't think of that, Kurt,
did you? It makes sense. Well, I'm not going to
(22:30):
tell my girlfriend until we're on the sled and now
you know, and again maybe just bring some goggles. Great,
all right, I interrupted. That's perfect, and that's valuable information
for anybody's planning on going sledding after hearing this story.
(22:51):
So we said there were two different kind of competing stories, right. Uh.
Many people will claim that the Gnome and from is
the inspiration for the Iditarod that happens annually today. We
do want to say one other thing about the Nome run.
They helped inspire an inoculation campaign throughout the US for diphtherium.
(23:19):
It's always positive. Yeah, so it even had a better ending.
There's another story that you will find from the Iditarod's
own website, and it differs. Uh, it differs a little
bit because in this version of events, There's a guy
named Joe Reddington's senor who has lived in Alaska, spent
(23:40):
a lot of time using dog sled teams himself and
his day to day work. And their story is that
in nine seventy three, uh, Joe Reddington launched the Iditarod
Race as a way to preserve the culture of dog sledding,
especially in Alaska. And that's because machines were taken over, right, Yeah,
(24:04):
an Henry situation there for a moment, I think so too. Yeah,
so we're talking about what they call them snow machines.
I've heard a lot of people call them snow machines,
but I've always my life called them snowmobiles. So snowmobiles
are taken over. And and I think we can all
picture this time and frame. You know, in early nineteen seventies,
or at least you know of them. You've seen snowmobiles
in that era, and they look essentially like they do now.
(24:27):
I mean, they're a lot more sleek now, a lot
more you know, they look like a high powered motorcycle
now or something. Yeah, they are. But but back then,
in nineteen seventy three, they were finding that, Yeah, they've
got these machines and they can do it, and it's
it's easier on you know, of course easier on the dogs.
Dogs stay at home, you know, by the fire or whatever.
They do. Um, it's faster, but they're not as reliable,
(24:50):
not nearly as reliable as the dogs are. And they
found that, you know, we've got to preserve this part
of our history. It's not just for the historical aspect
of it. But here's something that's gonna work every time,
and we know we've known it for centuries. Yeah. Yeah,
the people who are there so far before Alaska became
a US territory, let alone a state, have been dog sledding.
(25:13):
So Joe eventually gets everybody on board with this. The
first I Did a Rod race occurs in nineteen seventy three.
The winner is a fellow named Dick will Marth. It
takes him twenty days, forty nine minutes and forty one seconds.
So that so you will also hear um again from
I Did a Rod. They'll say that the Gnome Run
(25:34):
of five inspired a different race called the Serum Run
that Joe also started. So these these events, there's there's
a little bit of contradiction there, but every everybody agrees
on the following fact. The first I did a rod
race official race was in nineteen seventy three, which is
maybe a little younger than I think a lot of
(25:56):
people associated with because we have to remember, we've seen
all these images from the eighteen hundreds and so of
dog sled teams, because dog sledding had already been very
well established before someone decided to make it a race.
Yeah sure, and you know this is this is the
very public version of of dog sledding. Of course, dog sleds,
(26:19):
as you said, have been used for many, many purposes
for centuries before this. But but to put it out
in front of everybody and say, here's here's what we're doing.
We're doing this incredible test of human endurance. I'm gonna
say dog endurance too. I mean, I don't know if
that's not measured often do you want to put that?
But twenty days, twenty days is what it took to
make this course. And you know, as you can imagine,
(26:43):
as we'll get too later, that that record has has
dropped and dropped and dropped, so it's it's become much
faster race. Um. People are getting a lot more competitive
about the whole thing, and I thought they weren't competitive before.
But you know how this goes. I mean, this is
our quest to the four minute mile thing. You know,
like when everybody was trying to beat the four minute
mile and it was like they're shaving off, you know,
just fractions of a second here and there, and finally
(27:03):
someone broke it. And then now that's been shattered, you know.
And when we talk about records being shattered, I mean
you look back toe and the current record, which will
tell you later dramatic difference, huge, huge difference. But it's
not so much the desire to get there as fast
has changed or anything like that. It's just that maybe
there's some improvements in food for the animals. Material higher energy,
(27:26):
material science is a big thing. Um. I don't think
aerodynamics plays into this really not that much. Um. Maybe
we'll weigh in on some of these factors that we
think of have led to greatly reduced times prize money
later in this prize prize money is a is a
huge kick in the butt, isn't it right? It makes
(27:48):
it It It makes you get up early in the morning
and head out and try to make it to the
next stop. More aerodynamic that could be. Yeah, but you
know what, you know, what's maybe even something else that
no one has ever really heard of outside of you know,
if you're I did ride follower, somebody who tracks them
on GPS every here, and there are people that do that.
(28:09):
There are two routes. There's one that does go through
I did arride, the actual town if I did ride.
And there's another route as well, and they run them
in different years. So there's the there's a North south.
There's a north route and a south route and what
is it the the north route I believe is run
in the even numbered years, okay, And and that route
the total distance from what anchorage to know him uh,
(28:32):
somewhere around nine hundred and seventy five. That's the ballpark
because it changes a little bit here and there based
on current conditions. You know, if there was a rock
slide or you know whatever of snow sometimes makes the
change the route. Yeah, absolutely, avalanche or whatever, bad weather,
yeah exactly, um uh. And then there's a south route
and that's run on the odd number years. So in
(28:53):
twenty nineteen that we ran on the or they ran
on the south route, and that one's a little bit longer.
It's nine miles. And what I find maybe even I
keep saying what I find most interesting, but it's it's
what I find interesting about this is that they typically
just round the mileage up to roughly about a thousand.
I think, in fact, they go as far as to
say a thousand. What's what's the significance of that. It's
(29:17):
because Alaska is the forty nine U. S State, so
and and in all likelihood, and these guys are probably
going that far or farther. Really, I mean, you have
to there's gotta be some variants to the trail. Really,
I mean, like like Kurt was saying, you know, the
bad weather, can a tree could fall, you have to
go around and maybe a tree a bad example. It's
a short distance around, but you have to take an
(29:39):
alternate route around as long as it's allowed. There's there's
also this idea of distributing the impact of the race
across these small villages by alternating the route, because some
of these places have you know, maybe a few hundred inhabitants.
So this can be a big deal when when folks
come through, huge economic impact when the idea goes through
(30:02):
your town the year, right, It's it really is because
people fly in for this. People want to come in
for uh you know, these these package experiences that they purchase.
You know, they want to ride along with somebody, or
they want to you know, stay at a certain hotel
and watch the people come in, or they even get
an opportunity to sign in some people that are checking
in for the night. You know, things like that. They
(30:22):
offer some great perks if you want to buy into
one of these these package deals. But just the overall
growth of like you know, being able to put these
people up for the week or however long they're going
to stay, maybe even longer. The meals that they serve, uh,
you know, people are buying clothing, they're buying souvenirs. Of course,
you know, it's all kinds of taking their own dogs
(30:43):
let home. I don't know, oh man, don't imagine what
an amazing president, What a useless president if you don't
have at least like six dogs already. But this there
is so much more to this story. We have to
decided to make this a two part episode, so we
(31:05):
just it's so weird, you guys. We just started getting
to the specifics of the race. But I think the
history was interesting. I I learned. Uh, I learned several
things that I did not know. I was barely aware
of the sweepstakes until you had told us about it. Kurt,
Uh what what's what do you say to this guy's?
(31:25):
What if we paused our story here and we return
in part two of our episode on the idit a
rod look, taking a closer look at the equipment, taking
a look at some more stuff about the race itself,
as well as, of course the dogs other than Balto
and Togo. We barely got to them. I also want
(31:47):
to mention a few of these rules because I went
through the entire rule book yesterday. I read it's fifteen
pages and you think that's really boring. But this is
not a boring rule book. It's interesting. I think there's
some some standouts here that I want to share with
our audience and with you guys. I don't know, I'm
sure if you even know these rules. Um. But the equipment,
to I mean, the dog sleds themselves, there's more to
(32:07):
the sled than you might think. It's not. It's it's
not the simple, uh you know, wooden structure that you
think it is. There's there's far more to it. And
they're pretty fascinating really, and you can learn more. You
can continue the conversation in part two of our upcoming episode,
but you don't have to wait for that. Just just
between just between the four of us, uh, Kurt, Scott,
(32:31):
myself and you listening. Uh, you can hop onto the
internet and find us there to continue the conversation. We're
on Facebook as car Stuff, We're on Instagram or on Twitter.
All the hits, all the good ones, and of course
we want to give a huge thanks to all of
(32:51):
our regular listeners who tuned in. Scott. I don't know
if you noticed, but on Facebook, Kurt and I were
getting a lot of people who are starting to brew
this conspiracy Scott, where you'll hiding. Scott, Well, I'm back
and I'm safe and uh, and I was in no danger,
(33:12):
no danger, So conspiracy theorists you can rest easy, right,
all right, We'll well, I guess we'll check in with
you next time. And uh, and thanks for listening to everybody.
We appreciate it. Car Stuff is a production of I
Heeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:35):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. Hi, and welcome to car Stuff. I'm
your host, Scott Benjamin, and I am also your host,
Ben Boland. We are not alone. We are joined, of course,
with our good friend Kurt Garn. Hello everyone, Holy smoked Scott,
(00:21):
Scott Benjamin. Is it good to see you man? You're back?
Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that. It's good
to be back. It's you kept the seat warm. We
kept yeah, we kept the seat warm. We had a
number of strange adventures, you know. Uh, Kurt and I
are always getting into uh some some weird conversations. We
(00:41):
learned about the Testlas cyber truck, which I would love
to hear your thoughts on. One day we did a
piece on the evolution of the El Camino, remember that one.
That was a good one, like all caminos, you know.
The thing that we got caught on was that the
name of that translates to just the road. That's that's
(01:02):
not too inspiring, and really, I mean and maybe a
little bit, but uh, but yeah, it's it's good to
be back. Anyway. I really appreciate it, and thank you
guys for keeping the show a float here while I
was gone. I really do thank you for that. And uh,
just a quick explanation. I just took some time off
to kind of get things pulled together in my own
personal life. You know that Insomniac show that have been
working on that. Uh, well almost said the word that's
(01:26):
stuff is is real. Um, I was a kidding around that.
Really I messed with my sleep, messed with my whole life,
you know, from in here and outside of work, and uh,
and it was a disaster. And I just took some
time off to kind of pull some things together and
get back in uh, in the right mindset to do
this show and uh and be clear and you know,
(01:46):
a lot more present here with you guys. And I'm
really excited about getting back into car stuff and just
making it the best show that we can. I'm really
really happy to be back behind the mic. Likewise, you know,
the powers that be would not have let me back
onto the show if circumstances have been different. I kind
it's snuck back in here, you know how Well it's
a bit of a reunion for us, right. I mean,
(02:08):
you know, before it was Kurt and I and that
was great, but then when I'm back here. It's like
it feels comfortable again. It's like we never stopped doing
the show that was years ago. Now it was a
long long time ago, and we stopped doing that show together.
But but we're here, we are again. We got Kurt
joining us, who is fantastic, and we're all in this
tiny little room staring at each other. There might be
some awkward silence. You never know. We'll see what happens,
(02:30):
but uh, it's it's I think it's a good team.
I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with this.
Well said, Well said Scott. Indeed, So today's episode is
fascinating because as you would establish, you know, uh you,
Kurt and I have been doing some variety or subversion
or iteration of this show for the better part of
(02:52):
a decade and for a peek behind the curtain. Folks,
long time listeners you'll know this, or anyone with your
own podcast us. After about year five or six, on
some shows, you start saying, well, you start forgetting what
you we covered, you know, in previous episodes, and wondering
(03:12):
what you're going to do. And Kurt, you recently you
had a fantastic idea. There was such a good idea
that I was convinced we had covered it before at
some point in the past nine plus years. And I
was wrong. We had never covered it, which baffles me.
I think it baffled you two. Scott's surprising yet. So
(03:33):
we decided that we would cover sleddog races, most notably
the Iditarod in Alaska. Now, some people are gonna say,
what the heck, this is car stuff, right, but if
you remember car stuff of the past, we have always
covered just about any form of transportation, just about everything really,
and and the funny thing is that can even be
spun off into other things, like I remembered yesterday. We
(03:54):
we've even done like the Pinewood Derby cars time with
Derby races, everything that floats, fly, swims or drives exactly. Yeah,
I mean every form of transportation. And I think this
is the perfect time of year to talk about, you know,
something like this, you know, some some way of getting
around that maybe not everybody is familiar with. But it's
really fascinating. I mean when you dig into it and
how into uh you know, the sleds these people get
(04:16):
into the dog teams, of course, they get um just
the whole lifestyle that goes along with us, the history
of it. It's all very rich, isn't it. Yeah. Absolutely.
It's also one of those races, one of those events
that takes us to the limits of what our bodies
can like endure, and it takes us to the limits
(04:38):
of what we call civilization. You're very much in the
front here. I have either of you ever been to Alaska?
I have you have? Okay, where'd you go? Well, I'll
tell you it's not you know, the wilderness experience that
you might think. I I took an Alaskan cruise many
years ago. This is probably seven years ago, that's right. Well, yeah, no,
I remember, and we did talk about this, so there
and and you know, it goes to the usual reports.
(05:00):
It was a celebrity brand cruise and we're not getting paid,
don't worry. That's the celebrity brand cruise. So that tells
you The ports that we went to, and I can't
remember all of them, but it was like catch a
can um gosh, I can't even Skagway was one. I
know because I'll tell you this. When we went to Skagway,
and we did go a little further north to but
we went to Skagway, and one of the excursions that
(05:21):
you could take and we did do this. One was
to go to a dog sled training camp and I
did that and we talked about that and it was fascinating.
It was a you know, I don't know, maybe a
forty five minute or an hour bus ride to get
to this thing. You're seeing things like bald eagles on
the way, and you know, it's just pristine, beautiful um
Alaskan countryside, you know, my little boutanous you know, lots
(05:43):
of trees and things like that. And it wasn't like
a blizzard or anything like that. It was it was
their off season. So they're in training camp, right and
you get the opportunity to go and sit in a
training dog sled and have them haul you for a
one mile trek around this mountain course that they have
and maybe should I hold onto this for later? Do
(06:05):
you want to talk about it right now? It's it's
pretty quick. So at the time, if you remember when
I got back from this, I was so fired up
about this because it's almost like if you can picture
a golf cart, like an elongated golf cart, so it's
on wheels. Obviously, it's not on skis, and it has
a kind of a runner in front, like a bump
bump guard maybe or something like that. It's it's it
(06:26):
holds six people sitting. There's seats kind of built into
this thing. It's an aluminum frame, I believe, or metal frame.
And then the musher would stand on the back and
they have a dog team in front of you that's
pulling and they pull in this this kind of mountainous,
rocky road right and I'm sitting in this cart with
you know, all these other tourists from the boat. And
we're not small people, you know, we're adults. My daughter
was with the shoes small, but everybody else's adults, even
(06:49):
even the musher. So seven people. When those dogs took off,
I mean it slammed me back in the seat. It was.
It was a forceful takeoff, and they pulled and pulled
old and pulled, and you thought they were never gonna stop.
And then the funny thing is like these dogs were
I mean, they were jacked about pulling that sled. They
loved it, and you think, no, there's no way, there's
(07:11):
no you know, there's a there's got to be cruel
in some way, which we'll get to that, because there
are people that think that. Right, you see these dogs
they are and I know it's hard to believe, but
they're genuinely excited about pulling that sled, and I think
it's it's I did. I didn't understand it until I
was there and and felt it in person, saw it
in person, witnessed all this and it was it was
(07:34):
really cool day. It was. It was like a hundred
bucks at the time. It's more now to do this excursion,
but it was so worth it. It It was so much
fun and just um a real eye opening experience, gave
you a little bit of history, gave you some of
the You could stand on a real and actual dog
sled that they had retired, you know, a wooden one
and check that out. It was really cool all the
parts of it, and um, it just it gave you
(07:56):
a greater appreciation for what the sport is, about the
history of it that you know, the um the truth
behind it. Really right, yeah, this is this is the thing.
So I just went to Alaska earlier this year for
the first time in my life. I was there for
about ten days. I wasn't too far out in the wilderness,
but I was captivated by how close to the wild
(08:18):
people are. Like it doesn't even big, like the the
biggest city in Alaska is still gonna have moose that
run the town because moose are just huge. I would
not be surprised if there's a moose in downtown Anchorage
that has like a mortgage business or something, you know.
Uh So I was. I was amazed by how close
a while we are. And this even goes into the
(08:40):
rules of the idea Rod, which will will discuss in
a little bit. Let's first separate two important things here.
Although the race is often called the idea a rod,
right there is it goes on a route for the
majority of the time that follows a trail, the Dinerad trail,
(09:01):
which is a different thing, and it's it's very old.
It was used for centuries before the first Europeans arrived
to use it. And the first people who identified and
used this trail from you know, from the European side
of the ocean where Russian fur traders way back in
(09:22):
the eighteen hundreds. Native people in Alaska First Nations would
use this, uh this trail system right to travel to
different villages and eventually it became one of those things
like a what do you call it, like a desire path.
It was just the best route from point A to
point B to point C and so on. And so
(09:42):
in nineteen o eight, government employees cleared the Iditarod Trail,
which made it a little easier to navigate. But in
nineteen ten, someone found gold and that changes everything in
the town, if i'd it or yeah, okay, well it
did change everything because you know that that town I
(10:05):
guess kind of blew up overnight, right, They became boom towns.
And there were a lot of these in Alaska, as
we all know just from our history classes and you know,
elementary school, you can kind of learned about the gold
rushes and what was going on there. But what happened
is then a lot of the uh, the what are
they called veins I guess of gold dry up. You know,
they they go away. You know, the gold is no
(10:26):
longer found. It's not profitable to do that. The town
kind of drives up along the way with it. The
town remains, it remains maybe uh, you know, a shell
of itself. It remains kind of a skeleton of itself
and becomes eventually, um, a ghost town. If if it's
allowed to go that far. Some of them just kind
of remain with a few residents here and there. But
you know what, since we're talking about towns, we kind
(10:48):
of glossed over your trip to Alaska. Where what towns
did you go to any of the towns that might
have been on the trail or were you a cruise passengers? Well? No,
mainly Anchorage and I had to add to send the
team the Cordoba and then they also went to Hitchinbrook Island. Uh.
And then I traveled up to Willow, Alaska. You see,
you had to send a team. Okay, this is interesting.
(11:12):
I didn't even know you went to Alaska, so I'll
have to ask you about this later. A lot of
water under the bridge band, A lot of stuff happened.
It's like an undercover He's like, it's like a Navy
seal or something Sea five somewhere. Oh man, you know, uh,
I gotta say, like, maybe it's a story for another day,
but yeah, the the boom and busts that you're talking
(11:36):
about is very real and it's happened around the world.
When a town rises up based on a single resource,
it is therefore dependent on that resource. The cold dries
up than a cold town dies, right, and the same
with gold. Uh. Before the gold actually dried up, the
Goggenheims bought up a bunch of the smaller scale mines
(11:58):
in the area around Flat and I did a odd
and they introduced a little bit more of like a mechanized,
large scale way of mining, so it didn't take as
many individuals like sitting there, you know, trying to strike
gold in various places. So it kind of took away
the need for mail deliveries and food deliveries and travel
(12:19):
along the trails in between. So the gold may have
dried up later, but before that happened, like kind of
like a large I guess company or conglomerate came in
and started doing all the mining, so it needed less individuals.
So it's interesting is they they had less individuals, and
it took away the need for food and the need
(12:39):
for all that too, took for many many people. It
means that they never were quite established the point they
could have been. They didn't get the roadway systems that
they would have had. They didn't get um, you know,
the infrastructure that we would normally think of would associate
with a larger town a small airport. Even a lot
of things were happening railroads, for example, around this time
(12:59):
or kind of starting to be built in Alaska. So
I think human travel along the trail is just kind
of a lot of different things happen at once to
make this perfect storm. If you don't use these trails,
they just go into disrepair sort of. That's what keeps
them there. It's a frequent travel. Yeah, this is exactly
what happened to the Bates Hotel. And that's that's exactly
(13:21):
what could lead to bad things. That's what a Hitchcock
called it. Uh So, one question we have to address
here at the top before we get in the nuts
on the bolts of the race itself. We need to
explore the role of dog teams in general in this
(13:45):
part of the world. Nowadays, we're very fortunate there are
airplanes all over the place. They like there are tons
and tons of cessments in Alaska, right and they make small,
you know, like puddle jumper flights because it's the best
way to access uh point A to point B. In
some cases, before there were airplanes delivery mail and supplies
(14:07):
and so on, two very remote areas of Alaska, people
used dog teams. It was the best way to transport
yourself and goods, uh, you know, game, food, water, so on.
And many people lived a subsistence lifestyle where you know,
you were so familiar with your dog team. They it
(14:30):
was like your daily driver, just like horses would have
been back then in areas further south. Sure, and you
you take care of them extremely well because that's your
only way to get around. They're they're extremely valuable to you, right,
I mean, they're they're like gold in themselves. I mean,
you don't want anything to happen to your dog team.
You don't want anything to happen to your horse team.
Of course. Um, they become like family members, really, a
(14:51):
lot of them, I would bet. I mean, it's not
like they're not just work animals. They're also part of
the family, similar similar to your cars. You yeah, I guess,
so they have to take care of it. Yeah, well
it depends on the car. You know, some some you
grow out of favor with quickly, more quickly than others. Right,
But this is this is a critical party here, right,
(15:13):
because we're talking about delivery of goods and services. Well,
I guess goods via dog sled. So you know what
can you take You can only take small items, really,
But what happens when there's maybe an emergency? Ah, excellent question, Scott.
It's almost as if you're setting me up for something,
(15:34):
you know. Uh, it's true. And this leads us directly
to the story of the race that we call the
ident a rod today also called the last Great Race
on Earth. Well that's from my didad dot com. They're
a little biased. So in ninet there were twenty mushers.
(15:54):
Have we even talked? You mentioned musher? What's a musher?
Musher is the person driving the sled, riding the sled,
I guess I don't know, driving, piloting, pilot. Captain shouts
the commands the dog, Yeah, mus mush. So in a
(16:23):
team of twenty mushers commanding about a hundred and fifty
sled dogs, had to travel six hundred seventy four miles
that's one thousand a five kilometers for everybody outside of
the US and like two other countries. Uh. And they
traveled this tremendous distance in five and a half days.
And they were on a mission like some real superheroes stuff.
(16:46):
What were they doing? They were delivering a serum to
cure dip theory outbreak that they were having a Gnome
at the time, how's there going from wherever the I
think initially wasn't there. There was a plane I think
that took the initial um serum right to a certain train,
a train the first little bit, yeah, and then the
(17:07):
train could no longer go the rest of the distance,
and the dogs were able to accommodate that. And of
course we we said there were twenty mushers, that means
twenty dog teams. Yeah, yeah, like a big relay race.
You're right, it's like, you know, hand off the serum,
get it on its way and off to see them
get on the way. And the reason they need the serum,
I don't know if we even said this. It was diphtheria, right,
there was. There was a diphtheria outbreak in Gnome and
(17:30):
the surrounding smaller communities, and it was a It was
an epidemic, There's no two ways about it. The authorities
and Gnome realized that the diphtheria anti toxin they did
have was bad. It was yeah, bum antitoxins that and
expected to have efficacy, So they needed this stuff in
(17:52):
a hurry, and that's why there's a relay because the
dogs are still fresh, right, and so they can pass
it off to one another. This became known spoiler alert.
They successfully completed the run, the dip theory anti toxin
was delivered, the town was saved. This is now known
sometimes as the Great Race of Mercy or the Serum Run,
(18:15):
and these people and their dogs became heroes. They were
celebrities overnight, so much so that okay, we've gotta remember
this too that we're talking about um um Wait, okay,
we know where Alaska is right? How far away Alaska
is from New York? Yes, okay, there is a statue
in h in Um Central Park in New York City
(18:35):
of one of the dogs that they considered to be
like the hero dog. It's the lead dog that finally
brought the serum into Gnome. Right, it's the last dog.
Um it is um. His name is Balto Balto, Balto
the Dog. And you can go see Balto the Dog
statue in Central Park. And you have seen it, right, Ben, Yes, yes,
it's still there, still there and uh and you know
(18:58):
a lot of people had There was a little bit
of con versity over Balto Balto. If you can believe
this or not, I mean the musher of course, and
I don't even remember the guy's name it right now,
but he's also a hero. Um. But there was a
particular dog and musher that they thought should have been
given all this credit because it was the one that
took the most difficult leg of the journey. And I
don't recall from what town to what town that was.
(19:18):
I read that yesterday and I should have written it down,
but I didn't, So it's there. There was someone somewhat
of a controversy between, you know, between Balto and this
other dog, because this dog just simply was the last one.
There were twenty along the way that that probably deserve
equal credit. The one you're referring to a dog named Togo.
Okay and um. He was the lead dog for Leonard
(19:40):
sa Paula, who competed in a race that they had
sled dog race that they had in Alaska pre World
War One. So he wanted the last four times that
they did this race, it was called the All Alaska
Sweep Steaks. Give us some background real quick on on
what Sappola and Togo did. They did cover, as you
(20:01):
guys said, the most hazardous leg of the journey. They
made a round trip of two sixty one miles from
Nome to shock Tulik and then back to Golovin. And
this means they delivered the serum a total of nine miles,
which is almost double the distance that any other team did. Okay,
so they really they put it out there, they delivered.
(20:22):
Balto just had a better pr team. I guess they got.
They got they were the ones that they had finish. Yeah. Yeah,
isn't there a thing? I mean, it's probably a bumper sticker.
But you know, unless you're the lead dog, the view
never changes. Oh that's what did you write that? No,
that's pretty good. No, well it's uh, it's kind of
funny too if you think about it. It also makes
(20:42):
me think that if you're unless you're the lead dog,
you're always looking at another dog's But that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
that's what That's why I always take it. But I
think it's it's kind of deeper meaning as well. I believe,
you know, unless bud centric meaning. There's also a statue
of Balto in downtown Anchorage. Can I up you for
a second. Okay, since we're talking about this, I just
(21:03):
have to say this one of the most shocking parts
of the trip that the the one mile trip that
I was on the dogs training camp is that well,
we're this so gross, and don't let this discourage you've
from doing this if you get a chance. The dogs,
well they crap while they run. They don't stop, so
(21:23):
like they don't wait until it's breast time to go
off in the woods and go they go while they're running.
And yes, and it gets flipped up and you don't
realize it right as a passenger until you're done, and
then you're like, what is that. You know, you may
or may not experience this. I don't know. It kind
of depends on you know, what happens when. But these
dogs like they just they just go as they're like
(21:45):
full speed ahead, and of course it gets thrown all
thrown all over you. It's a shocking one. My kid
was just, I don't know, just upset about that. I
also was upset. It's not like it's it's like, oh,
this is so gross. It's just like it's like as
if somebody was riding a bicycle in front of you
and you know, mud gets flipped up on you or something.
(22:07):
It's like little drops of mud and rocks and things
like that to get thrown up. But then you realize
later like, oh wait a minute, some of that dog crap.
That's great. Yeah, so just be aware, but don't again,
don't let that discourage you. Okay, that's incredible insight. I'm glad.
You know. I'm shocked. I didn't think of that, Kurt,
did you? It makes sense. Well, I'm not going to
(22:30):
tell my girlfriend until we're on the sled and now
you know, and again maybe just bring some goggles. Great,
all right, I interrupted. That's perfect, and that's valuable information
for anybody's planning on going sledding after hearing this story.
(22:51):
So we said there were two different kind of competing stories, right. Uh.
Many people will claim that the Gnome and from is
the inspiration for the Iditarod that happens annually today. We
do want to say one other thing about the Nome run.
They helped inspire an inoculation campaign throughout the US for diphtherium.
(23:19):
It's always positive. Yeah, so it even had a better ending.
There's another story that you will find from the Iditarod's
own website, and it differs. Uh, it differs a little
bit because in this version of events, There's a guy
named Joe Reddington's senor who has lived in Alaska, spent
(23:40):
a lot of time using dog sled teams himself and
his day to day work. And their story is that
in nine seventy three, uh, Joe Reddington launched the Iditarod
Race as a way to preserve the culture of dog sledding,
especially in Alaska. And that's because machines were taken over, right, Yeah,
(24:04):
an Henry situation there for a moment, I think so too. Yeah,
so we're talking about what they call them snow machines.
I've heard a lot of people call them snow machines,
but I've always my life called them snowmobiles. So snowmobiles
are taken over. And and I think we can all
picture this time and frame. You know, in early nineteen seventies,
or at least you know of them. You've seen snowmobiles
in that era, and they look essentially like they do now.
(24:27):
I mean, they're a lot more sleek now, a lot
more you know, they look like a high powered motorcycle
now or something. Yeah, they are. But but back then,
in nineteen seventy three, they were finding that, Yeah, they've
got these machines and they can do it, and it's
it's easier on you know, of course easier on the dogs.
Dogs stay at home, you know, by the fire or whatever.
They do. Um, it's faster, but they're not as reliable,
(24:50):
not nearly as reliable as the dogs are. And they
found that, you know, we've got to preserve this part
of our history. It's not just for the historical aspect
of it. But here's something that's gonna work every time,
and we know we've known it for centuries. Yeah. Yeah,
the people who are there so far before Alaska became
a US territory, let alone a state, have been dog sledding.
(25:13):
So Joe eventually gets everybody on board with this. The
first I Did a Rod race occurs in nineteen seventy three.
The winner is a fellow named Dick will Marth. It
takes him twenty days, forty nine minutes and forty one seconds.
So that so you will also hear um again from
I Did a Rod. They'll say that the Gnome Run
(25:34):
of five inspired a different race called the Serum Run
that Joe also started. So these these events, there's there's
a little bit of contradiction there, but every everybody agrees
on the following fact. The first I did a rod
race official race was in nineteen seventy three, which is
maybe a little younger than I think a lot of
(25:56):
people associated with because we have to remember, we've seen
all these images from the eighteen hundreds and so of
dog sled teams, because dog sledding had already been very
well established before someone decided to make it a race.
Yeah sure, and you know this is this is the
very public version of of dog sledding. Of course, dog sleds,
(26:19):
as you said, have been used for many, many purposes
for centuries before this. But but to put it out
in front of everybody and say, here's here's what we're doing.
We're doing this incredible test of human endurance. I'm gonna
say dog endurance too. I mean, I don't know if
that's not measured often do you want to put that?
But twenty days, twenty days is what it took to
make this course. And you know, as you can imagine,
(26:43):
as we'll get too later, that that record has has
dropped and dropped and dropped, so it's it's become much
faster race. Um. People are getting a lot more competitive
about the whole thing, and I thought they weren't competitive before.
But you know how this goes. I mean, this is
our quest to the four minute mile thing. You know,
like when everybody was trying to beat the four minute
mile and it was like they're shaving off, you know,
just fractions of a second here and there, and finally
(27:03):
someone broke it. And then now that's been shattered, you know.
And when we talk about records being shattered, I mean
you look back toe and the current record, which will
tell you later dramatic difference, huge, huge difference. But it's
not so much the desire to get there as fast
has changed or anything like that. It's just that maybe
there's some improvements in food for the animals. Material higher energy,
(27:26):
material science is a big thing. Um. I don't think
aerodynamics plays into this really not that much. Um. Maybe
we'll weigh in on some of these factors that we
think of have led to greatly reduced times prize money
later in this prize prize money is a is a
huge kick in the butt, isn't it right? It makes
(27:48):
it It It makes you get up early in the morning
and head out and try to make it to the
next stop. More aerodynamic that could be. Yeah, but you
know what, you know, what's maybe even something else that
no one has ever really heard of outside of you know,
if you're I did ride follower, somebody who tracks them
on GPS every here, and there are people that do that.
(28:09):
There are two routes. There's one that does go through
I did arride, the actual town if I did ride.
And there's another route as well, and they run them
in different years. So there's the there's a North south.
There's a north route and a south route and what
is it the the north route I believe is run
in the even numbered years, okay, And and that route
the total distance from what anchorage to know him uh,
(28:32):
somewhere around nine hundred and seventy five. That's the ballpark
because it changes a little bit here and there based
on current conditions. You know, if there was a rock
slide or you know whatever of snow sometimes makes the
change the route. Yeah, absolutely, avalanche or whatever, bad weather,
yeah exactly, um uh. And then there's a south route
and that's run on the odd number years. So in
(28:53):
twenty nineteen that we ran on the or they ran
on the south route, and that one's a little bit longer.
It's nine miles. And what I find maybe even I
keep saying what I find most interesting, but it's it's
what I find interesting about this is that they typically
just round the mileage up to roughly about a thousand.
I think, in fact, they go as far as to
say a thousand. What's what's the significance of that. It's
(29:17):
because Alaska is the forty nine U. S State, so
and and in all likelihood, and these guys are probably
going that far or farther. Really, I mean, you have
to there's gotta be some variants to the trail. Really,
I mean, like like Kurt was saying, you know, the
bad weather, can a tree could fall, you have to
go around and maybe a tree a bad example. It's
a short distance around, but you have to take an
(29:39):
alternate route around as long as it's allowed. There's there's
also this idea of distributing the impact of the race
across these small villages by alternating the route, because some
of these places have you know, maybe a few hundred inhabitants.
So this can be a big deal when when folks
come through, huge economic impact when the idea goes through
(30:02):
your town the year, right, It's it really is because
people fly in for this. People want to come in
for uh you know, these these package experiences that they purchase.
You know, they want to ride along with somebody, or
they want to you know, stay at a certain hotel
and watch the people come in, or they even get
an opportunity to sign in some people that are checking
in for the night. You know, things like that. They
(30:22):
offer some great perks if you want to buy into
one of these these package deals. But just the overall
growth of like you know, being able to put these
people up for the week or however long they're going
to stay, maybe even longer. The meals that they serve, uh,
you know, people are buying clothing, they're buying souvenirs. Of course,
you know, it's all kinds of taking their own dogs
(30:43):
let home. I don't know, oh man, don't imagine what
an amazing president, What a useless president if you don't
have at least like six dogs already. But this there
is so much more to this story. We have to
decided to make this a two part episode, so we
(31:05):
just it's so weird, you guys. We just started getting
to the specifics of the race. But I think the
history was interesting. I I learned. Uh, I learned several
things that I did not know. I was barely aware
of the sweepstakes until you had told us about it. Kurt,
Uh what what's what do you say to this guy's?
(31:25):
What if we paused our story here and we return
in part two of our episode on the idit a
rod look, taking a closer look at the equipment, taking
a look at some more stuff about the race itself,
as well as, of course the dogs other than Balto
and Togo. We barely got to them. I also want
(31:47):
to mention a few of these rules because I went
through the entire rule book yesterday. I read it's fifteen
pages and you think that's really boring. But this is
not a boring rule book. It's interesting. I think there's
some some standouts here that I want to share with
our audience and with you guys. I don't know, I'm
sure if you even know these rules. Um. But the equipment,
to I mean, the dog sleds themselves, there's more to
(32:07):
the sled than you might think. It's not. It's it's
not the simple, uh you know, wooden structure that you
think it is. There's there's far more to it. And
they're pretty fascinating really, and you can learn more. You
can continue the conversation in part two of our upcoming episode,
but you don't have to wait for that. Just just
between just between the four of us, uh, Kurt, Scott,
(32:31):
myself and you listening. Uh, you can hop onto the
internet and find us there to continue the conversation. We're
on Facebook as car Stuff, We're on Instagram or on Twitter.
All the hits, all the good ones, and of course
we want to give a huge thanks to all of
(32:51):
our regular listeners who tuned in. Scott. I don't know
if you noticed, but on Facebook, Kurt and I were
getting a lot of people who are starting to brew
this conspiracy Scott, where you'll hiding. Scott, Well, I'm back
and I'm safe and uh, and I was in no danger,
(33:12):
no danger, So conspiracy theorists you can rest easy, right,
all right, We'll well, I guess we'll check in with
you next time. And uh, and thanks for listening to everybody.
We appreciate it. Car Stuff is a production of I
Heeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(33:35):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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