It’s days like these (scorching hot) that bring back such great memories of The Iditarod, which, to me, is also spelled Alaska.  Alaska; you know, where Sarah Palin lives.

First of all, believe me, Al Gore didn’t invent the internet. We can argue all day and night about his strong beliefs on “global warming” and still not know what we’re talking about. Is it real? Is it man-caused? Is it cyclical?

We’ll probably have the right answer in another couple hundred years, but let’s leave that to our followers on this incredible planet.

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Right now, all I know is it’s hotter than Hades, or at least that is what I am told to believe. When the temp pushes up to 100 degrees, that’s hell on earth to me. All you have to do is look at a map and know that way down here is closer to hell than way up there in Alaska, which looks closer to heaven.  Is purgatory someplace in between, like Nebraska or Utah?

Right now I wish I were up in Nome, Alaska, which we have visited six times over the years. Nome is the tiny hamlet on the Bering Sea that stares Russia in the face. It is also the wind-up home of the annual March Iditarod, “the last great race” of Alaskan sled dogs.  And if you still have a mental picture of large, beautiful Huskies pulling the sleds, quickly dispel the idea. Today, Alaskan sled dogs are bred for strength and endurance, not size. They are rather small, but extremely strong — and vocal.

Peg and I have been to five Iditarods, having stumbled across it on our first visit to Nome, a mysterious-sounding place I had always wanted to visit. All four of our kids have also been to the Idit at least once, experiencing the great fun of tracking the dogs’ pace over l,l00 miles from Anchorage to Nome.

March in Nome, of course, is cold, much to my liking. If we were lucky, there was a lot of snow and temps near zero. On a couple “unlucky” years, the temps were more like the 20’s and snow had to be trucked into Main Street were the sled dogs arrived.

The most memorable weather was the year it snowed heavilly, with the fierce wind blowing the snow horizontally with a wind chill factor of 40 degrees below zero.

I always wished Nome had that kind of weather during June or July because I would make an annual trek to get away from the boiler-room heat we have to put up with down here near hell.  No such luck.

Doing the Idit in March is a blast for some people and zilch for others. I even know some who went once and don’t care to face the cold again.  Not even with the lure of breakfast, lunch and dinner at Fat Freddy’s, the most famous eating place in town. There’s no better Reuben anyplace in the Lower Forty-Eight.

And of course, if you’re so inclined, as most everybody in Nome is, there are watering holes every few yards along Main Street, most notably the Board of Trade and The Polaris.  

Nome is an old gold-mining town which refuses to give up its past. It’s still tiny, with decaying remnants of the old mining days and a building where deceased bodies are stored during Winter, since the frozen ground does not allow burial until Spring.

 You’ve heard all your life, “There’s no place like home.”

Take it from me: “There’s no place like Nome.”

Mush!  

Lou Major Sr. is a former publisher of The Daily News.