»Preview »Itinerary »Reports »Maps »Photos »Bios »Iditasport

Norwil

Pat Calls from the Yukon
LISTEN:  [RealPlayer]  [Windows Media]

    Download a FREE media player to listen.

(John) Stamstad left Galena at 4pm. He's really hurtin'. I think he's going to start touring the ride now. He blew himself up in the Extreme and he's just, he's bowing out. He might just get on a plane and leave, I'm not sure.

" I don't think I'll ever come back up here and do this [sic] race again, this is just obscene. I mean what we're going through; the Yukon, God, I've never seen so much white expanse of boringness in my life...."

I'm in Kaltag heading to Unalakleet, so it's called the Portage, the Overland Portage to the Bering Sea. You know the one drag about this race is you get into these cool little villages and you can't explore them; Kaltag's a pretty cool looking little village, and so is Nulato and all of them down the road. But I don't think I'll ever come back up here and do this [expletive] race again, this is just obscene. I mean what we're going through; the Yukon, God, I've never seen so much white expanse of boringness in my life. It was just hell to ride. There were a couple times when I just stood there and put my head on my handlebars and was kind of like 'what am I doing this for?' It's been pretty bad.

Curiak is still way out in the lead; he's got about a 10-hour lead on us right now. He left Kaltag at 8am heading to Unalakleet, so he's probaly going to camp at one of the BLM cabins, there's the Old Woman and the New Woman cabin, so he'll probably be holding up in one of the cabins.

We made some pretty good time on him on the Yukon and hopefully we can just continue to reel him in. It's still quite a ways to go and the coast can just totally kick our ass. And I got a feeling that we've been in good weather, and although the east wind is still blowing, I think the sh*! can hit the fan, and I'm really hoping the sh*! hits the fan out on the coast and slows him down. Otherwise it's his race, you know, he's sitting fat right now and if he doesn't make any mistakes he's going to have enough of a lead on us right now to be first into Nome, which would be the sh*!s.

—Pat Norwil, MountainZone.com Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES