Jodi Bailey - camped on the river yesterday afternoon:
I wish you guys could hear the inflection in her voice, she's so funny. She's sitting on her sled, in the middle of the mile-wide Yukon River, eating chunks of bacon .
Interview starts mid-sentence...they've evidently not started the "official" interview yet, and are just setting up:
Jodi: "...How we train, we're alone a lot... so they [the dogs] hear you guys coming up behind us - I don't know if you can tell, but they're all "machines...! machines are coming...! machines are coming!!" and then you pass and they're all "MACHINES!!!"
Jodi-Yukon-WednesdayPM1.jpg
Then they discuss where the interviewer and the camera man should stand.
Jodi: "If you stand on this side, I don't have to look into the sun. ... can you kneel on this side, so I don't have to look into the sun?... or does that ruin everything?"
Camera man: "So long as you don't move, it's good."
<Jodi freezes, bacon bit approaching her mouth><laughs>
Comments that the interviewer looks like a bank robber right now.
Interviewer says he's "tired of taking it on and off".
Jodi: "There's so many jokes in that statement I'm not even going to touch... we're not rolling [camera] yet, are we?"
Camera man: "Please touch it. Our editor sits at a desk for hours on end, she needs some comic relief. It's best if she gets a giggle now and again"
<Jodi laughs>
Jodi: "You mean we're not comic enough? ... You know, I bet a lot of us are grumpy, but talk about a hard spot to follow - most of us are better with dogs than with people, we haven't showered in days... and that's not even on the trail, that's just a standard. And now we're kind of sleep deprived. And fans don't ever get to see us, except for through the job that you-all do - except for this little blip on a screen, most of them don't have any perspective on where that blip really is. So I figure it's the least we can do to show what it's like".
Jodi-Yukon-WednesdayPM2.jpg
Camera man: "So, for my editor, can you say your name... <Jodi laughs, having just inserted a blob of bacon into her mouth> ...no worries... just when you get the time".
Jodi: "I did warn you I was just about to sit down and eat bacon.
... My name is Jodi Bailey and I'm from Chatanika, AK. We're here with Dew Claw Kennel... and at some point, he will pan over and show you my beautiful dogs.
<she waves her arm out, à la Vanna White, towards her dogs>
....panning, panning, panning...
<camera man obediently pans over to her dog team lying in the straw, fast asleep>
Jodi-Yukon-WednesdayPM3.jpg
...I know they can edit out sound, and then I can eat more bacon while he does that... <camera man pans back to her. She laughs> ... I was not fast enough."
Q: So how's your race going so far?
<swallows> "It's going really well, the trail has been beautiful. And that whole Chatanika-thing means I'm used to running in the cold, so it hasn't really bothered me that much. And the dogs have been really happy, which makes me really happy.
...You realise that's the most boring question you could possibly ask me, right?"
Q: What's a good question for me to ask?
Jodi: "Something I haven't been asked by *every* *other* reporter.
...See now I'm just heckling him <looks at the camera man> ...that'll make your editor happy, right?"
Camera man: "Sure" <laughing>
Jodi: "No, it's true, they're always asking 'how's your race going? how's your goals for the race?'"
Q: Why are you out here? ... in the middle of nowhere... eating bacon...
Jodi: "Aah. I was raised in New England, which is a very - I don't know if 'traditional' is the right word - but it just felt like that because that's where I grew up. But life was very different there. You were going to go to school, and grow up, and get married, and have a career and maybe a family - because you know, modern women have choices - but it was all a little bit more... the path was laid out. And it never really felt right.
And when I was in college, I wrote a grant proposal to study story-telling with Athabaskan Elders in interior AK, as an excuse to not go home for the summer - to do something fun and crazy. And I landed in AK and something in my heart told me I was home.
There's just a different speed to life here, and - I apologize for being stereotypical, which I'm sure I am - because New England is different things to lots of people and I don't mean to be utterly negative about it, except that it was a really bad fit for me, I got up here and AK was a really good fit for me.
I like the fact that in AK - the best way to describe it, back east where I grew up, when people ask you 'what do you do?', they're specifically asking you what your job is, as a way for them to try and understand you. And when people in AK ask you 'what do you do?', they want to know what makes you interesting - and very rarely people answer that with a job. And I liked that."
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