• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

In This Issue

• Idiotarod: Mushing Fun in NYC
• Desensitization: It Does a Body Good
• Shit Blowing Up is So Patriotic
• Letters to the Feditrix: Hot Pre-Teen Sex!
• Point: There's No State Like a Prostrate, Girls
• CounterPoint: Assloads of Bad Stuff
• I Could be the Spectator's Sex Columnist
• Hardcore CosmoGirls Have Some Things to Learn
• Point: Shocking Apathy for Homeless
• CounterPoint: Solution for Homeless is Lock and Load
• Burbery Scarves, Labia Elephantitis Linked
• Elimidate Plays Cupid, Stupid
• Anti-Life Comics: The Great Cookie War
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• Cowboy Bush
• Uncle PennyBags Gets His Due

The Iditarod: a 1150 mile international dog sledding race across the Alaskan landscape. Mushers and their dog teams risk their lives to complete this 10-17 day long race through mountains, over rivers, and across the barren tundra. The Idiotarod: A 4 mile race between outgoing, inept people who run like a bunch of crazies through the concrete jungle of New York City. Over the Manhattan Bridge, through China town, and across Cooper Square teams of five and a shopping cart risk nothing except their dignity (if any of the participants even had it in the first place) to complete this 2-3 hour long race.

My friend Natalie first proposed that we enter the Idiotarod the night before the race. We had no shopping cart, no decorations, and not even enough people for a team. The morning of, we scoped out a local market to see how we could steal a shopping cart. There were cameras and security everywhere, and no real reason to take the shopping cart out of the store unless some amateurs were trying to steal it. We struck a deal with the manager: a hundred dollar deposit to push his cart like nobody’s business.

We literally had to call everyone in our cell phones to find enough people to enter the race as a team. We were baffled at why anybody wouldn’t want to sprint for two hours with a shopping cart in 15 degree weather. Eventually, we were a team of five: Natalie, Ali, Beth, Sloan, and myself.

As young scholars, we chose the Cold War as our team’s theme. We decorated our cart with a USSR and American flag, and random pieces of poster board that had Cold War catch phrases like “Domino Effect”, “Containment Theory”, and “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?!” Considering the weather, we were limited in our costuming capabilities. Natalie tried to dress as a Russian dictator but looked more like the Hamburgler, Ali wore a white vest and called herself Sputnik, and I tied a scarf to my head over my beanie thinking it was enough to make me a dirty hippy against the war in ‘Nam.
There were only two rules to the race. The first was that you have to hit two checkpoints: one in Chinatown and the other at the Bowery Poetry Club, and stay at each for 20 minutes. The second was that one person had to be the “musher” and stand behind the cart pushing it and the other four had to be the “dogs” and pull the cart from the front. In contrast to those that had build pulling apparatuses, Natalie got in back as the musher wile the rest of us wrapped duct tape around our waist and to the cart.

Some teams, sporting track suits and metal pulling apparatuses, were in it to win the $3,000 first place prize. However, most, including Team Cold War, used it as an excuse to get drunk at two in the afternoon. We only realized that people actually ran in the Idiotarod when all teams started sprinting for the bridge at the wave of the flag, and Team Cold War was left at the start confused, lost, and in the middle of a third round of vodka shots (in honor of the Russians). From the outset, out of twenty-five teams, we were somewhere in the last five.

Those five included Team Chinese with a huge dragon covering the cart, Team Evil in red and black (who essentially looked like WBAR and Fed staffers 5 years from now, and Team Fuzzy Animal where all members were dressed in various full body animal suits. Because we were Team Cold War, we knew we had to beat the Chinese for historically symbolic purposes, and this was easy because their large dragon prevented them from getting anywhere fast. The Team Fuzzy Animal’s costumes seemed to slow them down just as Team Chinese. So Team Evil emerged as our ultimate competitor but would remain one step in front of us for most of the race.

During the race, Team Cold War, like many of the other teams, literally stopped traffic on Canal with the NYPD watching with puzzlement from the sidewalk to get to our second checkpoint. After having a drink and realizing that we still had nine minutes to technically wait before we could make the final mush for the finish, we realized that we all had “Fuck it” written across our faces and just started running.

The final mile towards Union Square was the most arduous because it was not so easy to run up Fourth Ave with tobacco in our lungs and vodka in our gullets. Sloan ran up ahead without the rest of team just so he could beat Team Evil. When we were less than ten blocks away, we saw a hot pink member of Team Fuzzy Animal darting towards us through the darkly clad New York pedestrian traffic. With a big “AHHHHHHHH!” Team Cold War took it up a notch yet it wasn’t enough to escape the tackle of a large woman dressed in a suit right out of “Death to Smoochie.” To get her paws off of Natalie, our musher, I jumped on her back, dragged her to the sidewalk, and yelled “Go! Go! Go while you can!” The pink Rhino then threw a handful of confetti at my face in a futile attempt to stop me. I then ran up to catch my team at the finish line at Union Square.

Though Idiotarod officials stopped counting placement after the first team, we came in third to last. Despite a poor finish, we were welcomed with open arms at the George Washington Statue by inebriated freaks with decorated shopping carts. I was drunk by 3:00 p.m., and before leaving for uptown, we tried to hoist Ali up onto the 20ft GW Statue, I jumped into a wrestling match with some kids in the park, and finally, while the rest of our team chose to head back, Natalie and I insisted that we go shoe shopping, with the beat-up shopping cart.

We were so proud then, and would beam with pride for the rest of the weekend as we responded to questions like “Wait. You fuckers ran a race with a shopping cart?” Yes, yes we did, and what a long strange trip it was. The countdown begins for Idiotarod 2k5…