World Class Federalists in Paradise

Despite years of animal-rights activism, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race -- a grueling 1100-mile trek that commemorates the 1925 "race" to bring diptheria serum to the people of Nome -- has perservered and grown in popularity. Now, having already achieved unprecedented gender-equality (women have won the event five times), their big tent is getting even bigger:

NOME, Alaska -- Rachael Scdoris and her Iditarod sled dog team were navigating a treacherous cliff, crisscrossed with switchbacks, when her sled slammed into a thick spruce tree.

"It was the worst run I've ever done," said [Scdoris].

Scdoris managed to recover from the fiasco in the Alaska Range and crossed the Iditarod finish line in the post-midnight chill of the old gold rush town, becoming the first legally blind musher to bring a sled dog team more than 1,100 miles from Anchorage to Nome.