COMING THURSDAY: Read excerpts of Jim Bardoner's blog from Montana as he prepares for the Race to the Sky, and follow his blog online at timesfreepress.com
Jim Bardoner stared fear in the face, looking directly in its cold, steely eyes with the ultimate stakes.
Bardoner, an Erlanger doctor who lives on Signal Mountain, was standing on the runners of a dog sled last year, surrounded by Montana snow, and the pain in his severely dislocated shoulder may have been the one thing that kept his mind from approaching panic.
The shoulder -- injured by several falls from the sled -- already had been shoved back into its socket several times in preceding days by Doug Swingley, a dog-sledding veteran who has been a sponsor and a mentor for Bardoner.
Now Bardoner was alone and the shoulder was shredded. It would require extensive surgery, he suspected, but in zero-degree temperatures with little to no light left and his exact direction unsure, the throbbing pain was secondary.
Unable to risk falling from his sled again and realizing the stakes -- "It was a survive-mentality kind of thing," he said last month in recalling the ordeal -- Bardoner tied his injured arm to the sled and ordered his dogs to move. He was headed back to camp.
"I was really scared, but there was a peace about it," he said. "The snow was like quicksand, and if you fall the dogs have to pull you out. I didn't know if I could take that."
That was Jan. 3, 2009, and Bardoner's dream of racing in the famed Iditarod seemed to be fading like the Montana sunlight.
Bardoner will compete in the "Race to the Sky" in Montana starting Friday. If he finishes in the top 75 or within a set percentage of the overall winner's time, he will qualify for next year's Iditarod. He has spent several months of each winter of the last six years either participating with or trying to compete in the Iditarod.
He has trained, working with Swingley and his wife Melanie, progressing from a novice to the point where he can almost see the starting line of dog-sled racing's Super Bowl.
He has lost weight and worked out. He has sacrificed and risked his safety. All for the dream of participating in the race that is as much against the elements as the competition. The Iditarod starts in Anchorage and concludes in Nome as teams comprised of one musher and as many as 16 dogs cover more than 1,150 miles in 10 to 17 days.
Bardoner even has volunteered as a way to connect to the event, reaching out in 2005 for what type of help a trained physician could lend the event.
"I told them I was a doctor and I wanted to volunteer," Bardoner said. "But they didn't need doctors, they needed veternarians. And HAM radio operators."
Bardoner got his HAM license to volunteer that first year. In other years he wanted to see more of the course and the terrain and worked as a trail guard manning the ceremonial start line.
Don't let the cool position title fool you.
"I was pretty much a traffic monitor and pooper scooper," he said.
He has never been deterred, though. Like most moments of supreme inspiration, the timing was random and the location was unpredictable.
In 2004, to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary, Bardoner wanted to take his wife, Dianne, on an Alaskan cruise. The romantic getaway became a family vacation with seven kids, Bardoner's father and his two sisters. Amid the family travels that covered an array of transportation -- from ship to train to plane to sled -- Bardoner received his vision quest.
Standing outside Jeff King's Husky Homestead -- a shrine and kennel for the Iditarod started by the four-time winner who has logged enough miles in a dog sled to wrap the globe four times -- Bardoner was hooked.
"We got to see the whole setup and see how he does it and all this paraphernalia from the races," Bardoner said. "He gave a speech about the Iditarod, and I hadn't really heard about it before then."
The seed had been planted for Bardoner, who grew up in the Pittsburgh area and has never shied from a challenge.
Looking at the trinkets and the trophies and the Iditarod memories around King's place, Bardoner said he thought about the race.
"Could I do that?" he wondered. It's a fair question, since if he qualifies and completes next year's Iditarod he would be the first Tennessean and the oldest rookie to finish it.
There are times that moments happen, and there are happenings that become moments. For Bardoner, who simply was pondering the possibilities of the Iditarod, the answer came from his wife.
"I had been mulling it over, and she really affirmed me," he said. "She said, 'You operate well on little to no sleep, you love being outside, you like being cold and you love to solve problems. Yes, I think you can do it.'
"Really, how often does any wife give permission to do something as hare-brained as this?"
After some of Bardoner's travails, though, the excitement and overwhelming approval have been tapered somewhat.
"After I got back last year, she said, 'When I told you you could try to do the Iditarod, I didn't think you could get seriously hurt,'" Bardoner said.
Such is the price of dreams.