Tired Iron

Hearken the buzzings of vintage engines commanded by vintage men, both from a time when things were simpler. This weekend is the Tired Iron, an Alaska (and therefore, world) famous snowmachine contest (don’t ever call them snow mobiles here unless you want to broadcast you’re an outsider), and the second of two famous snowmachine races in the immediate area (the other being the Iron Dog, a two-thousand mile grueling race across Alaska, and I promise this is the last time I’ll use parentheses in this post). The announcer’s trailer had been left near the center of the activities and old, old speakers played what I think was 80’s butt rock heavily accompanied by static and interference. I can’t tell if it was intentionally shitty, but it added to the genuinely vintage atmosphere. Any better system would have been worse here.

Watching from the sidelines, it did feel like a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas except that the Mojave had been replaced with the industrial south side of Fairbanks. The machines aged as well as I can hope for myself, and I was in awe at how fast they buzzed by, most of them on their own power.

I had never been to these races before, but I immediately loved these crusaders on iron horses, these beasts of men, refuges riding a tide outwards from the mainstream with no other place in the world where they could have this. In the electrified future perhaps spectators will gather to watch the last gas-powered machines of today, awed by the reverberations over snow from mechanical hummings of cylinders in engine banks. Perhaps some will feel uneasy in their presence, fearful that at any moment one could burst into flames and explode, unleashing another Tunguska event. A flash of light would blind all, and in the moment after their eyes adjust they’d see beautiful crimson chaos as a ring of fire travels outwards in all directions, consuming the city and valley beyond.