Longboater tracks memories at Iditarod

It’s grampa.

Not grandpa, and he follows one simple motto.

“If it ain’t fun, I’m not doing it.”

His real name is Phil Cady. The Shore Condominiums resident earned his nickname “Grampa Phil” over the 20 years of volunteering he’s done at the Iditarod.

For the past 20 years, Cady has been a member of the “Pee Team.” Along with his teammates, Cady picks up exhausted dogs, drug tests dogs throughout the race and does check-ins with veterinarians.

Cady started volunteering for the Iditarod in the 1990s, and in 2004 he took it a step further.

That year, Cady participated in the Serum Run.

The Serum Run is similar to the Iditarod, but it isn’t a race.

In 1925, a diphtheria epidemic swept across Alaska. At that time, the only way to get medicine to those infected was to bring the serum on a train from Anchorage to Fairbanks’ neighboring town, Nenana, and then by dog sled from Nenana to the other side of Alaska.

Today, mushers track that same path, but instead of carrying a vial of medicine, they carry a vial of maple syrup. They also stop in each village, which are about 50 miles apart, and speak to Alaska Native youths about two of the biggest problems they are facing: juvenile diabetes and alcoholism.

Alaska Native youths are the largest age group affected by diabetes at 27%. A lot of them are also affected by alcoholism. As Cady puts it, they don’t have much else to do.

Cady, now 90, is the oldest living person to complete the Serum Run. He did it when he was 77.

Cady is not an indoor person. In fact, he’s quite the opposite.

“I am a wilderness explorer adventurer,” he said.

Don’t believe him? For Cady’s 90th birthday, Jan Cady made a list titled “Grampa Phil’s 90 years of adventure” that included 39 feats Cady accomplished before his milestone birthday.

• At 65, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
• He’s traveled every continent and visited more than 140 countries.
• He caught a new species of tropical fish with a professor in Indonesia.
• He has slept in a hut with the African Masai tribe.
• He did the “made man” ceremony in the Australian outback with the Aborigines.
• And the list goes on and on.

“He goes where no one goes,” Jan Cady, Phil’s wife, said. “He’s always sleeping with the natives in the hut or something, no bathrooms. He doesn’t care.”

When you sit down with Cady, it’s obvious he’s most passionate about the people and purpose of the Iditarod.

“I think I’m stuck on the last 20 years at the Iditarod,” he said. “It’s kind of like a fixture. It’s family.”

He flips through scrapbooks without missing a beat. He knows everyone pictured and a memory specific to them.

A girl named Melanie he walked down the aisle at her wedding at the Iditarod finish line. The dogs he slept with because they were warmer than sleeping under caribou hides. A man named Rudy whom he taught to drink root beer floats with three scoops, “not that cheap two-scoop stuff,” instead of alcohol. A man named Charlie who bet Phil he was older.

That bet has become tradition. When Cady heads to Alaska in March for the next Iditarod, he has to drink 63 rootbeer floats as part of a bet. Whenever someone guesses his age incorrectly, they owe him a root beer float.

“If you can’t get it within five years, you owe me a root beer float with three scoops,” he said.

Cady isn’t ready to slow down. As Jan Cady puts it, they’ve been married for 40 years. Phil needs to live to be 100, so they can have 50 years together, but he’s pushing to 105, just like Frank Sinatra sang about in his song “Young at Heart.”

As the song puts it, “if you should survive to a hundred and five, look at all you’ll derive out of bein’ alive.”

It seems to be that Cady took that line and ran with it.