by Jess Evans
April 24 2018
My nieces and nephews will sometimes ask me after a long race, “where did you sleep?” As I tell them, I get looks of horror, shock, amazement, or laughter. I do not think they quite understand the pleasure of sleeping wherever you can put down your sleeping bag or bivvy when you are on a long adventure.
Here are some fun ones I remember:
During the Great Divide ride I did in 2015 and 2016, I slept in some crazy places due to my fear of bears. I slept in a propane tank enclosure in Canada, in an outhouse on Union Pass in Wyoming, and behind a car rest area in Wyoming. One evening in Montana, we put up our tents, ran around the campsite to lose the mosquitos and dove into our tents to sleep soundly without buzzing in our ears. The next morning we did see a black bear meandering down the road off in the distance, but he had no interest in us. There were plenty of lovely campsites we enjoyed as we progressed south from Banff those two summers.
During the Breakdown EXP race in 2017, one of the best sleeps I have ever had was in a leaf litter filled ditch along a gravel road. The leaves crunched as I nestled down in them. The wind blew strong way above our heads, swaying the trees, but we could not feel it. We also slept in a post office one night trying to keep out of the below freezing temperatures. It was 50 degrees in the post office, and we only had bivvy sacks. Each of us shivered throughout the 3 hour nap we had – that was not great sleep.
During the 2017 Cowboy Tough ARWS race, we had some very unique spots to sleep. One night after riding our bikes for 20 hours, we rolled into an Historic Mining Town (South Pass City) at 3am ready to crash. Jim and I unrolled our sleeping bags in a jail cell in the old wooden jailhouse. While it was not very warm inside, it was a lot warmer than outside, and we had our sleeping bags. Doug and Shawn curled up in Doug’s tent outside. I think Jim and I had the better deal. The other fun spot we slept during that race was under an old red school bus out in the Basin of Wyoming where there are a lot of sagebrush and sand. There was an abandoned town nearby where other teams slept, but we chose the beautiful red bus. My primary fear as we fell asleep was if someone sat up suddenly, hit their head on the bottom of the bus, and was knocked out cold for a few hours. Luckily, that never happened.
While in most of my previous examples, we searched for a fairly decent location to sleep before stopping, during the 2017 USARA Championship race, we just plopped down in the middle of a mowed trail and wrapped ourselves in one space blanket. The few minutes of sleep we captured was heavenly. When you are hit by fatigue, anything will do.
