WLM
of drafting), and Marina and I watched
her bounce her right hip and elbow off
the road.
Calmly, she stood up and pulled the
med kit out of her pack. I felt my eyes
widen when I saw the chunk of Karla’s elbow that was no longer there.
Patiently, she rinsed her own wound,
cleaned it, and wrapped it. We quietly re-mounted our bikes, our arrival in
Riverton more pressing now.
points (“When I worked here ….”)
along the shore.
We were almost to camp at the north
end of Boysen when the infamous Wyoming wind kicked up, pushing us to
the east shore we had been paralleling.
We fought until the wind and waves
beached us rather rudely right next to
a family’s camper. They welcomed us
into their backyard with offers of Gatorade and beer while we regrouped.
Upon reaching town,
we learned the medical
team had already moved
to the next checkpoint
at the southern end of
Boysen Reservoir. Karla’s steadfast focus and
reassurance in response
our concern moved us
to toss our tomahawks
(a skill we weren’t surprised to learn Shad had
honed in his youth) and
bike on.
We caught up with the
med team at the reservoir, and they cleaned
and assessed our stoic
team member’s elbow
carefully, methodically. We waited
anxiously.
“Our race is over,” I thought, and it
echoed with an almost silent, embarrassing, sense of relief.
Shad had told us repeatedly since the
wreck that Karla was tough, that she
wouldn’t be stopped by this, that he’d
seen her bounce back before. He was
right. She decided to go the ER in Riverton for sutures and meet us at the
end-of-day checkpoint. Though our
finish would be unofficial as a result,
it would be at the finish line, not here.
Karla loaded into a car and we hefted
two canoes to the shore. For 18 miles,
Shad paddled his canoe solo, not only
keeping pace with the canoe Marina
and I shared, but also finding check-
That familiar Wyoming hospitality
negated the impact of the hostile Wyoming wind
We clambered back into the canoes, this
time paddling straight into the wind
with a plan. As we slipped through the
water, bouncing over waves, an optimistic smile made its way across my
face. My eyes drifted up from the water
directly ahead to the sky. Gold began
to paint the heavens, then the water
directly in front of us, and the molten
lava of the sun started to melt behind
the mountain. Calm washed over me
even as the waves washed over the
bow and onto my toes. The three of us
had come together as a team, and our
fourth would surely be waiting on the
beach. We turned to the right and let
the wind push us to her.
| adventure
Karla was indeed waiting for us, the
embodiment of “cowboy tough.” We
even set out to retrieve a few optional
checkpoints but found the emotional
drain of the day proved quicksand to
our decision making and opted for a
few more hours of sleep instead.
Sleep on an adventure race isn’t sound.
It may be deep, it may come quickly,
but it is interrupted as racers arrive, set
up their sleeping bags, and stuff dinner
into their tired faces
under the guiding
glare of headlamps.
It’s disrupted by
thoughts like “is the
wind blowing my hat
away or just drying
it out?” It’s cut short
by an alarm set for 5
a.m., then one set for
5:02, but not before
your
competitors’
alarms start going off.
We left camp at our
familiar “trot” down
Wind River Canyon to the rafts that
awaited us. I had
only ever driven
Wind River Canyon
between Shoshoni and Thermopolis.
It’s always a pull between taking in as
many of the striking views as possible
and focusing on staying on my side of
the yellow line. That morning’s float
down the river left me torn between
watching the paddle in front of me to
stay in sync and taking in this intimate
perspective of the colorful canyon.
A few hours later, we disembarked
from our raft to transition back to those
bikes. Marina had borrowed, at the last
minute, Shad’s wife’s bike; I had borrowed, not-so-last-minute, Karla’s old
bike. We got very familiar with these
foster bikes over the 90 sweeping miles
between us and our sleeping bags. The
ride started in red dirt sprouting purple thistles as tall as me and bright
green grasses. As we rolled east toward
Lysite, the terrain got more brown, the
www.wyolifestyle.com
31