Rules For Sleeping in Your Car

Since we are on the topic of sleeping in cars…

1. Never sleep naked.  I don’t care if you are hot.  I don’t care if you want to have wild sex.  You never know when a cop, ranger, grizzly or a shotgun-toting Montanan will come a-knocking.  It’s always better to be clothed in these situations.    Nudity makes it really awkward.

2. Always lock you car.  It deters psychopaths and bears from breaking and entering.  And it gives you a chance to start the engine and make a quick getaway if such an intruder should surface.

3. Don’t fuck with the US Government.  Park Rangers love nothing more than ousting car-sleepers parked in inappropriate camping spots.  Obey all signs in National and State Parks.  Or at least be able to explain why you didn’t.  Note: National/State Parks are different than National/State Forests and require a fee.  Should you choose to ignore this, beware that a Ranger will sniff you out like a bloodhound on a coon’s trail.  Public lands and BLM lands are ideal.  Especially in the wiles of Northeastern Idaho. 

4. If you don’t obey said signage, play nice with the ranger, cop or shotgun-toting Montanan who is mad at you.  Playing dumb usually works best for the female variety of car-sleeper.  Bonus points for nice tits and pretty smile.

5. Crack a window so you don’t suffocate.

6. Keep all of your shit in the car.  Rangers, vagabonds and animals tend to collect it if it’s left outside the vehicle.

7. Leave the driver’s seat clear in case you need to make a quick getaway.

8. Don’t let your fear get the best of you. 

9. Face east.  There is nothing better than watching the sun come up.

Stuff People In Mountain Towns Like

Perhaps the fine publishers of Stuff White People Like would consider a spinoff – Stuff People From Mountain Towns Like.  Included on this list would be face shots, Patagonia, making fun of Vail, making fun of Aspen, being burlier than your friends, sleeping in teepees in the summer, PBR, Subaru, beards, REI, 14ers, not owning a TV and (the topic of today) sleeping in your car in National Parks.

And so I found myself sleeping in the back of a Subaru, in a snowstorm, in the Utah desert, in my Patagonia sleeping bag with a guy named Pete who I met ten days prior.  It just doesn’t get much more mountain cliché than that (he didn’t have a beard though, and we had box wine and Tecate, not PBR).  It was May and the desert should have been scalding hot.  Or at least warm.  Instead it was 30-degrees and snowing.  Screw setting up a tent.

The morning rolled in.  The sky was blue.  The birds were signing.  Children were laughing.  Park rangers were knocking on the window of said Subaru, “Mornin’ folks.  Mind stepping out of the car?”  Utah Forest Service Ranger.  So out we stepped.  Wrapped in sleeping bags.  Into the popsicle blueberry sky of the morning Utah dessert.  No worries though.  He let us go with just a warning. And now we are on the Most Wanted For Sleeping in a Car in an Inappropriate Location list of the United States Forest Service.

Driving I-70 (Also: Running The Colorado Winter Road Gauntlet)

For the second (or is it third) time this week I hucked my pack into my Red Rocket, an ’05 Subaru, and joined the jihad of Weekend Warriors to the ski resorts of central Colorado in their descent to Denver on the dreaded I-70 corridor.  I-70 is a daily battle between overly confident Coloradans, overly paranoid tourists and long haul truckers who could give a shit about anyone because they’re the biggest thing on 18 wheels.  The Coloradans, thinking nothing of doing 85 in a snowstorm, over 10,000-foot Vail Pass around the bends and twists of I-70, terrify the white-knuckle tourists whose license plates are routinely from Arizona, South Carolina or Texas (sorry T$, not you).  Woe is he who is caught in a swarm of Texans in a snowstorm.  A black Escalade in front, an 18-wheeler to the right and a Tahoe behind.   All bearing the blue star and cowboy on a horse that brand the loud-voiced, boot-wearing, big-haired virgins to snow driving.  Rather than maintain a logical distance between cars and pursue a consistent speed, the Texan muscles through in their outsize SUV and then slams on the brakes when they near the unsuspecting car in front of them.  For this reason, 30-car pileups are not uncommon along the I-70 gauntlet.

Despite being a Midwestern transplant to Colorado I crank up my Credence on my iPod and ignore the pending disaster around me.  After all, I learned to drive in Cleveland.  And the Cleveland driver thinks nothing of scraping a 4 by 4 holes in the ice on their windshield and hoping behind the wheel with the defrost cracked all the way up.  Who needs to actually see the road?  It’s all drive by feel in Cleveland.  The idiot factor on I-70 is the highest I’ve seen it all season.  There is no snow.  Literally, no snow.  Not a dusting.  Not the remnants of a snowstorm.  No snow.  Dry roads.  Yet, in preparation for the promised upslope storm (comes from the east), CDOT already has chain laws in effect for Vail Pass and truckers are diligently slinging 20 pound chains around their drive wheels.  Of course the Texans have to slow to a crawl to observe (or oversee perhaps) this activity.  Somehow one such driver finds a way to smash his SUV into a parked semi chaining up.  Like I said, the idiot factor is at an all-season high today thanks to increased Easter traffic.

Since it’s Colorado in the springtime, we think nothing of the fact that it was 72-degrees and sunny at 9 AM and that now, at 6 PM, husky snowflakes have begun to drip down on the city of Denver like Cinnabon frosting.  I have a smattering of friends, both old and new, to grab drinks with.  Crashing on one of these couches won’t be a problem.  I call Lauren.  We’ve been great friends since we were five years old and are supposed to grab dinner and drinks. 

“I’m stuck on the highway.” She’s pissed.

“36 hasn’t moved in the last 40 minutes.  I actually put my car in park and started reading my book.” 

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”

I call Amber, my friend from the mountains.  She’s in the wine business and regularly runs the I-70 gauntlet.

“They closed I-70 at Eisenhower Tunnel.  I can’t stand this road.  And the moron factor is out of control today.  I think I might just die.  Right here.”  Amber tends to be theatrical.  That’s why I love her.  It keeps life interesting.

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”  Déjà vu?

Lauren texts me.  I’m running out of gas.  My light came on 30 minutes ago.  Help?!  I tell here to drive in the emergency lane.  Sounds like an emergency to me right?  CDOT would be ticked if her dead car blocked a lane of the Boulder Highway.

I try Whitney.  She and Lauren and I are all native Clevelanders.  Transplants to Colorado.   We drove west on I-80 until we hit the mountains and decided to stop there.  Her phone’s off.  “Shit.”  She is still on the plane and the prospects for DIA actually staying open are not looking good.  The Frosty Flakes have laid down about 8 inches in two hours.

My phone beeps again.  Lauren.  I am in some random girl’s car.  Will probably sleep at B’s tonight.  So sorry.  Highway closed.

I’m not surprised.  Rather than deal with the idiot factor, CDOT usually elects to shut down entire highways to deal with snow removal.  Eisenhower Tunnel usually shuts down because of avalanche risk.  The roads around Denver and Boulder usually shut down because of idiot risk.

Sleeping In My Car Behind The Denver Country Club

Denver.  March 2010.  A snowstorm has crippled my evening plans and left me momentarily friendless, homeless and without plans.  I do what any good Midwesterner would do and head to a comfortingly nondescript, mediocre chain restaurant.

My new friends Dane and Britney spend the next twenty minutes or so trading quips and anecdotes with me about what it means to grow up Midwestern and bond about how wonderful Colorado is.  They are both born and raised in the great state of Ohio as well.  Just like in the movies.  Whenever someone has moved from somewhere terrible to somewhere wonderful, they always come from Ohio.  Food for thought.  I’m already having a mild panic attack about leaving my precious mountains behind.  Dane, the bartender turns out to be every bit his character.  He’s always on point and ready with a witty quip.  He never fails to act ten years less than his likely age.  He is adamant that he will never get married, will never grow up and will remain an atheist until the day he dies. 

This Peter Pan is of the species manus childus, a species with whom I have become intimately acquainted in the mountains.  The age of this man-child is accurately determined only through the application of a complex calculation.

He can be spotted in his natural habitat at the local watering hole (having fun without a beer in hand is tough) chatting up girls at least ten years younger than he is.  They laugh airily at his constant stand-up routine.  Their voices click like so many pairs of high heels on tile and he love every minute of the attention.  He is not usually ganfully employed and is supported by his enabling parents.  He has many stripes, but in the mountains he is usually identifiable by his requisite Careharts, sweatshirt (or T-shirt) from his favorite microbrewery and a college baseball hat.  He always drinks cheap beer and shoots tequila or whiskey.  He loves his Buckeyes, his Buffs, his Cornhuskers or his Bulldogs.  He loves girls but hates girlfriends that last longer than two weeks.  Should one desire to entice this reckless species be a beer swigging, pony-tailed, All American sweetheart who laughs at his jokes and avoids serious conversation.  To avoid this potentially dangerous species look no further than the kryptonite of, “I love you,” or “Let’s talk about our future together.”

“You wanna grab a drink?  I’m getting cut.”

I decide I’ve got nothing better to do.

“Sure.”

A half bottle of Hornitos cheap tequila, several beers and a basket of fries later it’s Cinderella time.  I have this bad habit of packing up and leaving as soon as a place, person or situation is no longer fun.  In college, this used to worry my friends when, come 1 AM, Kate decided to disappear into the night unannounced and without warning.  They used to look high and low for me only to find me fast asleep in my bed, pajamas on and makeup off. 

I sneak into my car and realize I have no place to stay.  Shit.  I look at the seat next to me.  Dane’s bag sits there calmly mocking me.  Shit.  “Sucker,” it says.  “You’ve got a strange man’s clothes and no bed to sleep in.  Watcha gonna go now?”

I proceed to the eternal Plan B of the technologically crippled, instant communication dependent, Generation Now.  The mass text.  I text my friends who are stuck in the mountains, I text this guy I hooked up with in college and who might, maybe still live in Denver.  I text my ex-boyfriend looking for his brother’s number.  I text my best friend in Athens, Ohio because it is totally logical that she could help in two thousands miles away.  Nothing. 

I ring my high school girlfriend’s boyfriend’s buzzer ten thousand times.  Nothing.  I am left with no choice.  I park my car on a quiet street behind the bastion of social exclusivity and elitism that is the Denver County Club (my friend who works for a Pro-Israel lobby informs me that they don’t even let Jews in).  I unroll my red sleeping bag that my Mom won at a company party when she worked for Coca Cola.  In 1983.  I pull the hood of my down hoodie over my head.  I hunker down.  I’m too tired to care about moving my shit or putting my back seats down so I curl up on the tiny half of the backseat not covered in snowshoes, hiking shoes, ski poles, running shorts, yoga pants, gloves, helmets hats and other assorted sundries of mountain life.  I’ve got a yoga mat for a pillow, a pair of skis in my ass and a pile of shoes and clothes at my feet.  The great blizzard of 2010 quickly blankets my car in eight inches of heavy wet snow.  The elitists will have no idea that I am passed out on their quiet street, in their fancy neighborhood come morning.