Have you ever heard of Sufferfest? It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Luckily, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. That’s the name that epic adventurers Cedar Wright and Alex Honnold give to their explorations which they document for National Geographic. In their latest trek (or Sufferfest), they biked nearly 800 miles in the American Southwest. Oh, and they climbed 45 mountains while they were there. You can see where the name comes from now.
These adventurers were in the middle of their second expedition when they came across something completely unexpected. A puppy! Abandoned and living in an old tire, they couldn’t just leave it.
“Sometimes you’re in the middle of nowhere and you gotta go, so you just pull off and pee behind a bush,” said Cedar. “I have to pee so I just stop on my bike randomly in the desert and all of a sudden I hear this whimpering sound and at first I can’t figure out what it is and then I look and there’s this little puppy curled up an old tire hiding from the wind. I quickly realized that he had been abandoned.”
They nicknamed the puppy Sufferpup, which sounds a little harsh, but fits their adventure theme. And, after they fed him string cheese, he did poop it out in their sleeping bags…
“[I]t’s really heartening at the end of the day to come down and have this adorable little puppy to cuddle with,” said Cedar. “Without Sufferpup I don’t know if we would have made it.”
The puppy gave the adventurers a real morale boost, and it was hard to say goodbye at the end of the trip. However, Cedar has friends who wanted to adopt, so he sent his friend to a good home. But, he still goes to visit when he can!
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