As I have said elsewhere, it was cold when the sun went down, which was about 5:00 PM. We would head into our sleeping bags to keep warm until we were called to dinner. After dinner (often before 6:00 PM) we would head back to our tents. Some people managed to stay awake reading or talking, but I generally lay down and tried to sleep.
I never had any trouble keeping warm: I was usually hot all night long. But I did have trouble sleeping the twelve hours of darkness until 6:00 AM next morning. I went through hours and hours of book and podcasts, spent many hours tossing and turning, hours trying to control my breathing so that I would not cough continually.
If I concentrated entirely on my breathing, I could control the coughing pretty well. But I could not sleep. If I drifted off to sleep, I would soon wake myself with coughing. I could only guess how much coughing I had been doing while "asleep".
I think
my coughing
was the worst in our party.
We had an extra tent, and
this was set up so that Paul and I could sleep apart.
Since Paul was completely
silent and never
woke me up, this arrangement was obviously designed to give him the
chance to
sleep undisturbed.
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