The Bed Rally Race tradition was brought out of remission this year at this years Snowdown by the students of the Fort Lewis College event management class.

The Bed Rally Race is a Snowdown event in which participants have to maneuver one member of their team on a wheeled mattress, through a series of obstacles, as fast as possible. In previous years, the event was hosted by the Rochester Hotel, until two years ago when it dissolved for unknown reasons.

A former FLC student and current manager at the Rochester, after requests to bring back the event, brought up the idea for the event management class to coordinate the Bed Rally Race this year, Lorraine Taylor, assistant professor of management at FLC, said.

The class of 25 students divided into five teams, each with different responsibilities. The teams’ responsibilities included obstacles, planning, execution, promotions, sign up and physical labor.

The students started with a budget of zero dollars and couldn’t locate the beds used in previous years, so they had to start from scratch, Taylor said.

“For the beds, we started by trying to think of different ways to build a frame while on a zero budget,” said Zane Jewett, an FLC student and member of the physical labor team.

As an employee at Albertsons, Jewett knew that the store had a place where they put shopping carts that were going to be thrown away, he said.

Albertsons offered to donate some carts, and the team got to work. With the donated carts, Jewett and the other members cut the baskets off the carts, and extended the bases to better fit the mattresses.  Twin mattresses were donated to the students by one of the Resident Directors at FLC.

The bases of the carts were secured with wire and zip ties, and the mattresses were attached to the frames with ratchet straps, Jewett said.

“I was really impressed by their use of resources and creativity, and I wanted the students to experience making things happen with limited time and limited funds and still execute something well,” Taylor said.

In terms of safety, the planning team was responsible for creating a liability waiver, and considered requiring the participants to wear helmets, however the potential for getting injured was minimal this year, Taylor said.

The execution team was also required to be there for crowd control, she said.  

This years Bed Rally Race was held in the alleyway behind Steamworks on Friday afternoon.

This years obstacles required the rider to pull a tire on a rope while on the bed, they then had to bob for Spam submerged in water and marshmallows in a pile of flour. The teams had to answer Steampunk trivia questions, then the rider had to spin around a baseball bat and shoot nerf darts through a tire to finish, said Milo Greenman, a FLC student in the event management class.

“It was really fun, I’m glad I wasn’t the one walking around all night covered in flour though,” Tony Simplicio, one of the victors of the Bed Rally Race, said.

He was glad the rider, his friend Andy Kostmetschke, had to perform most of the obstacles because the lot was on a slope, he said. The hardest part was pushing the bed to the north end.

“It works for me to motivate the students because they’re excited about it. They are the event managers and it’s their job to step up and find the information and bring it together,” Taylor said.

Hopefully FLC event management will continue to host the event in future years, she said.

“I thought it was a success, it was a lot of fun and it really came together in the end,” Greenman said.