Day 20: it’s getting hot in here

Bowling Green, KY -> Madisonville, KY – 84.8 miles, 4,439 ft

Today, like too many Spokes days, technically started at 12:00am. Many of us share the the night owl quirk of getting more energy as the night wears on, and tonight was no exception. In fact, tonight was particularly exciting because we were sharing the night with two new Kentucky friends. On our first rest day in Bowling Green, Tian left the house at 6:00pm to “go get groceries”. When she didn’t come back until 9, we all suspected her grocery mission must have been a cover for some other mischevious scheme, but then she asked for help unpacking the groceries… and we realized she really had just gone shopping and that we really would be feasting the next night. In fact, there was SO much food we suspected we might need some extra help finishing it all up…

Fear not, Spokes put on our extrovert hats and made some new friends at the Bowling Green learning festival. Along our travels, we interact mostly with hosts and learning festival coordinators (who are usually older than us) and students (who are always younger than us). While I’ve loved getting to know everyone we’ve met so far, I’ve missed getting to interact with new people my own age. Luckily, this void was filled yesterday by two super cool students from WKU, Libby and Khalil. Khalil, a recent WKU graduate, runs an education startup from the WKU Small Business Accelerator, located just down the hall from our learning festival. We met Khalil in the morning during check-in, and he ended up helping us out with the learning festival all day! I met Libby a couple hours later, when we were both photographing the bottle rocket workshop. Libby is a summer intern at the WKU Herald and she had come to the festival in order to publish a story about our event. We started chatting during the learning festival, but we realized by the end of the day that there was still so much we wanted to talk about. Thanks to Tian’s grocery shopping foresight, we were able to invite Libby and Khalil to join us for dinner at our Airbnb, which was a double win for us–more hours to spend with awesome people and more people to help us finish Tian’s gargantuan (and delicious) meal.

Before we knew it, it was nearly 11 o’clock and everyone was still gathered around the table chatting. My family often talks about kindred spirits, a phrase we adopted from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. You know you’ve found a kindred spirit when, despite whatever differences in where you’re from, what you do or who you know, it somehow feels like you’ve always known each other. Libby and Khalil are definitely Spokes kindred spirits.

(Unfortunately, we had so much fun we forgot to take a single picture…epic fail. With no photographic evidence, who knows… maybe this was just another one of Greta’s crazy dreams.)

After Libby and Khalil left and we finished the rest of our tasks for the night, I did eventually drift off into dreamland. When I opened my eyes again around 7am, I was stocked up on (almost enough) beauty sleep, my bucket was still filled from the night before, and I was ready to continue making the most of Day 20.

By this point in the trip, the morning tasks were routine. I readied my snack bag, lubed my chain, and pumped my tires. Filled up my water bottles (one with water and one with electrolytes), curated my Spotify queue, slathered on my sunscreen. Order doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s go time.

Time is of the essence, especially today. It was day one of the heat wave rampaging across the country and temperatures were soaring into the high 90s before noon. We knew we were going to be cooked (literally). Nothing like a little perspective to keep you sane, though. Back home in Virginia, my family’s AC was out, so I knew I should at least be grateful for Mother Nature’s ever reliable fan, the westernly winds.

With our personal and communal tasks in order, all the bikers set out towards our first destination around 8. Sarah was our driver for the day, and Ruth was in the car recovering from her mysterious illness (possibly, but probably not, pneumonia). Ruth spent the day tearing through her book, The Lady With the Dragon Tattoo, and Sarah was hard at work driving and finishing up her blog. Unlike me, Sarah is a pro at publishing her blogs in a timely manner…

One of the highlights of today was the joy of discovering leftovers for lunch. Last night, I had packed myself not only a leftover burrito, but also a leftover box of sweet potato noodles with tofu and veggies. When I tell you… they. were. DELICIOUS. SO GOOD. Tian has been on the leftover game from day 1; and Tian is always right… I probably should have converted sooner.

Besides meals, today was full of lots of little happy moments. Ishaq and I swung by the John Prine Memorial Park (shoutout to Grandad, my favorite John Prine fan!)

We bought Haagen Dazs ice cream bars at Dollar General. Or, more accurately, I bought Haagen Daaz bars and coaxed the rest of the team into eating them with me. For some reason, the team hasn’t yet realized I have impeccable taste, and keeps disapproving of my group purchases. Their loss, I guess. Luckily, today was hot enough that no one could put up a fight and all the Haagen Dazs bars were consumed:)

Everyone has their own ways of dealing with the heat. And when I say “own ways”, I mean some people like to nap lying down and some people like to nap sitting up. I personally, am a lying down napper. The heat did take it out of me more than I expected. Along some of our longer stretches, I could feel my body working overtime to both keep the bike moving and keep me from overheating (like my laptop when I write code without chatgpt…) I much prefer being hot than being cold, though. One time, my mom told me I had to choose whether to complain about summer or winter because I couldn’t get annoyed about both. I chose winter, so… no complaining for me.

By the time we made it to our final rest stop, we’d made it through the worst of the heat with out spirits intact. The mood was goofy, as it often is at the end of the day. Ishaq showed off his manly strength by pushing the minivan in neutral. We were all very impressed… until Sarah and I gave it a go and turns out its actually not that hard. Ishaq did look pretty cool in this picture though. Also at this rest stop, Charles got up to his usual tricks and made Tian feed him a bit of her bibimbap. After pretending (?) to take an enormous bite, he backed off, but the damage was already done. Tian then tried to shove all the contaminated bibimbap into his mouth. Guess he got what he asked for?

Once we got our giggles out, we locked in for one last stretch of road to arrive at our destination for the night! We were hosted by Life Christian Center in Madisonville, KY. Pastor Jon, Isaac, and Steve cooked us a delicious meal, and we all sat and chatted while we ate. There is nothing like arriving someplace to a home-cooked meal, and I am so grateful for the incredible generosity of our hosts. I definitely want to repay the favor someday!

Finally, we ended the night packing our lunches and preparing for the day ahead (our first day in Illinois!) I went to sleep surrounded by all the Spokies, curled up in my sleeping bag on the gymnasium floor. Like usual, I woke up all the way on the other side of the gym. But that’s a story for tomorrow…

Peace out!
Greta