Day 21: The highest highs and the lowest lows

Madisonville, KY -> Harrisburg, IL – 90.32 mi, 2,533 ft

No one said that a cross-country cycling trip would be easy, but man this is ROUGH. I feel like I’ve been tested so many times and after getting hit by an absolute wombo-combo of bad experiences recently, I’ve been in trenches deeper than ever before. I already mentioned the probably broken rib thing previously (it still hurts), but as of late there’s been so much more. The country got hit with a bad heat wave starting our day getting to Bowling Green (Day 17) and I became very aware of a new danger previously unknown to us – heat exhaustion. Having lived in the Southeast my whole life, I’ve always had to deal with extreme humid heat in the summer, and I figured myself equipped to handle it in the coming days. I made a big deal out of staying hydrated and with electrolytes to avoid heat exhaustion, but I made two major miscalculations on my own end. The first was that our two non-biking days in Bowling Green, mostly in the comfort of being inside with AC, reduced my heat acclimation. The second is that, despite living in the Southeast my whole life, I usually didn’t go outside in the heat, mostly because I would often end up feeling sick if I stayed out too long! So wouldn’t you imagine my surprise when I wound up being the person to tap out midway through the day yesterday because of a combination of heat exhaustion and back pain! I felt miserable yesterday, and to top it all off, my shampoo spilled inside of my bag, emptying out onto all of the contents inside. Luckily none of my stuff was ruined, but 4+ hours of cleaning shampoo off of all of my personal belongings after such a rough day was anything but fun. I went to bed hoping tomorrow would be better.

I woke up the following morning with absolutely no motivation. I was tired, still having to deal with cleanup following the shampoo incident and was not at all looking forward to another absolutely miserable day on the bike. The heat was, after all, going to stick around for a couple more days. I managed to get going eventually, though Charles described my look getting out of the door as being between homicidal and suicidal. Things got better, though. I took it slow, chatting with Charles for the first part of the day as we passed dozens of corn fields, a sign of the approaching Great Plains.

I was feeling a lot better than I did yesterday, but eventually the heat and my back pain (was a bike fit issue, now solved) started getting to me again. We crossed into Illinois from Kentucky, across the Ohio River. Shortly after, at our third rest stop, I decided I would once again tap out, if only as a break from the heat so that I could bike again for our last segment. I had hoped that I would have acclimated enough to the heat by this point, but I still wasn’t quite there. I really wished I could’ve continued, but I decided at the start of the trip that my health would always come first.

I rode with Tian to our last rest stop: an ice cream shop called 4 S Dairy Barn. There we all indulged in some sweet treats, as has become tradition on this trip. I looked at how all of the other bikers seemed. Was I really the only one getting hit this bad by the heat? Some people definitely seemed energized, especially after the ice cream, but others definitely looked more tired. Everyone has to fight their own battles and face their own demons on this trip, and it’ll be apparent at some times more than others for each individual. What’s in front of me is my own fight, and it’s up to me to face it head on. Even if it felt like my mental fortitude was melting away as quickly as my smoothie was, my mom didn’t raise a quitter. So, I got back on my bike.

We eventually all made it to our destination, where our wonderful host Sherry had a tub of watermelon waiting for us. As we all settled in and ate dinner, she mentioned how our team seemed very close compared to other years of Spokes. It’s a sentiment that I’ve heard shared by a lot of our hosts who have hosted Spokes teams in the past. We were eight college students who didn’t even know each other before we started planning for the trip, and now we’re all a tight-knit group of friends, discovering more about each other with every passing day. It’s quite a special thing, really.

Spokes so far has seemed like a microcosm of life itself. Each day is filled to the brim with so many new experiences, lessons to learn from, and discoveries about myself and the people I’m slowly starting to call family. For each low, there’s a greater high to be received, and for each high, there’s a more devastating low to be had. A never-ending amplified oscillation. Can it be stopped? I fear it’ll keep on going until my own spokes stop, whenever that may be.