Day 27: Missouri Business

WAKE UP! ITS THE FIRST OF THE MONTH!

Hi, Ishaq here 👋. Happy first of July and have Tour de France eve eve eve eve. What a day today was. The pace was slow, the vibes immaculate, and the falls even more so. All in all a chill century ride with loads of fun time.

Our journey begins in Sedalia, Missouri where we hop back on the Katy trail, where we’ll stay for pretty much the rest of the day. But we had a nice rest stop at a cafe where I got a large pineapple limeade Italian soda. Delicious way to instantly hit my daily recommended added sugar intake. But continuing on we hop back on the trail and start playing Mr. White. Our favorite gaem for the day works by havign us all pass around Charles’ phone and getting a word. All civilians have the same word, 2 people, the under covers, have a different word, and Mr. White gets no word. No one is directly told their role except Mr White and we all have to go around giving clues in order to vote out Mr. White before they get the civilian word and vote out the under cover members. On the other hand, the goal of Mr. White and the under cover members are to survive as long as they can.

Now that you know the game, you can begin to understand just how I was repeatedly wronged over the course of this ride. Every time my turn rolled around I’d drop the most elite hints and no one would get them. I personally think its a skill issue. For example, I had Lord of the Rings as my word, so I, with a very sensible line of logic, said “Professor X” (Professor X -> Magneto -> Ian McKellan -> Gandalf). Little did I know, none of the other spokies know X-men! Actually criminal. So I made it FAR more simple for round 2 and dropped “Eagles” (Gandalf always calls the eagles to save the day in LOTR). Once again even the so called “LOTR readers” didn’t get it. I was ultimately voted out for my “suspicious answers” and we civilians lost the round ☹️. Even worse, Ruth’s insufficient knowledge of the intelligence of aquatic mammals threw me on the chopping block again (She claims whales aren’t smart).

In the middle of our grand group ride a few whoopsies happened. First off, I sadly slipped off the trail, took a ride in the bushes, and fell back on to the trail. Really tough, I though I was going to survive spokes unscathed, but I have now acquired scrapes on my right knee and elbow. The team, of course, laughed at me, however, my fall was topped by Charles just a couple of hours later. While setting up a new game of Mr. White, he clipped a metal post and was launched off his bike. He lied there, motionless, all of us thinking the worst. He says he hit his head and the worst was spinning but recovered as we ushered him to a nearby table. He actually re-scraped an old scab on his elbow so we hit it with the wettest stingiest alcohol swab which had him squealing in pain. Once we were sure he was okay we all had a good laugh about the sound of the fall and the scene we observed in the aftermath. Maybe we’re horrible people for finding joy in the misfortune of our friends. Maybe we are just a generation conditioned on epic fail complications 🤷🏾‍♂️. Either way, its funny because we were all okay in the end.

After tending to the wounds of the fallen, we stopped playing Mr. While and I was now incredibly tired of biking for the day. This is where I innovated. Using two bungee cords I secured my iPad to my handlebars to enable a peak watching experience on the bike. Granted I did not want to watch anything actually good that would require mental energy to enjoy so I put on the Netflix adaptation of the popular game series Devil May Cry. I was very disappointed because at no point in the 4 episodes I watched did a devil cry. But, I suppose thats what makes it interesting: maybe a devil will cry, maybe not 🤷🏾‍♂️. The other spokies were all haters, thinking that I would fall or my iPad would drop, but I literally have a degree in engineering from MIT so pretty confident in the setup. I followed Ruth and Ramona because the iPad partially covered my bike computer.

At the end of the day we rode into Kansas City and I hada great time zooming down the city roads at sunset. We got to our large Airbnb where Sarah made us all grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, then we spokies dispersed for our bedtime endeavors.