Ishaq here with a driver blog. Yesterday I went to visit my mom in Oklahoma City so I abandoned the spokes team and it was pretty 50/50 among the rest of the members is I would come back. After a nice day with my mom and afternoon in Wichita where I went to a nice coffee shop and random barber shop, I was really thinking about forgottign this whole biking thing. But how could I deprive the public of my blogs? So, I rejoined the team and brought a bunch of Nigerian snacks.
Now to the driving of it all. We are a notoriously terrible team in the morning, we’d set wake up times and leave times and regularly disregard them on the basis of low collective responsibility. Greta, however, was resolute on us get out the door on time at least once just to prove we could. So in support of this idea I woke up everyone 6:30, lightly kicking their sleeping bags when necessary. I was locked in on my driver duties and hurried everyone and we 6 of 7 bikers made it out by 8:10, just minutes after our 8 am departure goal. Joseph, sadly, lost something again. This time it was his glasses, so we spend 30 minutes looking for them until we ultimately gave up and collectively hoped that one of the spokies had “accidentally” taken them for some reason. I personally suspected Greta, she clearly was itching for revenge for the time Joseph stole her phone. She of course denied this accusation when I confronted her later on, but we all know the evil that lurks in her mind.
It was a short biking day to Dodge City, aka The Wickedest Little Town in the West, known for it’s history of cowboys and outlaws on the old frontier. Googling the place made be want to visit a saloon and hawk one up for the good ole’ spittoon, but back ti the driving. I got to the first rest stop just minutes before Greta. She was ZOOMING and didn’t stay long. Fueled by the PRs set yesterday by others while she was driving she wanted to go all out today and knew the key was to keep these rest stops short and sweet. The rest of the team rolled in and out of thew rest stop and last came Joseph, sunglassesless, in agony of the bright sun blinding him on highway 50. I would have said he could borrow mine, but they are prescription and I’m quite blind so I wouldn’t really work out. So, he hopped in the car, and my driver day once again became a dynamic duo.
The rest of the day was pretty standard biking. Joseph and I saw largest wind farms we’d both ever seen. Then I tried to get him on the show Legion, which I watched a long time ago and forgot, but he didnt seem all to into it. Greta was going mad fast so she ended up skipping the last rest stop and riding straight to the end. She put up quite the fast 100km PR, some would say nearly unbeatable by any of us other spokies… nearly. Everyone else was pretty fast today too so we ended up arriving around 2pm, definitely one of our earliest arrivals. Now we had the rare the occurrence of free time on a biking day, so we hit the local water park 😎. Well 5 of us did, Sarah, Joseph, and Charles stole out host’s car and did donuts in the parking lot of a coffee shop or something. The water park was quite fun, they had the works, a lazy river, water slides, and some little lanes where I could just swim laps. I’m pretty bad at swimming, but I find it super cool so I’m trying to learn some water skills. Greta tried to teach me how to tread, but I really was just drowning with extra steps. We all relaxed for the last hour until we had to head back for dinner.
We had some absolutely amazing lasagna and our host’s told us about the history of Dodge City. The lawlessness and cowboys were only the surface level, with tons of economic and military involvement with the history of city and surrounding area. It was quite educational, but I really wouldn’t do it justice with a brief recap here. After dinner, we all settled down and prepared for bed to try and once again get an early start tomorrow.
Lastly, here is Charles, moments before he and Ruth collectively break our host’s violin.
MIT Spokes 2025 
Leave a comment