Baker, NV -> Ely, NV — 61.7 miles, 4,472 ft
(This blog was written 3/14/26 from what I remember, with the help of our shared photos album, the route for the day, the day’s Strava captions, and a few other Spokies’ recollections. The details I do remember, I remember like they were yesterday. The details I don’t; well, they’re lost to the cold-hearted machine that is the passage of time. Let’s all pretend they aren’t as important as what I’ve documented here).
The biking Spokies had a bit of a staggered start today. Ruth and Ramona left early, per usual. Greta, Joseph, and Sarah, our resident coffee stop fiends, ate a lighter breakfast and went for coffee at the town’s only café (also Baker, Nevada’s general store and inn) right around the corner. This part of Highway 50 in Nevada is desolate. Not a single viable coffee shop rest stop on the route until our final destination.
The past few days, I’ve been coordinating with Evan, my roommate-to-be in San Francisco when I move there at the end of Spokes. He’s been apartment touring and filling me in with his thoughts on the places he’s checked out. My service has often been spotty in rural Nevada but we’ve called briefly a couple times at rest stops so I can weigh in. I’m trying to be helpful, but I’m completely incapable of figuring out my apartment preferences through just photos and videos. I think I lack object permanence or something, because I’m convinced I need to actually be there to have any clue about what I want in a prospective apartment. And biking across the country, especially this part, is certainly not helping me with apartment visualization. So I’ve been reduced to thanking Evan for doing all of this and happily deferring to his judgement. The best I’ve offered in the way of preferences has been a “windows are nice… I guess?”
This morning, I responded to a few more apartment tours Evan had done and I was the last of the bikers to leave. I swung by the café and he rang me, so I sat on the porch outside and he filled me in on our apartment search. Our call was starting to run pretty long as we spent some time catching up and I remember looking inside the café window to see if Greta, Joseph, and Sarah were still there. At one point, Greta left the café on foot running back towards the church where we’d stayed. I thought it was odd but she came back with a backpack so I figured maybe she’d had some work she needed to get done in the morning.
When I wrapped up my call, I was in good spirits. It looked like I wouldn’t be spending the first part of the day biking alone! But these spirits quickly came crashing down. Joseph filled me in. Sarah had had an allergic reaction to a bite of Greta’s lemon blueberry muffin. When she had immediately realized something was up, the servers at the restaurant had looked up the muffin in the recipe book and saw that it used almond flour. It was pretty bad so Greta had run back to the church to grab Sarah’s EpiPen and gave her the shot. When I walked in, Sarah was beginning to do better and was recovering in the bathroom. I felt awful as we sat around waiting for Greta and Sarah to emerge. Greta appeared and let us know Sarah was OK and she and Joseph helped Sarah out to the table.
It was a relief to see Sarah was going to be alright but she looked rattled and was definitely not herself. She said her throat still felt tight and her breathing was shaky, but it had reduced a lot since the initial reaction, which had been the quickest ramp-up she had ever experienced with her nut allergy. It was the first time Sarah had used her EpiPen. I learned that the EpiPen is a temporary treatment; you’re supposed to go to urgent care afterwards. Ishaq and Tian pulled the car out front while Sarah called her mom. The nearest hospital with an urgent care was about 45 minutes away. So, the plan became: Ishaq and Tian would drive Sarah to the urgent care. They’d leave a water jug behind at the rest stop for Ruth and Ramona. After dropping Sarah off, they would come back to meet us at the rest stops and perform their driverly duties, until Sarah was discharged from the hospital.
The mood had lightened a bit so we joked that this was Greta exacting her revenge on Sarah for attempting to kill Greta’s grandmother, Cathy, back in Glenwood Springs. Sarah swore off lemon blueberry muffins forever. Greta, Joseph, and I bid Sarah well and said bye before they drove off.
Hitting the road for a full day of biking after one of your fellow Spokies almost dies (not to mention biking alongside her almost-murderer) made for a sobering ride initially. But I was proud of how everyone handled the situation with their thought, care, and preparedness. Kudos especially to Greta and Joseph for their response at the café and Ishaq and Tian for stepping up as drivers! I was pretty tired since I hadn’t slept well the night before, so I trailed Greta and Joseph as they shared their first (!) yap ride of Spokes.
At the “rest stop,” we found the water jug tucked under a bush. We snacked and refilled our waters. I took a 20 minute nap under the beaming sun. When we were ready to leave, we realized we had a problem — the water jug meant Tian and Ishaq would have to come back for it if we didn’t want to litter. We all tinkered with how to bring it along with us until Joseph came up with a fantastic solution:
Highway 50 was super boring. Worse, the wind had picked up and turned into a treacherous headwind. To keep morale up, we jammed out to music on Greta’s speaker. Finally, we busted out my ultimate pump-up music for biking — white-girl hardstyle. Immediate pick-me-up. We were bopping, we were swerving, we were cruising (like 11 miles an hour into the winds lol).
Joseph probably burned himself out or he simply wasn’t feeling it after the events of the morning, because when we reached rest stop 3 at the base of the day’s big climb, he had nothing left in the tank. After resting up for a bit, he decided he didn’t want to finish out the climb. Since there were already 3 bikes on the bike rack (Ishaq, Tian, and Sarah’s), we had to take his rear wheel off to make his bike fit in the car. That left no room in the back for Joseph to sit. I jokingly suggested Ishaq could bike instead.
Boy when I tell you this man’s eyes lit up. “Charles you’re a genius!” Can you tell Ishaq really loves biking? What a stunning turnaround for the man once known for his heart not being in it. Ishaq changed into his biking gear, took his bike off the rack, and traded places with Joseph. Greta and I groaned because now he was going to push the pace of the climb.
Ishaq promised he would stick with us for the climb. After about a half mile of calling us slow, he gave in and dropped us. We met up with him again at the final rest stop of the day and chugged some Sprites with him.
In the final leg of the day, we caught up with Ruth and Ramona, who had ditched their bikes on the edge of a pullout on the side of the road. Our confusion quickly gave way to understanding when we saw a narrow path leading down to the lake, and then, two bobbing heads swimming. Greta, Ishaq, and I pulled over as well. Ruth and Ramona swore the water wasn’t cold (it was frigid) and convinced us to go for a swim. It was very refreshing, though, and we were dry pulling into the town an hour later.
As we arrived in Ely, Nevada, ready to put this cursed day behind us, Greta, Ishaq, and I decided to celebrate. We thought it’d be fun to take our bikes through the McDonald’s drive-thru and get McFlurries. But their ice cream machine was broken. Classic Mickey D’s. Ishaq got an iced lemonade. We hit the Carl Jr’s drive-thru next. I got a cookies and cream milkshake, which was simply heavenly. Vibes were great.
Our place for the night was White Pine County High School. It was so surreal sprawling out in the empty lunch hall of a high school to lodge for a night. For many of us, it had been years since we had stepped inside a high school. Our hosts had ordered us pizza, which was super nice of them. Sarah was doing better, but was a bit sleepy when we arrived. Good thing we all weren’t biking tomorrow!
There was a pole vault pole in the cafeteria, so I asked Sarah to show us proper pole vaulting form. There wasn’t an actual pit, so a few of us gave it a shot on the grass outside, rather unsuccessfully. Ishaq and I also took turns hurdling each other (pinky promise that’s what’s going on here)
Some of the Spokies set up the projector and watched the Princess Bride. Joseph, Sarah, and Ramona went to bed early. I filled out some apartment applications and ID verifications Evan sent my way. I ended the day like I started it — in a small, rural town in southern Nevada trying my best to figure out the logistics for starting the next chapter of my life, a painful reminder that Spokes must eventually come to an end. Thankfully, no one had a serious allergic reaction while I was off doing my apartments thing this time around.
MIT Spokes 2026 
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