Day 65: the late night zoomies club

Ely, NV -> Ely, NV, 0 mi, 0 ft

0 miles today, so teaching! Somehow, even though this is the second to last learning festival we are doing, the thought of kids and lessons made me nervous.

We woke up and left the high school for the library, only 15 or so minutes later than planned. The library, across the street from the middle school, had a nice lawn and a pond next to it. We made it there just when it opened and set up half in a conference room and half outside. This was definitely one of the smaller learning festivals with around 12? kids and one adult. I always like working with only a few kids in a group, since I can listen to them more and ask more questions, as opposed to making them do things. The adult was a new addition. A retired? special ED teacher, he wanted to join for the classes. This made me even more nervous – a teacher would be there observing me trying my best to teach. But it ended up being completely fine. It was actually really nice to talk to him about the lesson and teaching in general, especially special ED, afterwards. Unexpected, pleasant surprise. The kids were also great! I met multiple people, whose favourite subject in school is math and found out about some teenagers have been dirtbiking since 3 years old. Kind of crazy! (We had passed some tracks for dirtbikes when riding into Ely yesterday, so it checks out. Dirtbiking and mountain biking appear to be common hobbies here.) We ate lunch outside, it was a calm and sunny day.

Afterwards, we let Charles and Ruth work on their 3d prints, which always take longer than expected and this time faced some extra difficulty due to a corrupted SD card (an ordeal that extended into the next day, respect to Charles for not giving up on any of the prints!) And we left Greta with them to blog. The rest were shuttled back to the high school. Joseph and Sarah went to do laundry (and checked out a cafe too I think?). I was going to join a meeting, but due to my poor mental math abilities, missed it by an hour. I did some other work, until the people left at the library got back. Me and Charles (who was awarding himself for finishing the learning festival by procrastinating on his blogs) joined Ishaq for the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for a Thai green curry and some other red type of curry. The grocery store was actually huge and very well stocked, we got all the ingredients, found a basil with all the roots and contemplated making it a Spokes pet and got a huge melon. Then we got to cooking. Ruth also made a crazy amount of sandwiches for everyone for the ride tomorrow.

The scenery was amazing: us under the bobcats in the evening sun.

Halfway through cooking Ruth, whose stressed about the unwritten blogs for both Charles and Greta, kicked Charles out of the cooking team and made him write his blog. (So he sat there and wrote his blog.) She also had an interaction with Greta about the blogs, but ended up not making her blog, since she had already dropped a blog that day. Anyways, the meal ended up absolutely delicious and we enjoyed it on the spot, sitting on the ground.

While not blogging, Greta had gone on a run and returned absolutely ecstatic over the sunset and huge moon she had seen. So, after dinner, we too went to see the moon from the bleachers. I walked around the football field, a place I have never found myself on. It’s a pretty big field.

Afterwards, even though there were definitely tasks to do, I got a bout of sleepyness, so I lay down on my mat and soon found it impossible to get back up. Not quite asleep, but not awake either, I vaguely remember there was some more evening shenanigans by the awake Spokies – sliding around the hall in socks, maybe a movie? They were suffering from the late night zoomies.

I later was informed it was the recreation of the trailer for the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club. After seeing it in some part of the editing process, I can say it is a work of art. Keep an eye out for Ruth publishing it someplace. In the meantime, for a teaser, you should look at the original here (link in text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGuWbVb1210)

But yes, short blog this time, seeya in a week for one last biking trip blog encounter.