Blacksburg, VA to Tazewell, VA – 83.38 mi, 4744 ft
One day I’d like to have an uneventful blog day but today is not that day.
We woke up today at 6am for what would be our second longest ride so far: 83 miles to make up for our short 40 mile ride yesterday. I spent a lot of the morning rummaging through my stuff looking for my wallet. Because of his track record with misplacing stuff, Drew’s stuff also fell victim to some rummaging. This is not very important, especially in comparison to the events of this blog, but this was very eventful for me because I never lose stuff. Anyways, turns out it fell out of my backpack in the car yesterday while I was driving.
After getting ready, we ate some oatmeal and eggs graciously made by our amazing host Ann who is a super cool cyclist who did a tour across Illinois at 14. In total, we spent 1 hour and 45 minutes getting out the door, which might be a record for the team (😢).
As we left, our main concern was Nunu’s bike. The chain had fallen off twice in the last 20 miles of yesterday’s ride. Drew and I diagnosed the bike with “misaligned derailleur” and did our best to fix it the night before but I still need to watch a YouTube video on how derailleurs work so I had very little trust in our handy work.
Caroline (who can’t drive) was taking her unofficial driver day today (smart) with Tatiana’s driver day, so it was just Drew, Carmen, Nunu, Aarushi, and myself on the road. We biked out of Blacksburg through the Virginia Tech campus (which is super pretty, lots of white stone + gothic vibes similar to Yale/Princeton/West Point). Yesterday, while Nunu was fixing her chain on the side of the road, someone pulled up to her and asked her if she was okay. When she said she was fine, they drove off and yelled “Go Hokies1, beat MIT”. I’ve been thinking about that line all day because I can’t think of any sport or activity in which MIT and Virginia Tech compete against each other.
We took the first couple of miles pretty slow since the rest of the squad was tired from yesterday’s ride (which I was driving for). Fun fact: yesterday was the first day I wasn’t the first one to finish the ride since I was driving, sad stuff. While everyone else was trying to take it easy, I was physically itching to go faster and had to let Drew move ahead of me to set the pace so I could fight the urge to speed up.
We continued our ride for 20 miles passing through some lovely greenery, along rivers and rapids (+ a swing for jumping into the river that we had to drag Nunu away from), and up some not so fun climbs.
At some point during these 20 miles, Aarushi and Carmen had fallen behind Nunu, Drew, and I. While taking in the lovely river views, Carmen reappeared without Aarushi. We continued waiting but she never appeared, and with no cell service to see where she was at we decided to continue onwards assuming she was taking a break.
It wasn’t until we had nearly reached the rest stop that we ran into Tatiana going in the other direction. She let us know that Aarushi had hit a pothole, biked off the road, and ran into a tree, and that she was going to go SAG2 Aarushi out.
As Tatiana sped away, we continued to the rest stop where Caroline reassured us that Aarushi was okay, but was banged up and (understandably) not going to continue the ride. After refueling and waiting for ~25 minutes for Tatiana and Aarushi to return, Nunu, Carmen, Drew, and I decided to continue biking since we had a long bike ahead of us.
It was a good thing that we didn’t wait because meanwhile in Tatiana/Aarushi-land, Tatiana found Aarushi on the side of the road scraped up with a dent in her helmet and the handlebars of her bike bent. They decided to take the bike back to Blacksburg (the starting town) since there was a Trek Bicycle Shop (the company we bought our bikes from) in that town and no bike shop in Tazewell (the destination town).
At this shop, they were able to make use of the 1 year warranty on our helmets to get a fresh helmet and also get the handlebars repaired. Unfortunately, they were also told that the derailleur barrel adjuster on Aarushi’s bike was broken and that the Trek shop wouldn’t have the parts to repair it for a week. The Trek shop mentioned briefly they could try another shop in town called Hokie Spokes, but Tatiana and Aarushi weren’t immediately planning to go there.
The state of the Spokes universe at this point of the day is as follows: Nate, Drew, Carmen, and Nunu are biking 20 miles to the second rest stop where lunch is planned; Aarushi and Tatiana have partially repaired Aarushi’s bike and are now going to a coffee shop; Caroline is waiting at rest stop 1 with the cooler, water, and food since the minivan can only fit two people/bikes at a time.
Around mile 30 (halfway between rest stop 1 and 2), the biking group came across a Dairy Queen and found it necessary to get some ice cream. This was also convenient since it would give the drivers more time to figure out how to get food/water/lunch to the second rest stop.
It was around this time that we bikers decided to check the weather and noticed that some thunderstorms had crept up on us and would be hitting us in ~30 minutes. We decided to push to the next town along the route (approx. 4 miles away) and try to wait out the rain there.
We made it to the next town and found a church with a small roof above its front door to take cover under. We took cover just in time because within a minute of us getting under the roof it began thundering and pouring rain.
We had taken cover around noon and saw on the forecast that it would be raining until 2pm, so we decided to hunker down.
During this time, Aarushi and Tatiana were still grabbing their coffee in Blacksburg. As they walked up to the coffee shop, they looked at the shop next door and lo and behold it was the Hokie Spokes bike shop. They ended up bringing Aarushi’s bike in and got it fully repaired. In the process, they also received two generous donations after two passersby overheard the Spokes story: $41 from Bruce and $20 from Wendy.
After finishing up in Blacksburg, the two of them started heading towards the first rest stop to pick up Caroline who had been waiting this entire time in the rain.
Meanwhile, at 1:45pm, the four bikers woke up. The four of us had all fallen asleep on the cold, hard concrete outside of this church while waiting out the rain. Luckily, we woke up to clear blue skies. After a bit of stretching, we continued towards the second rest stop 8 miles away where lunch would be happening.
By some miracle, all 7 members of the team converged on the second rest stop at mile 44 at 2:30pm. This was largely made possible after Caroline, Aarushi, and Tatiana worked some magic reorganizing the minivan and bike rack so that it could hold 3 people and 3 bikes. At the rest stop, we all enjoyed our usual sandwich-based lunch.
At 3:30pm, we were back on the road, but not before the second member of the team fell victim to a SAG. This one was much less concerning, Carmen just really needed to use the restroom and the nearest spot was a gas station 13 miles away along the route. Tatiana ended up driving Carmen + her bike to the gas station while Nunu, Drew, and I biked over and met her there.
From there (mile 57), the four of us reunited to bike the remaining 6 miles to the last rest stop at mile 63.
Throughout the day, Nunu had been dealing with some knee pain and, after some climbs leading up the last rest stop, it got to the point that she was feeling sharp pain with every pedal stroke.
Tatiana had dealt with some knee pain leading up to the summer that ended up taking focused strength training and physical therapy in order to resolve. Additionally, she had been told by the PT who did our bike fittings (Brendan at Cycle Life PT) that sharp, repetitive pain should be grounds to immediately stop biking. As a result, Tatiana strongly recommended to Nunu that she should call the ride there.
After doing some stretching, however, Nunu felt like her knee wasn’t hurting anymore. We decided that she could keep riding but that if at any moment she felt the knee pain return, she would be SAG’d out. Nunu ended up biking two more miles to mile 65 before being SAG’d out due to the sharp knee pain returning.
I have a lot of respect for her decision to SAG out. While it may seem like an obvious decision from afar, a SAG out is a dreaded ending to a ride for anyone on the team. Getting SAG’d out feels like the accomplishment of “biking across the country” being chipped away, making all the hard work less worthwhile. Obviously, this isn’t actually the case but in the heat of the ride it’s hard not to feel this way. It’s worth pointing out that the decision to let Nunu keep riding was only reached after a long discussion that included a few tears.
By the end of the day there were only three bikers on the road. Carmen, Drew, and I biked the last 20 miles relatively uneventfully, albeit slowly. Meanwhile, Tatiana shuttled Caroline, Aarushi, and Nunu to the end point.
When we arrived at Tazewell, we were warmly greeted by Teresa who works at the Tazewell United Methodist Church – the church that was graciously hosting us in their house-turned-office, and would also be where we would run our learning festival the next day. We were welcomed with warm pizza, fresh fruit, juice, sodas, and a fridge stocked full of food for breakfast and dinner the following day. I don’t think I can effectively convey how kind Teresa was to us, nor how admirable her work with members of the community facing hardships is.
We wrapped up dinner and unpacked our sleeping bags and sleeping pads to get ready for bed. After a long, chaotic day, the best part of the day might’ve been getting 9 hours of sleep before tomorrow’s learning festival.
– Nate
1 Hokies are the mascot of Virginia Tech. Unless they’re talking about a Hokie Pokie, I don’t know what a Hokie is.
2 Def SAG (verb): a.k.a SAG out. To get picked up by the (Support And Gear) car during a ride, usually to be driven to the end point.
MIT Spokes 2026 
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