London, KY to Liberty, KY – 64.8 mi, 4060 ft
Last night was probably the worst sleep we’ve gotten during this trip. In an attempt to create “summer vibes”, Drew, Carmen, Nunu, Aarushi, and I all decided to sleep in hammocks in the backyard, as opposed to sleeping on the floor inside or in tents like normal people. Drew slept in the hammock already set up outside on a stand in the backyard. The remaining four of us used two hammocks provided by our (amazing) hosts, Lucy and Steve, as well as two hammocks that we brought on the trip. We promptly realized that the hammocks we brought were both missing enough parts to make them non-functional, and we were only able to make them work by frankensteining parts from the hammocks Lucy and Steve provided us. We strung these four hammocks haphazardly across the pavilion in the backyard, criss-crossing two of the hammocks in order to do the aforementioned frankensteining of hammocks.
For some reason I ended up taking the bottom, criss-crossed hammock (the pink one). I was the first one to sleep last night so in hindsight I don’t know why I did this but after such a long and stressful day of fighting off dogs along an 80 mile ride, I probably just slept in the first thing I saw. This ended up being a critically bad decision because Nunu, who later went to sleep in the top criss-crossed hammock (the red one), spent the entire night LYING ON MY KNEES. I think I tried adjusting a few times during the night to no success and in the end I was too tired to move. I also suspect this knee sitting situation is a precursor to some incoming knee concerns.
In addition to that, all five of us hammock sleepers were all super cold despite (most of us) being in sleeping bags and it only dropping down to 50 degrees that night. Since all of our hammocks were connected by the same ropes (frankenstein is the gift that keeps on giving), anytime one person got up to grab a sleeping bag or a blanket, everyone else experienced intense hammock turbulence. Drew’s hammock was separated but when he woke up in the early morning to grab a blanket, he realized it was wet because of early morning dew. He still slept with it because he was too tired to look for a dry blanket.
Meanwhile, Tatiana and Caroline presumably slept well inside on the two available beds. Of course, they are dealing with other issues currently (we think Tatiana sprained her ankle last night and Caroline’s bite mark is glistening in different shades of purple, red, blue, and yellow bruising) so it’s fair to say I’m not envious of their position.
We woke up at 6am after ~5 hours of sleep. I should point out that our hosts, Lucy and Steve, are amazing and that it was entirely our own hubris of trying to make this hammock situation work that we slept so badly. They had a huge spread of food ready for us for breakfast including donuts, eclairs, pigs in blankets, fruit, juice, eggs, etc.
Around now everyone was deciding whether they wanted to bike or not today given the prevalence of aggressive dogs on the route the previous day. Drew, Tatiana, and I, who had biked yesterday, tried to make clear that while we had figured out a strategy to make the situation generally manageable (a combination of yelling and mace), it was by no means a safe environment because of how aggressive the dogs could be. Besides that, biking in these conditions was very mentally taxing from the constant anticipation of a dog sprinting towards you.
Drew was set on still biking and ended up giving up his driver day to Nunu so that he could bike. Tatiana couldn’t walk so she was out for today. Aarushi decided that she wanted to bike since she hadn’t biked in nearly a week at this point. Carmen said, “I don’t think I’m gonna bike today, I’m not gonna be stupid for no reason”, in reference to not wanting to put herself in the dangerous situation of biking near aggressive dogs. She also biked today.
I had to return the small SUV we rented for extra SAG space and for following our riders to help deal with dogs, and exchange it for a larger pickup truck that was actually big enough to provide the extra SAG space we wanted. Our team has two MIT corporate cards that we can use for renting cars, I have one and Caroline has the other one. Caroline doesn’t have a driver’s license. As a result, I had to go drive the car to go exchange it and would miss the first part of the ride.
I drove 50 minutes to exchange the car for a huge GMC Sierra, then 30 minutes to meet the team at the first rest stop. Meanwhile, the team finished packing and started the first 20 miles to the first rest stop, which ended up being very uneventful with nearly no dog encounters.
The only dog encounter occurred at the first rest stop when some dogs came running down the street from the opposite direction, while I was waiting in the parking lot, just when our bikers pulled into the rest stop. I don’t think they were chasing after our riders though. It seemed like they were just running down the street independently and then decided that antagonizing our riders would be a fun time.
At the rest stop, I changed into my bike gear and joined the ride for the remaining ~45 miles of the ride. Truthfully, I wasn’t really planning on joining in on the ride at all since I was feeling very mentally drained from the previous days’ events + physically drained from getting some awful sleep. Unfortunately, Tatiana egged me into joining the ride by claiming we didn’t need me to drive the pickup truck since only her left foot was injured and not her right foot (the one you need to drive) so she could drive the pickup truck. So, without really planning to, I ended up biking today. Meanwhile, Tatiana and Caroline drove themselves to the nearest hospital in order to identify the state of Tatiana’s foot + get Caroline her 2nd dose of rabies vaccine.
Biking the middle 20 miles ended up being very uneventful, and borderline boring without the “entertainment” of scanning houses for any dogs sprinting at us.
At the second rest stop, we ate the usual sandwiches for lunch and then ended up passing out on the grass for an hour. Unsurprisingly, the five of us who passed out at lunch (Drew, Carmen, Aarushi, Nunu, and myself) were also the five who had slept in the hammocks the night before.
Napping all over the parking lot and lawn. I don’t know why everyone ended up napping in like 3+ different locations.
As we slowly started waking up, Nunu introduced Aarushi and I to this game called Rummikub in which she quickly won and then proceeded to essentially play for us afterwards. I’m sure she had a fun time playing. Then, Drew, Nunu, and I played an awful game of HORSE in which we decided we should avoid basketball and stick to biking.
After a total of 3.5 hours at the second rest stop, we finally left and continued our biking journey. Around this time, Tatiana had found that her ankle was sprained (after going to three different hospitals because the first one she went to didn’t have an x-ray machine in the entire town).
The last leg of the ride ended up being much more eventful, and Carmen and Aarushi got their first taste of dealing with the aggressive dogs Kentucky is known for. I think in total we had ~6-8 dogs chase us, with the most “exciting” breeds being a Rottweiler, two Pyrenees mixes, a Retriever, and a Great Pyrenees that ran between houses across two streets in order to chase us. After we yelled that Great Pyrenees off (probably a co-conspirator with Max, the dog that bit Caroline), a watching neighbor yelled (in a nearly unintelligible Southern accent), “Watch out for that dog, it’ll bit ya”.
I also noticed some slight knee discomfort during the last leg of this ride, which I found very surprising since I run a lot and that tends to have a much higher impact on your knees than biking. Having seen the rest of the team getting their rides ended by knee issues, the discovery that my knees may not be invincible was quite jarring. Having written this in the future, however, the discomfort has since subsided, and so I have decided to place the blame on Nunu sleeping on my knees.
After arriving in Liberty at the church we would be staying at for the night, we were welcomed warmly by Brother Rodger at the Liberty Assembly of God with delicious fried chicken and tons of groceries and food that we were told was all for us.
At the same time, Nunu ran our clothes to the local laundromat before it closed so that Drew’s singular pair of bike shorts could be washed before the ride the next day.
After dinner, Caroline’s dad and two siblings stopped by to visit. They were originally planning to meet us at Mammoth Cave in a couple of days (on a much shorter bike day) but got the dates wrong. In any case, it was great meeting them. We heard about her dad’s 1000 mile, 10 day bike trip that he did using a single speed bike. Also, when we first met he said, “Ah you’re Nate, you’re the best blogger!”. Forest, if you’re reading this, you’re more than welcome to stop by anytime 🙂
With people tired and ready to head to bed, we spent a bit of time trying to figure out who would bike the next day. Both Drew and I were physically, but probably more so mentally, drained after the stressful past two days and were both interested in resting the next day. My driver day was tomorrow so I was quite excited to miss the 90 mile ride coming up.
Carmen, Aarushi, and Nunu were interested in biking, but they hadn’t had much experience with the dogs and wanted one of either Drew or I to join them. Between Drew and I, he was dealing with some chaffing that could use a rest and I had biked a bit less today. In the end, I ended up giving up my driver day to him so that the rest of the team would bike and we could avoid MIT Spokes 2026 from becoming MIT Rims 2026 (everyone driving the route).
Side note but since Drew wasn’t biking tomorrow, there was no need for Nunu to miss eating dinner with us to go do laundry. Sorry Nunu 😦
For those who have been following along, you may recall that our team has bad luck on my blog days when it comes to SAG outs. Caroline put it best this morning, “Are you blogging today, Nate? Oh no…”. Luckily, it seems to be the case that today breaks the “half the team SAGing out” streak that has come with my blogging days. Maybe just to extend the streak we can count me missing the first 20 miles as a SAG, but that’s kind of a stretch. Alternatively, Tatiana’s driver days have been on the same days as my blog days except for today, so maybe the real bad luck is there? I guess we’ll see in a couple of days.
– Nate
MIT Spokes 2026 
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