Day 21: Alternate Reality

6:00 AM

I wake up to my alarm ringing in my ear and immediately turn to snooze it.

6:10 AM

I wake up again 10 minutes later and once AGAIN, press the snooze button.

6:20 AM

It rings again and finally, I guiltily roll out of my own personal king size bed and begin my morning routine. I take a quick shower, brush my teeth, change into my biking gear, take out my dried laundry, fold my clothes, pack up all my things that I’d strewn about my room from the past three nights, say a very sad and longing goodbye to my beautiful master bedroom, and head downstairs. To my surprise (my own fault), the house is dead silent. I sent a message to our group chat, “Hi, who is awake?” To which I get no reply.

7:00 AM

I go outside to put my things in the car and to my second surprise, the car is missing?? At least from where I’d parked it last night. I hastily sent another message to the group chat, “guys, where is the car?” I finally use my brain and check the garage, where I find the car. 

7:10 AM

I then pull the car outside so we can begin loading our luggage where Nate finally appears with his things. I then wonder to myself why no one else other than myself and Nate are ready to go (already an hour and a half after our agreed wakeup time).

Unfortunately (for us) this morning, Tatiana, our usual wake-up caller, was missing in action because she’d been staying at a hotel nearby with her boyfriend who was visiting. Even so, as I sat in the kitchen eating breakfast, I looked around and I became very puzzled as to why everyone was moving even slower than normal. Something that our warmshowers hosts always comment on when they greet our group in the morning is how we are all obviously NOT morning people (except Tatiana). This was not more obvious than it was this morning. 

8:00 AM

The group had finally all stumbled downstairs and it seemed we would be ready to leave soon at last. Just one final step, we all need to load the route onto our bike computers. Suddenly, Aarushi asks aloud, “Where’s my bike computer?” Uh oh.

8:10 AM

Everyone is thoroughly checking throughout the house for Aarushi’s bike computer: behind dressers, under beds, in the luggage that had already been neatly packed into the car.

8:30 AM

Everyone is still looking and I decide to do some “looking” in my master bedroom, in my bed, under the covers.

8:45 AM

I go downstairs and Caroline has just found Aarushi’s bike computer in Aarushi’s backpack! Which Aarushi swears she checked like five times…

Right before we finally start pedaling, it’s revealed to Tatiana, Nate, and I that while we’d been peacefully sleeping by 10 PM the night before, Aarushi, Carmen, Caroline, and Drew had stayed up until 2 AM! It’s all making sense to me now…

9:00 AM

And with that, we were off on our 87 mile day!

For the first time ever, our entire group of 6 somewhat biked all together for the whole 24.2 miles to our first rest stop. Whenever this happens I always get super excited because it just feels so much cooler. Like, yeah hey we ARE MIT SPOKES! And we bike in a line in our matching jerseys, bikes, and helmets. Today we also passed our first other bikers to which we tried to lock in and look cool for. Today was also going to be one of our last super hilly days as we left the Appalachian mountains so we were going through many PUDS (pointless ups and downs) and took a number of quick breaks at the various peaks.

At some point during the bike ride, Nate asks me what day of the week it is. I checked my lockscreen which read, Sunday, June 21st. We realized there were cars parked outside all the churches we biked past and there was a sign that read, Happy Father’s Day! I’d forgotten today was Father’s Day and as we continued to bike, the team members all called their dads.

1:00 PM

We all make it 43.1 miles to our second rest stop for lunch! We had an awesome view of a raging river where many people were fishing below us as we sat and ate lunch. This is when Aarushi discovers some funky tan lines that she’d developed from just this morning.

1:30 PM

I called my dad and talked with him for 45 ish minutes.

2:15 PM

I hang up, look around, and everyone is SLEEPING?! Literally all over this park, a Spokie is sprawled out and unconscious.

3:00 PM

Admittedly, I wake up from my own 20 minute nap and Nate and I wonder to each other why everyone but the two of us and Tatiana are still sleeping? How come our team is always napping? Why is everyone so tired? Who is going to be the one to get us going again? How are we only halfway done with the day?

3:30 PM

Nate and I have an epiphany. The only people still sleeping are the exact people who stayed up until 2AM. With that, we decide enough is enough and we need to keep biking.

5:30 PM

We all arrive at our final rest stop and we take turns peeing in a massive porta potty.

6:00 PM

We leave for the last leg of our ride.

6:30 PM

We come upon a road closure in the middle of our route but decide to keep pushing through.

7:00 PM

Nate and I decide to speed off because sometimes it’s more fun to go fast, especially when you’ve gotten a proper 8 hours of sleep and not 4 hours of sleep. It’s dusk and the landscape looks beautiful.

8:00 PM

We meet up with Tatiana and eventually the rest of the team at Fazoli’s for an amazing Italian dinner. Thank you so much Morgan and Eddie for your kindness and support to our team!

8:45 PM

We finished the last few miles of our ride to the church in Madisonville where Pastor Jon was waiting to greet us!

9:15 PM

We unload our luggage from the car and Nate gives me a boost up to the roof of our car to unload our sleeping bags and pads from our car top storage. Nate tells me he thinks my feet are stinky.

9:30 PM

We run a quick shower line.

10 PM

We unroll our sleeping bags and sleeping pads to discover that it wasn’t my feet that were stinky (or at least not the only thing), it was our camping gear! For some reason, all our sleeping bags, pillows, and mats smell like old dirty socks…

10:30 PM

There’s nothing we can do but try our best to fall asleep, despite the stench, so we can hopefully wake up on time at 6 AM the next morning to do it all over again.

---

I tried to write my blog in this time stamped format to illustrate what exactly our day to day routine has become. It’s crazy to think that we are now at a point in the summer that we don’t even remember what day of the week it is. We’re living in a kind of alternate reality bubble that feels very disconnected from the real world at times. And it’s even crazier that we all chose to take an entire two and a half months off from reality, which means inevitably missing major life events of family and friends. At the same time, in our bubble, it feels like we are somehow always busy, moving around, tired, and maybe even a little stressed. Literally from 6 AM to 10 PM every hour is filled with activity.

Despite all these maybe stressful factors, this summer has already felt like an extremely fulfilling endeavor. Being busy and tired means we have big goals that we are chasing and working hard to achieve. And even though we are living out some alternate reality, we are literally experiencing the real world, pedal by pedal, city by city, and state by state. We are meeting so many wonderful and kind people across the country who have fed us, housed us, talked to us, and cheered us on.

Even when it takes three hours to leave the house in the morning and the remaining hours of the day just slip by, I am so happy and grateful for the opportunity to spend my days this way for another 54 days. Sorry for always being cheesy but it’s true.

With love,

Nunu