Day 28: Sunrise to Sunset

Marshall, MO to Kansas City, MO — 86.2 mi, 4953 ft

There’s many things I never thought or cared about before this summer that now, literally makes or breaks my days. This includes how hot it is and at what times of the day, and how windy it is and in what direction that wind comes from.

We’ve been trying to take this summer day by day so last night we looked at the weather forecast and saw that it is going to be the hottest it has ever been thus far and close to the windiest it’s ever been thus far as well as somehow super hilly again? This surprised most of us because we’d been under the impression that we were done with the Appalachians and were going to be on flat roads until Colorado. Unfortunately, as Carmen and Aarushi drafted up the route as they usually do the night before, our GPS app showed us a very spiky, very hairy up and down graph that no one likes to see.

So, this morning I woke up feeling unrested. This is because we slept at 11 PM and woke up at 4 AM in the hopes that we could finish our ride early enough to avoid the peak “feels like 107 degrees” and peak “30 mph crosswind” conditions. Stressed, rushed, tired, and in pitch black, I used my phone flashlight to pack the car with all our luggage. We ate a quick breakfast provided by our wonderful and kind hosts, Shandra and Dave. Then we said our goodbyes which included a very sad goodbye to their puppy, Percy who the whole team agrees is the cutest most lovable dog we’ve met so far.

And with that, we started our ride at 5:30 AM—despite being 30 minutes late of our goal, it was still a record early departure time for the team. And at first, the ride was feeling great… for the first five minutes. The sun was rising over the landscape and the sky’s horizon was just slightly pink.

We defaulted into biking in a draft line because, even so early in the morning, we were already feeling some wind. Over the course of the summer, our team has slowly caught onto this cycling technique called drafting. This is when a cyclist rides very closely behind another cyclist to avoid wind resistance and supposedly saves the cyclist that is behind, up to 50% of their energy while maintaining the exact same speed of the person in front. You can expand this into a line as the first person breaks wind, the second person drafts the first person, the third person drafts the second person, and so on (see exhibit A). Usually, when we group ride, it’s either Nate or Drew breaking wind for everyone else because they are bigger and faster so their wind pocket is larger. Today, it was both of them leading the pack as we tried to bike in a double line draft for the first time (see exhibit C). So, it was Nate, Tatiana, then myself in one line and in parallel, it was Drew, Aarushi, then Caroline.

The thing about drafting is that in order to actually reap the benefits, you have to bike in a very precise and perfect way. Firstly, you have to bike so closely to the person in front of you that you’re afraid of crashing into them and you also have to bike so consistently and in a straight line that the person behind you can easily match pace and follow you. Unsurprisingly, most of us are not perfect cyclists yet. So being third in line, Caroline and I struggled to follow Tatiana and Aarushi as they unconsciously and totally understandably swayed side to side. At our first rest stop at mile 21 we had a brief check-in and decided we should try to switch up the order. I would draft Nate since I had learned to be more consistent after having drafted Nate many times already and Tatiana would draft me. Caroline decided she wanted to stay third in line because she didn’t feel confident to be consistent enough for someone to draft her. At this point, it was getting hotter, hills were getting steeper, and morale was getting lower as the incoming extreme heat and winds were luring closer and closer. Midway through the second 20 mile leg, Tatiana switched places with Aarushi because she felt it was hard to draft me and keep our fast pace. Despite being consistent and straight with my biking, my wind pocket was too small. At this point, our double draft line operation was breaking down along with our mental fortitude. Aarushi and Tatiana rode side by side in an attempt to both catch Drew’s wind pocket? The hills were also becoming more frequent and steep that on each climb, the draft line would break because people climbed at different paces and we would take breaks after each major climb to drink water and wait for everyone to group up again. Before we knew it, our early wakeup time advantage was slipping away from us and everyone was feeling the heat and wind exhaustion.

We eventually all make it to the second rest stop. Everyone is sad and Tatiana is the saddest. She cries and says that while she wants to bike in the draft line so that she can be faster and make it to our destination early enough, she is really struggling to keep pace. It’s not just her, most of the group is struggling because the pace is faster than usual and tougher than usual. It’s also a lot of mental stress because we are biking in a line that moves so fast we can’t even talk and enjoy each others’ company, so we’re just trying to keep biking fast enough to escape the hotter and hotter weather.

Everyone takes turns peeing behind this tree. Some of us pulled out our cooling towels which we had yet to try out. Spoiler: they don’t work. And Drew kindly volunteers to go at a slower pace with Tatiana so she can keep drafting him. Nate and I head out first.

During this third leg, we turn onto a road called Pink Hill Rd. The name was far too literal for my taste. It was literally an asphalt road that was bright red and pink that went on for miles, of just up and down, up and down. I remember Nate telling me a couple weeks ago when we were in Virginia, climbing another up and down up and down, that I just had to look forward to flat flat Missouri. I brought this up to him and called out his lies.

As we kept biking it felt as if we were biking in and out of pockets of hot hot air. On climbs, it felt especially hot because, as we slowed down going uphill, we no longer had the very slight breeze to cool us down and it felt like literally being enveloped in a huge fuzzy blanket which normally I would love but not in this scenario. Nate and I were not having a good time. As we entered into Kansas City, we’d been so beat down that a train horn going by scared us so badly we jumped out of our bike seats.

Finally, around 2 PM just a few miles from our destination, a hotel in the middle of the city, we decided to stop at Wendy’s (Nate’s favorite restaurant). Since we were still waiting on the details of checking into the hotel, we decided to get out of the heat and kill some time. It was exactly what we needed.

Around 3 PM, we got the call from Carmen (our driver for the day) that we could come check into the hotel. We stepped outside Wendy’s and it somehow felt 10 degrees hotter. We met up with Carmen at the hotel and as we walked into the lobby, I’m blasted by the most glorious AC I’ve ever felt. I also felt incredibly out of place as our sweaty stinky selves wheeled our three bikes through this fancy lobby, up the elevator and into our rooms. We then brought up everyone else’s luggage, making a huge ruckus as usual with our seven duffels, seven backpacks, and other miscellaneous items stuffed onto a luggage cart and wheeled up the elevators.

Once everything was in order, I took the most amazing shower and contemplated never getting out. By now it was around 4 PM and Nate and I decided to watch some TV while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Turns out, they had also just stopped at the same Wendy’s we’d been at just a few hours before.

By around 6 PM, everyone had arrived and settled into our four different rooms. At around 8 PM Carmen messaged that our dinner had just been delivered to our hotel lobby and we shuffled downstairs to eat. It’s BBQ! We stuffed our faces and I felt so happy and full.

I also found out that Carmen and Caroline had doordashed boba without telling me and demanded that we go back so Nate and I could also get boba. We decided to drive there instead because it would be more fun but didn’t realize we’d be crossing into the Kansas side before we biked across the border which felt a little sad but Nate closed his eyes so it didn’t count. On our way out we saw a beautiful sunset and decided to drive around the city a bit listening to music—my favorite pastime.

After a long and very tough biking day, I felt like a normal person again. Not worried about heat maps or wind direction, just thinking about our next two days of rest and how we should spend our free time. Amusement park? Escape room? Shopping mall? World cup? Kansas City was our oyster and we were going to make the most of it. Despite the physical and mental lows of the day, it’s making the highs that much higher and I am so so so excited for the next couple of days to loiter and eat food and hangout.

Love,

Nunu