Learning Festival in Glenwood Springs, CO — 0 mi, 0 ft
The nice thing about learning festival days is that we can sleep in. 8 am most days is a late start — thus, our 8 am alarm on these days is a sweet treat, and we had a nice rolling start to the day. To make things even better, we decided to stop by a coffee shop for breakfast, a semi-regular routine ahead of the learning festival. Nunu, Nate, Carmen, and I drove the van downtown and walked into the shop (Drew biked to Wendy’s instead, Aarushi and Tatiana were staying in a hotel with Tatiana’s visiting family). Along the way, we saw a cute doggy daycare van picking up a dog for the day. Honestly a dream job, just picking up adorable dogs and watching over them.
The coffee shop’s name was Wild Coffee, and true to its name I spotted some interesting speciality lattés that were calling my name. I ended up choosing a Raspberry Danish Latté and a breakfast burrito, all of which were quite unique but delicious. I also liked the decor a lot, as I noticed a quote from Mary Oliver that my favorite English teacher in high school would always quote and centered our graduation speech about: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Clearly, Spokes is a part of my answer to that question, even if the rest is not planned out yet. I’d love to challenge others to think about this too!
After filling our hands with too many drinks and things to eat, we got back into the van to rush to the location of our learning festival: the library. Turns out, we really didn’t need to rush to the van, as the library was a whopping one block away. We spent more time trying to find marginally closer parking than it would have taken if we simply walked there. Finally walking into the library, we were reunited with the other 3 members of our team, all coming from different directions and beautifully coming together at the front doors.
The library team showed us to the room we would all be doing our workshops in, which had plenty of room for all of us to spread out. We’re rarely all in the same room, so it was nice to share a space and get to see each other’s faces throughout the day and escape the bubble of our workshops for a bit. However, first things first, Nunu and I ran through the well-practiced routine of pulling out our templates, papers, rulers, markers, colored pencils, tape… the list goes on. Quite chaotic, but there is a method to the madness, I swear. I took bites of my burrito in between supplies, scarfing it down with as much dignity as possible (spoiler: there wasn’t much).
As we neared setup completion, Tatiana brought the kids in for her activity of choice — Simon Says! I always look forward to seeing what activity Tatiana picks or comes up with each festival to get the kids going. I’m still traumatized by winning the rock-paper-scissors tournament twice, so I was glad to see this one return. Except these kids were the worst group ever at this game. I don’t know if they’ve ever played Simon Says…? Even when Simon (Tatiana) was clearly not saying to do something, they would still all do it. It was very entertaining to watch, regardless.
After getting the energy out, we split into four groups, roughly sorted by age. Nunu and I got to work with the youngest kids first, and worked our way up to the oldest group at the very end. We often adapt the projects we do based on age level and ability, but today we had a large variety, ranging from the traditional houses to fun animals and cacti. One of my favorite interactions was with a boy who initially wanted to create a cardboard dog like the one we have in our examples. However, during the process, he messed up his design a bit such that the dog wasn’t salvageable. Instead of giving up, he reassessed his materials and realized that although it didn’t look like the dog he was aiming for, it would still make a great bird — thus, he pivoted to creating a bird, the first of our workshops. The end result was amazing, and he received a lot of compliments for it, especially with how unique it was. I think it was an interesting lesson on adaptation and persistence. It’s easy to perceive many things as “failures,” especially during the design process, but allowing yourself to continue and consider new pathways can result in even more special outcomes.
For lunch, the library graciously provided us food from a local restaurant! I scarfed down most of my fish and chips before it was back to regularly scheduled programming.
While demonstrating the cardboard animals, I also made an elephant I thought was cute, so it’s getting its own moment to shine. 🙂
After debating World Cup teams and listening to jokes I felt too old to understand, the day came to a close and the kids were slowly picked up. We all took a breather and planned out the next couple of hours. It was imperative that we stuck to our schedules because at 5:00 pm, we were meeting up with STANFORD SPOKES!!! They were graciously making the longgg 2.5 hour drive to meet us for dinner and hot springs, after a long day of biking nonetheless. Although we were both in Colorado at the moment, our route goes parallel but north of theirs, subsequently requiring a bit of driving to cover the gap. We ran back to our host’s house, changed, and went to the restaurant to get a table. Funnily enough, the restaurant was the same as where we got our lunch from!
As we waited, we were split between waiting at our comically large table and outside, not sure what was the least awkward way. We ended up doing a halfway meetup, which was more complicated than if we had just chosen either one. The way we choose to operate is fascinating sometimes… But once we were seated together, we immediately started chatting about each other’s journeys thus far. We traded stories, taking turns to laugh at funny scenarios and understand difficult challenges we’ve all faced. Paisley, one of the Stanford Spokes, had just been attacked by a BEAR earlier that day (read: taken a nasty fall) and still bore the fresh scars. I really admire her ability to get back on the bike after that and also still come all the way here, being positive about it. She said she took her bandages off to look cooler coming in, and they definitely were all super cool to talk to. I also found my non-driver counterpart, Ian, and got to bond over being flamed for not having a licence. Funnily enough, the 4 frosh (Carmen, Drew, Ian, and I) were all together on one end of the table. Maybe we identified each other subconsciously?
We kept talking and talking, causing our poor waiter to have to wait much longer than usual to take our orders and to start eating. Carmen and I split a veggie mac n cheese and a mediterranean salad that was SO GOOD. I haven’t had a salad like that in a long time, one that I kept scarfing down.
After eating, we debated our initial plan to go to the local hot springs. It was getting late, and Stanford Spokes had to leave in an hour or so to make the long drive back and meet their WS host. We decided it wasn’t worth paying like $30 for one hour of the springs, and head to a local park instead to chill and talk. We got a tour of their fancy cargo van that is actually capable and can fit sooo much stuff. I mean I’ve grown fond of our minivan, but it gets absolutely mogged by their van. They have a whole seat dedicated to their pillows… the world is truly unequal.
We got to the park and immediately started brainstorming what to do for like 5 minutes. Frisbee, football, volleyball, all the sports were thrown out there, immediately throwing away our initial priority of just hanging around. I don’t think “chilling” is in a lot of our vocabularies, and with that we settled on toilet tag, suggested by Freya. Toilet tag is one of many variations of freeze tag, where when you’re tagged, you kneel with one knee up and another arm raised . To get untagged, someone must sit on your knee and push your arm down like a toilet flush. I think it’s so interesting that everyone has different versions of freeze tag they’ve played as a kid, yet the basic principle of the game is so universal.
We chose our taggers and locked in. I was returned to 5th grade, running barefoot at full speed away from reaching hands and watching the chaos unfold between all of us. It was such a goofy sight but so much fun. In everyday life, when else do you get to watch others sprint as fast as they can? It was also surprisingly tiring, and all of us took a couple of minutes of deep breaths afterwards and made jokes about how we’re literally biking across the country, but this was some of the hardest things we’ve done. My personal highlight was faking Drew out while standing still, feeling like I just performed a crazy move in the NFL instead of a random park in Glenwood Springs.
Feeling tired, we decided to pivot to a slightly less demanding activity — volleyball. We used a fence as our net and split into 2 groups: Aarushi, Tatiana, Drew, Jack, Logan, Freya vs Nate, Nunu, Carmen, Ian, Paisley, and I. If you know us, you know one side is extremely disadvantaged height-wise relative to the other team. Luckily, we had the powerhouse of Nate, Nunu, and Ian (all people with some level of volleyball experience) to carry us, while Carmen, Paisley, and I supported as much as we could. Ian in particular was a libero in high school, so he performed some INCREDIBLE saves that kept us afloat and even leading for quite a bit. Apparently I’m decent at tossing the ball in? We ended up losing in a close battle and graciously shook hands through the fence.
With it getting dark quickly, the Stanford folks had to unfortunately get moving. We took our final photos together and said our goodbyes, thinking about how impactful our meetup was despite how short it was relative to our trip. We’re two groups that are doing the same thing at the same time, and we got to share a space for just a couple of hours before setting off to continue the long journey. While many of us may not see each other again, it was special to do so (especially being the first groups in a couple of years). Thank you Stanford Spokes for making the effort and being so lovely! Nate was the saddest to see them go, joking about joining them so many times that I don’t think it’s just a joke to him…they definitely needed to check their trunk for stowaways.
Once they left, we got in the car to drop off Tatiana’s grandpa Victor back at their hotel. However, during this ride, we floated the idea of still going to a hot springs since the next day was relatively short and we could afford a later night. We found a natural and public hot spring just a 10 minute drive away and decide to go, avoiding overpaying and being constrained to a private hot spring’s open hours. As we dropped off Victor, Drew took the opportunity to reunite with his one true love: Pepsi. Nate snuck these photos of this fascinating behavior, however, not without being noticed.
We got there in the dark at around 9:30 pm, changing into our swimsuits under the protection of the night. It was a short walk there, and we found a couple of murky pools and found a nice one for ourselves. Right before getting in, there was a suspicious UTO (unidentified turd-like object) that Tatiana herocially removed for us. The water was perfectly warm and also muddy at the bottom, which took some getting used to but was comfortable. I did fish out mud from my swimsuit afterwards.
We sat in the pools, talking about everything and anything yet nothing at the same time. The night stretched on, we observed lighting flash in the distance, and we watched the clouds clear above us, taking the opportunity to do a bit of stargazing as well. We spoke in mostly in low tones, trying to preserve the tranquility of the environment, and took a couple minutes of silence. No photos were taken during this time since we were so in-the-moment, but I can only describe it as magical. When I reflect on this trip in 10 years, this will definitely be a night that stuck out.
At about 12:40 am, we begrudgingly got out of the warm water and of courseee had to grab some food before getting to bed. Luckily for us, there was a McDonald’s open! Not so luckily for us, it closed at 1:00 am and our eta was 12:55 am. We rushed there, saw a McDonald’s worker outside (probably under the illusion no one would show up 5 minutes before closing at this hour) and saw the same worker run inside as soon as they saw us pull into the drive-thru. We were probably their worst nightmare: a van full of hungry, sulfur-smelling bikers with a big order ahead of them.
Finally, a couple burgers and fries later, we arrived back at our host Greg’s house and quietly got ready for bed. A much more active learning festival day than most, but it was full of coffee, new faces, adventure, and minimal biking. What more could you want on this trip? 😉
See you soon,
Caroline
MIT Spokes 2026 
Leave a comment