Parachute, CO to Grand Junction, CO — 53.5 mi, 1427 ft
Nothing will motivate our team more than… the World Cup final! Yes, you read that right. On any other morning we would snooze our 6am alarms and take a couple extra minutes sleepily packing up our things but this particular morning was the morning of the World Cup final. You would think we were a soccer team instead of a biking team with how locked in we were this morning as everyone sprung up from bed and got ready faster than I’d ever seen. We were staying at a hotel last night that was very kindly provided by Tatiana’s mom, auntie Olga. Soon enough all our belongings were piled high onto a luggage cart outside in the hallway of our two rooms and everyone was wheeling their bikes down the elevator. Nate and I began to push the luggage cart down the elevator too but it required such a huge effort since it was so heavy and hard to steer and everything was so delicately balanced. As we pushed it through the elevator doors our basket of miscellaneous toiletries and items fell and some mysterious items dropped down the elevator shaft, oops.
After we’d all scarfed down the hotel lobby breakfast which consisted of bagels, poptarts, and tangerines, we started our bike ride! The reason for our haste was that we wanted to make it to our end destination by 1PM Mountain Time for the World Cup Finale with Argentina vs Spain. Knowing our team, this was an unlikely feat but we were determined. Specifically, Caroline, Tatiana, Aarushi, and Carmen were the most determined and the rest of us just followed suit. Luckily, today’s ride was relatively short and mostly downhill. It was Me, Drew, Carmen, and Caroline leading the way.
Because the road is also basically free of cars, we take up the entire lane and Drew decides to play a trick on us and sneak up behind everyone to try and take their phones from their back pocket. Here’s a video of Drew chasing Caroline down.
At one point, we end up on highway 70 next to the Colorado River and it’s just beautiful.
At another point, our route tells us to get off the highway and onto a mysterious bike path that’s overgrown with trees and bushes to avoid the highway 70 tunnel that bikers aren’t allowed to go through. Getting through this overgrown path was quite an ordeal as we had to keep unclipping and clipping so we wouldn’t run into the trees completely.
We were so fast that we all beat Nate (our driver for the day) to the rest stop by about 10 minutes. Caroline set a 15 minute timer so we would make sure not to overrest and keep biking and we all quickly stuffed our faces with snacks and fuel. When the alarm went off, Nate jokingly complained that we only ever went fast when he is the driver (Nate loves going fast).
Close to the end of the ride, we stopped by a peach stand in the Palisades and ate the most delicious and juiciest peaches.
Not before long, we were at our final destination, a restaurant/bar in Grand Junction with a dedicated watch party room. We proceeded to stay here for the next three hours eating food and drinking our unlimited refill lemonades and iced teas.
To be honest, most of us were slightly rooting for Argentina to win because we felt like the Argentinian goalie deserved it as he was making save after save after save. This summer is also the first time I’ve ever properly watched soccer before and I’m just so impressed at how coordinated everyone on the field is despite how fast things move.
After the game ended, we finished the last three miles of the ride to our hosts house for the night, Greg and Stephie. Upon arrival we were greeted by a tub of watermelon and a very excited dog.
After a quick shower line and dinner, the team debated going to see the new movie, The Odyssey. I was initially very down along with Aarushi, Tatiana, Drew, and Carmen while Nate and Caroline were going to stay back. Unfortunately, I was incredibly behind on my blog writing and had “lapped” as today was my blog day while I still hadn’t finished my blog from last week. Consequently, I decided it was more responsible for me to stay back to finish my blog. Caroline was also convinced to go instead. Nate still stayed back so he could fix his bike that had a tire puncture.
As the only two people who stayed back, we also got put on laundry hanging duty.
With that, we ended the night until around 11PM or so. I woke up to the rest of the team stumbling in from their movie and quietly slipping into bed.
See you next week hopefully not lapped,
Nunu
MIT Spokes 2026 
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