Day 65: The Legend of the Rider in White

Learning Festival in Ely, NV — 0 mi, 0 ft (or 36.44 mi, 2254 ft)

Today, we woke up strewn across the floor of the library of a high school in Ely, Nevada approximately 5 miles away from a 0% contained wildfire. Certainly not what I foresaw for my life if you asked me a couple of years ago. 

We need to be at the learning festival location by 9am for our learning festivals. We woke up at 8:30am. It goes without saying that we did not eat breakfast as everyone ran around between hallway bathrooms trying to get ready quickly (except for me, who limped around since I cut the bottom of my foot on a rock in a lake at Great Basin National Park back in Baker, NV). 

We drove over to the library where the LF was being hosted “only” 10 minutes late, after texting the library that we would be a bit late, and quickly scrambled to get the LF boxes out of the car. At that moment, we got a text back from the library staff that they weren’t expecting us until 11:30am. Strange…

Not that strange, actually. Turns out that this LF was scheduled for 11:00am to 5:00pm (as opposed to the usual 9:00am to 3:00pm) and that we had just forgotten. Suddenly, a call we received from the library staff the previous day in which they ended the call with “See you all tomorrow morning… or I guess, afternoon actually” made sense. At the time, we had just ignored it as strange, but clearly, we are the strange ones. 

What follows was a textbook example of the Spokes planning process. I’ll try my best to recall all steps throughout the process, however, strong disclaimer that there were certainly more steps that aren’t included:

1. Let’s go wait at a cafe.
2. Drew doesn’t want to wait at a cafe, and wants to go back to the high school and will bike to the library later.
3. We start driving to the high school and then will drive to the cafe.
4. Our bikes are still sitting at a random campsite. Since at this point the wildfire doesn’t seem to be a concern anymore (see below), it’d be good not to leave them there more than necessary. Otherwise, since the LF ends late, we’d have to go pick them up at night.
5. We need somewhere to leave the LF boxes since the 5 bikes at the campsite don’t fit in the van unless the boxes are out. Let’s go leave the boxes back at the library.
6. Bringing the bikes back will cut it close to the start of the LF. Since there’s only ~15 students signed up for the LF, we can do 3 groups of 5, run 3 workshops at once, and let the pair running the fourth workshop go get the bikes.
7. Nate has nothing to do and is down to go get the bikes, meaning Drew should come go as well. 
8. Drew has some work to do and would rather stay. Nunu can join but then two workshops are understaffed. Drew will help Caroline for the first workshop to avoid understaffing.
9. Since the bikes are going to be in the van during the LF and we’ll need to put the LF boxes in later, some people will need to bike back to the highschool after the LF.
10. The bike rack is back at the high school, good thing we’re going to drop Drew off there anyways.
11. Time to drive back to the library to drop off the boxes. Unfortunately, we don’t actually know which building the library is.
12. Walk into the first building we see and be told it’s actually a courthouse. Someone shows us the way to the library while we carry the LF boxes. 
13. I walk back to watch the car because I’m not much help limping around. We left all the doors open, the car running, and the keys inside the car. 
14. We drive cafe people to the cafe, at which point they realize they’ll have to get back to the library and they don’t want to walk. New plan: they’ll order while we go back to the highschool, then we’ll pick them up on the way back to go get the bikes, and drop them off at the library. The cafe and library are on the way to the bikes so it’s not too egregious.
15. Drive Drew to the high school. Pick up the bike rack. 
16. Grab breakfast from McDonalds since the cafe people aren’t ready yet and we haven’t had food. 
17. Pick up cafe people, drop them off at library, and go to get the bikes. 

Nothing too interesting on the car ride to pick up the bikes, but Nunu and I did discuss how typical this inefficiency has become lately. At the same time, we seem to do inefficiency so efficiently.

We got back to the library just as the first workshop was finishing up and Drew and I jumped into our electric motors workshop for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th slots. 

At 1:45pm, we stopped for lunch. With the kids being watched by the super helpful library staff + Tatiana + Caroline, the rest of us went to a nearby burger place to pick up lunch for all 7 of us. We came back with this haul of huge burgers with a ton of fries. Too bad we aren’t biking today, it’d be great fuel.

After finishing up lunch, we went back into teaching and wrapped up the learning festival around 5pm. Tatiana had taken the kids to some bouncy castles at a festival across the street from the library, so we waited for her to come back with the kids that hadn’t been picked up yet, as well as for Aarushi and Carmen to get back from looking at the town’s main street, to take a picture with the library staff. Unfortunately, Aarushi and Carmen took so long that the other staff member left.

After we finished packing our stuff and cleaning + vacuuming the room we held the LF in, we walked across the street to spend some more time at the festival. We checked out the booths, some people got matching temporary tattoos, we played Connect 4, and Carmen and Caroline raced each other in an inflatable obstacle course.

^{Pictures of the festival, which was thrown by the city’s police department.}

After about an hour of loitering at this festival, I was getting bored, which translated to me complaining to Nunu about not being able to finish yesterday’s ride and fence-sitting the idea of finishing the ride today. 

We had stopped the ride partly because of how hazy/smoky it looked along the route causing concern about bad air quality, but also because we were worried the wildfire might cause road closures along our route since it had doubled from 4k to 8k acres that morning. Additionally, the wind had shifted to blow the fire towards the road we were biking on, and we were worried we’d be separated from Drew (who was waiting for us in Ely, read yesterday’s blog for more context) if the road got closed. 

In the end, we were probably the only people concerned about the fire in all of Ely because no one in the town showed any urgency or concern about the fire (as a football coach at the high school put it when I asked him about everyone’s lack of concern, “There’s nothing we can do about it, so why worry.”) 

As soon as we had arrived in the town, however, and certainly by today when the air was clear and the fire had stopped growing in size, we realized that we may have been overly reactive (e.g. moving our bikes out of the town, cancelling the ride, etc.) – what’s new? In the grand scheme of things, erring on the safer side was the best thing to do, but I personally don’t like missing out on any biking and somewhat felt like we had quit/given up on yesterday’s ride. 

After conveying my displeasure at not rising up to the challenge of the wildfire at length to Nunu, she said something along the lines of “If you really wanted to finish the ride, you should’ve planned ahead better earlier to do it right after the LF ended. If you’re not gonna do something about it, stop complaining” (she didn’t say anything close to this, but I read between the lines). 

Feeling inspired by Nunu’s tough love, I decided I would finish yesterday’s ride. 

I asked around to see if anyone else was interested but I just got various versions of “No”, “Why would I do that”, “You’re weird”, and an “Any other day I would” from Drew (but I’m pretty sure this is the second time I’ve heard this 🤔). 

So at 6:20pm, Nunu, Caroline, and I drove back to the high school (and then drove back to the festival because Drew had the key, and then drove back to the high school). I quickly got ready while Nunu and Caroline went to pick up some drinks for the team from McDonalds (including a big lemonade for me to fuel up on, as if the giant burger from earlier wasn’t enough). Nunu dropped Caroline off with lots of assorted gear/stuff to put back in the high school, including our dinner that the library had very kindly cooked for us, and then Nunu and I drove off 30 minutes to the point where we had stopped yesterday’s ride to complete the last ~35 miles of the ride.

^{Around the same time, we received this picture of the team receiving massages that were “for the firefighters”…} 

A bit after 7:30pm, Nunu dropped me off to start the ride. She also kindly offered to drive support car for me since she was just going to work on her blog in the car anyways. So with that, I headed off on my ride, dressed up in a pretty cool looking outfit if you ask me. 

At this point, the sky was a super pretty pink color and the vibes were pretty amazing. Unfortunately, this was because the sun was setting. Oh well, I knew I’d be spending most of my time biking in the dark when I signed up for this.

^{Would most people bike 36 miles to see this view? Probably not, but it was still nice.}

I biked through the valley, enjoying the lovely sunset and last bits of light, before the sun set and I began the 2000 ft, 8 mile climb out of the valley that would comprise the hardest part of the ride. An additional benefit of this ride was that, since I was the only one biking, I was free to bike as fast as I wanted without having to wait for anyone else – so I decided to take advantage of the ride to push myself more than I’m usually able to during rides. 

Part way through the climb, I came up on the first rest stop that had been included on the route. I decided to call ahead to ask Nunu to look for a bag of peach rings from the snack box so that I could just grab them and keep biking without stopping (these peach rings have 20g of carbs in 3 rings and a total of 90g of carbs in the whole bag, meaning they’re a great way to shove fuel into your body). When I rolled up to the car, my amazing driver had them sitting in the passenger seat for me and I was able to grab them without my Garmin even pausing the ride.

I finished up the climb (after spending ~50 minutes on 8 miles, the entire ride took 2 hours so…) as well as the bag of peach rings, and enjoyed a quick descent back down the other end of the mountain before the route flattened out again (only slightly worried about a deer jumping into the road and ending the summer early). 

As I came up on the last rest stop, I called Nunu to let her know that I had great momentum and was gonna skip the rest stop. I felt pretty bad that she had spent the time driving/waiting around and in the end I didn’t even spend any time stopped, but at that same moment I looked up and saw the brightest stars I had seen all trip as well as views of the Milky Way. I told her this which seemed to maybe make the ride worth it because she seemed very excited about the stars. 

I arrived at the high school a bit after 9:30pm, having spent a total of 2 hours on the ride. I headed into the library where everyone was seated around doing their own thing. Nunu and I made ourselves some taco bowls for dinner, and then her, Drew, and I headed to McDonalds for yet another round of yummy drinks. 

Drew headed back to the high school while Nunu and I drove a bit out of the city because I wanted to take another look at the stars. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much chance to really appreciate them while riding since I was focused on biking fast and kept nearly swerving off the road whenever I stuck my head out to look at the stars above me. 

We spent some time lying on the floor enjoying the stars for the first real time this trip, and seeing like 5-10 shooting stars. 

Some time towards the end of our time stargazing, it passed midnight and I turned 23. Happy birthday to me or something.

We drove back to the high school where we found the entire team about to start a movie… Clearly none of us have any concern about our hot 80 mile ride tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, I showered and then headed to bed, wondering if the people of Ely were telling each other the story of the Rider in White, who biked in the night through the flames of the wildfire.

– Nate