MIT Spokes 2026

Author: MIT Spokes

  • Day 56: a series of reflections

    Day 56: a series of reflections

    Capitol Reef National Park, UT to Escalante, UT — 68 mi, 6031 ft

    A common enough question I get asked by either Tatiana or Aarushi is: what do you think about on your rides? Half the time I don’t know what to say, I’m just dissociating up the climbs. Otherwise, I’m trying to lock in and listen to my audiobook. But mostly, I’m thinking about thinking. Thinking about what I have said, what I will say, what I have not said, and what I will not say. Why I feel a certain why, why I want something, or why I’m annoyed with something else. A lot of metacognitive thoughts that probably aren’t very interesting to anyone else but me. And so, given this opportunity to write about whatever I want and have my friends and family read it, I’ll share some of them.

    As soon as my eyes opened, I was immediately reminded by Nunu that this was the last morning we’d ever wake up at a campsite. So I took a couple of seriously bad photos through the screen of my tent to commemorate the moment. How we ignore all our alarms and then get up in sequence some minutes after, with Nunu always first and Drew always managing to get an extra half hour of sleep. The last day of this routine, of those steps we decided at our first campsite, and others that naturally occur but nonetheless become ingrained in our group psyche. It’s like a living thing, each of our own seven habits contributed to it, creating patterns of interactions that only those who lived it can predict. And maybe part of it dies the moment we put the last suitcase in the car, but the rest has the chance to survive for the next 20 days.

    With the tents packed away we scavenged for breakfast like foods of granola, dried mango, until Tatiana and Noah rescued us all and brought three breakfast burritos from their hotel. We shared them and our saliva as usual.

    Tat eyeing Caroline’s burrito

    Moments away from leaving, a British guy carrying a bike comes up to us and asks if we can help fix his deflated tire. This is now the third or fourth guy that has asked us for either bike help or for tools within the past 48 hours. It’s almost as if our seven matching bikes chained up to the park grill send out a bat signal to all the tool-less husbands at the Capitol Reef campsite. We tried to fix his bike, discovered the seller had folded up a leaky tube too large for the tire, and attempted to patch it, but in the end it still was flat. Even with all seven MIT brains put together, the poor guy ended up in the same position as he started. 

    I had been mentally preparing for this day: 6,000 feet of elevation, the highest I will have biked. I was honestly quite excited. The triumphant satisfaction of tackling each hill would in theory replace most of the dread I felt. It did at least for the first section. 

    We had driven up and down this highway leading out of Capitol Reef multiple times by now, and so I had a decent picture of what the climb would look like. It was like any other kinda uncomfortable climb, gradual uphill for a few miles, then some steeper sections and some fast downhills. The most notable part was the beautiful red rocks I got to bike by. My favorites are these vertical pillars and mounds at the base of this mountain that manage to look like rows of sphinxes.

    I also got to see some cute deer in the fruit orchards on the road out from the campsite.

    Earlier we had planned to stop 7 miles in at the national park sign to finally take some pictures for Olga with the NASA hats. Nunu staged us very artistically on the hill behind the sign and in a line to show off our side profiles.

    Noah had been driving along for this first section, and would park up ahead every few miles to cheer us on during the climbs. What an amazing man. Tatiana really bagged a good one. 

    As I passed through half of Torrey, the small town I had spent the previous day exploring, it felt as if I was traveling through all of those memories which already felt so large. The Subway which we devoured after the hard century day into Capitol Reef, the mexican restaurant we ate at while jokingly discussing if we should dip and take a day trip to Salt Lake City, Tatiana’s hotel which we crashed at for hours, the random antique and grocery stores we roamed through, the bulletin board where we found the flyer for the BIFF film festival, the farmer’s market that gave us the people watching show of a lifetime; all trapped along this few mile stretch of highway 24.

    When I look back, I’m always amazed at how I was able to have so many full experiences within such a short amount of time. How have I managed to instill each moment with meaning? That is precisely what I feared I wouldn’t be able to do. And so this, to me, is a huge relief, but still a high goal to continually reach day after day, this desire to avoid monotony. Despite this nagging reminder droning on in the back of my head, it has naturally become the norm.

    Why is it natural? Our rest days are not structured like our biking days, and don’t provide us instructions on when and where to meet people, or how to peer into other’s communities. 

    I’m going to say that for most, it’s due to an intrinsic curiosity in people. For me at least, I think it’s from this same desire to avoid monotony by chasing a certain feeling of warmth, of affection. An affection I only find when I either see or get to play a meaningful moment in someone’s life. 

    So maybe each day is a new race to acquire these moments of affection. And the shops in Torrey are where all of those moments from the past 24 hours live.

    I was met with four types of pie and two types of ice cream at the first rest stop. In my immense greed I still checked out the coffee selection and ordered an horchata latte. It was delicious, and so were the pies. Especially the strawberry rhubarb one recommended by all three workers at the farm store. 

    The next segment was relatively calm. We left the red rocks of the park behind in a very sharp transition that turned into flat grasslands. I was following Caroline for most of the ride until we started up a gravel climb, and were assaulted by 15 mph winds coming from the east. I tried to fight it as long as I could, but it was just too strong, and we both had to get off our bikes. We hadn’t had enough fun yet because then rain started pelting down at a steep angle in addition to the wind. As Caroline and I were hunched over on the side of the road, the rain started to sting our faces. It must have turned into hail as it felt like being pelted with tiny rocks everywhere it landed on my skin.

    With nothing else to do I started to laugh. In times like these, in situations as ridiculous as this, where we couldn’t even stand up straight, couldn’t bike, couldn’t do anything but exist and wait out this uncomfortable weather, I just laugh at the absurdity of it all. I tend to do this, laugh during ridiculously hard and trying times, or at idiotic mistakes, anything that is inevitable and uncomfortable. Because what is the other option? To cry? Sometimes I fear this can be mistranslated as me laughing at someone, or at inappropriate times. Maybe that’s what it looks like, but it’s not where it comes from.

    When it eventually died down enough to finish the climb, we continued on until the next rest stop. As Mr. K came into view, I saw what looked like a tent? Nunu’s genius had made itself known for a second time today. We found Nunu, Nate, and Drew already inside devouring the most amazing snack haul I had ever seen. Nunu got those pink and white circus animal crackers that are just so nostalgic in all the right ways. When we first saw them Drew, Caroline, and I gasped, yelled, and dove for them like the greedy pigs we are. Look how happy Drew was.

    The wind wasn’t going away any time soon, and so we decided to wait it out for an hour inside the tent. An hour and a half later, we still hadn’t moved, and the wind was still slapping the rain cover on the outside of the tent. The largest climb of the day was also still ahead of us: 1,000 ft in 10 miles straight up gravel. So Drew and I chose to ignore the wind. It had died down some, even if it sounded like we’re being tumbled around in a washing machine. 

    What I’ve recently learned is that we’re all sheep. If one person starts moving, everyone else (usually) follows. It’s such a great hack; the few times I’ve used it I’ve felt so powerful. Like a shepherd leading their blind sheep off a cliff. So the rest of the team woke up and put on their helmets too.

    • Tent: 1, Nunu: 0
    • Tent: 1, Nunu: 0
    • Tent: 1, Nunu: 0
    • Tent: 1, Nunu: 0
    • Tent: 1, Nunu: 0

    The next stretch was the most climbing we’d do all day. And I didn’t even mind, not one bit. The landscape was so incredibly beautiful that it apologized for all the uphill. It was out of some story book. As I biked up the road, there were sprawling green fields on either side, and multicolored mountains looming in the background. The road curved downward, and so from my view I was biking between a small gap in a fence and into the infinite blue sky. 

    Literally a microsoft screensaver

    It was at this point I took out my headphones and just listened to the wind, the brush of the bushes, gravel crunching under my tires. It was so incredibly peaceful. 

    A half mile more and the climb for the next 5 miles came into view. The road curved up the mountains in front of me. It was vulnerable in a way. These hills were not obscuring anything, they were presenting the challenge for me to judge. And I couldn’t be mad at its honesty or its beauty. Mountains simply have climbs and descents, and we are the ones who choose to bike across them.

    From the base of this climb, I could see about four trees, all standing alone, scattered throughout the hill side. My camera did not do them justice. They just stood there, in the wide expanse of flatlands, only a couple feet tall, but providing dots of shade. 

    What a stoic little tree

    Along the drive from Phoenix to Prescott, there is a single tree a half a mile or so out from the road, surrounded by a similar landscape. I’ve always wanted to sit under that tree and look out at the quietness of the rolling hills. 

    On this ride, I should have done so when I had the chance. The chance was a small road that would probably have taken me to one of those trees, a mile or so off the main road. But I didn’t, and admittedly, kinda regret it. Next time?

    For the last part of the climb, a cap of trees came into view. “The Dixie Forest”, the sign read. Within 20 miles, the land had changed so rapidly: red rocks, to flatlands, to forests. 

    We stopped just past the sign for lunch, and wrapped ourselves up in blankets to protect us from the cold that was at 9,500 ft of elevation. We ate our sandwiches huddled like penguins and some of us went swimming in the back of the car for rain jackets. 

    Aarushi isn’t afraid to dive headfirst into what she wants

    All the way back in Blacksburg I remember hearing from our host the philosophy on wearing rain jackets while biking. You get wet both ways, either from the rain itself or from your trapped sweat. So like the absolute units Caroline and I are, we went without them and chose to be cold instead, at least until we warmed up from biking.

    As we rode off to finish the last climb, we kept passing these tiny circles of trees that lined the trail. Eventually they grew into more of a cohesive forest, and we started talking about how we would love to go and explore. It’s ironic really, because 0.1 miles later, the route curved into the forest and our wish came true.

    We crossed several “experimental farms”, and were confronted with cows on either side of the road. They are apparently as stupid as deer, since when they heard us coming, they got startled and ran across the road, almost trampling us. 

    majestic cow

    We finished the climbs, reached the highest point of elevation in our ride (10,049 ft), and then started on the incredibly steep gravel downhills. I may not be the fastest on the way up, but I did manage to bomb past Caroline on the way down, not that it was a race or anything.

    When I pulled into the last rest stop, I saw three people in kayaks on the lake in front of me. To my surprise, one of them began to wave. My eyes are so incredibly bad that even with my contacts I couldn’t make out who they were, until one of them started paddling towards me. It was Drew and he was pointing to a dock with two more kayaks and paddles. 

    As I was pouring water out of the single kayak, Caroline arrived, and her and Drew decided to squish into one of the larger kayaks. To make room for the last two bikers, Nate and Nunu also squished.

    Look at how happy everyone is, aww
    Everyone taking pictures of the bald eagle

    The kayak I rode was more of a paddleboard. It sat on top of the water, which meant it felt far more unstable than the others. Drew knew this too, and so he started barreling towards me, threatening to splash me and overturn my boat. I remembered from the rafting trip that he had already done so, it’s just that at the time I was on his side. Now though, I was at risk of being drowned. So I said something along the lines of, “this is a peaceful trip! No fighting, let’s be very zen right now. Truce?” Caroline, for her part, explicitly said she did not support any violence. He must have agreed since my butt and feet stayed dry.

    Drew taking aim at me

    The lake was stunning. We saw a bald eagle sitting on top of a pine tree. Nate and Nunu got the privilege of seeing it dive for fish. We also saw a family of ducks, one mom with seven or so ducklings trailing behind. Someone mentioned the ugly duckling, someone else mentioned the Aarushi gap, and then somehow they got combined into one? Aarushi is the ugly duckling? As the self proclaimed (and communally agreed upon) daughter of Aphrodite, she is arguably the least qualified to be likened to a scruffy wet bird. But she is definitely qualified to be leading that gap behind the third duck. So while everyone was shouting about ugly ducks and runts and slow swimmers, I chose the most confusing moment to add, “I found Aarushi!” Everyone then starts looking around for her and Tatiana as they remembered they haven’t yet arrived, saying “Where, where is she?” I only meant that out of the cute little ducks, I found the one lagging behind a little, and then paddling its little feet to go faster. 

    if you listen closely, you can hear the real time Aarushi gap discussion

    Well at this point we all started to get worried, since it’s almost been an hour since we arrived, and we hadn’t yet seen Aarushi or Tatiana. Also it was about to get dark, and none of us wanted to finish these steep gravel descents with no light. Drew’s brakes had already stopped working from overuse on the first part of the downhill. None of us wanted to be in a position where we lost control at night. And so we sent Nunu out to go find the two missing ones of us, while Drew, Nate, Caroline, and I dragged the kayaks out of the mud and on top of the dock. 

    It’s a funny thing, repeatedly putting yourself in a situation where every few hours you get to worry for someone’s safety. It’s not a trivial worry either, what makes it even more stupid is that it’s completely valid. We have crashed into trees before on gravel descents, last year’s team slid out on gravel and seriously hurt themselves, some guy on the UT Austin team was blown off the side of a cliff and had to get airlifted out. All of these accidents have happened to people relatively close to us. So every time we wait for people to arrive in areas with no service, it’s always a guessing game of are they seriously injured, or just slow(er)?

    While I get to ooh and awe at the beauty of the mountains and the pine trees and the algae running under the boat and the birds hunting for fish and the cicadas humming in the trees, I also get to hedge a ridiculous bet that my friends are still alive and not desperately trying to call for help with no service. What’s more is that we all get to do this multiple times a day, experience this dichotomy of feeling, these extreme highs and lows all at once. It keeps the trip interesting, that’s for sure. 

    Maybe I’m getting desensitized to these anxious thoughts. I did after all bet that they were just going slower. But what’s the other option, envisioning their death and destruction constantly?

    As soon as Drew and Nate finished my emergency stash of Cheez-its and we were almost ready to finish the ride, Nunu pulled up with Tatiana and Aarushi in front. Alive. And each in one piece. Wonderful. They said it was just slow moving, all the climbs and the steep downhill had taken them forever. But they were also ready to just get the ride over with. So we all left together, me in front leading the way, the first and only time I got to do so.

    We saw the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on the way down.

    At this point my chain has fallen off, but the staircase is beautiful

    I was biking with Drew and Nate for a bit until my chain fell off and I had to stop on the side of the road to put it back on. As I continued down the hill, I watched this black pickup truck pull out of a parking space and slowly drive down the road. Either it was incredibly slow or I was going fast, but I had to pass it on the left. That’s never happened to me before. I don’t know why, but I had the irrational thought that maybe, just maybe it was planning on following me? It was going slow enough and started trailing behind, keeping a couple hundred feet of distance between us. The longer I biked for, the longer it followed, and the more I became convinced that something was going to happen. This went on for a couple miles or so, as I biked as fast as I could. I took a right turn, and then a left, and it still never left. Half the time my eyes were in front of me and the other half was spent looking behind. Eventually, it took a left as I went straight, and I realized how well I had gotten into my own mind. Everything was fine. I was being crazy, but to be fair, crazier things have happened on this trip. I guess I’m not desensitized after all. Just attempting to tone these thoughts down and occasionally succeeding.

    We all finished the ride into Escalante, met up with our hosts, pet their two adorable dogs Rocky and Mocha, had dinner, and began the debate about our next day’s ride. Should we take the highway or gravel side roads?

    At dinner, our host Pastor Richards suggested we take this alternate gravel route north of highway 12. So Aarushi and I did our duty, and looked into this road. We took input from the team: Drew was a strong advocate for the gravel, Tatiana was leaning towards the highway even though she knew the gravel was more responsible, Nate was more aligned with taking the gravel, and Nunu and Caroline were fine with either. The issue is that we don’t have street view for some of the parts of the gravel section, and the ride with gps elevation graph isn’t always accurate. If we took that path, we’d be going into the ride blind. But if we take the highway, the risk we assume is getting run over by a semi. The gravel might be more scenic since it’s in the mountains, but the ride involves one large climb. The road tracks over two climbs (splits up the climbs), but the total elevation gained between each path is the same. And even though the gravel is the same in elevation, it will likely take longer simply because the ground isn’t smooth or easy to ride on. The paved route would have better rest stops, while the gravel route would just have stops on the side of the road. All of these considerations we thought through, while taking the team’s input, going back and forth on gravel or paved, gravel or paved. This went on for about an hour until Nate finally mentioned that if we took the highway, his parents could meet us at the rest stops. And so the decision was finally made. We would use the exact same route as last year with the exact same rest stops. No extra work required. No new route, no new rest stops, no effort needed to be put forth to make any changes. We got an hour less of sleep for the sole purpose of yapping in circles, our favorite pastime.

    Thank you for reading my self indulgent, metacognitive yap. Hope you enjoyed a day of Spokes through my little brain’s view of itself.

    – Carmen

  • Day 55: Hello Down There

    Day 55: Hello Down There

    Rest Day in Capitol Reef National Park, UT — 0 mi, 0 ft

    Video script:

    I woke up this morning in our massive four person tent but just aarushi and I shared it since Tatiana was staying at a hotel nearby with her boyfriend, Noah, who was visiting. Looking around the campsite it seemed like I was the first one awake because my circadian clock is tuned too well. We began a very slow and gradual morning as the sunlight and heat naturally woke everyone else up. We shuffled through our snacks to see what we could have for breakfast landing on the usual chips and cookies.

    This morning’s plan was for Caroline, Nate, Tatiana, Noah, and myself to go on a short hike in Capital Reef while Aarushi, Carmen, and Drew would rather treat their rest day as an actual rest day and do some dilly dallying around camp or in the main town area. We originally planned to meet up with Tatiana and Noah at 9AM at the campsite but half an hour later at 9:30 they were nowhere to be found. Since we were staying in the national park, none of us had any data to communicate updates so we just sat around and waited for a bit. I convinced everyone to play a round of BS and right before Caroline could win, Tatiana and Noah showed up at 9:45. However they didn’t show up empty handed because they managed to steal us some apples and oranges from their hotel breakfast which we all happily munched on because our random junk snacks get tiring sometimes.

    Caroline, our resident national park expert (she’s been to 36 national parks), chose a 5 mile trail through the canyons called Grand Wash Trail. Since it’s a rest day we still wanted to take it easy so this was more like a stroll than a hike. The hike kind of felt like walking through a giant amusement park and the canyon crevices were our play structures. It was very beautiful and we walked the whole thing out and back. Close to the end of the hike, it began to drizzle and we were worried that all our camping gear would be getting soaked since none of us put our rain so we hurried back to the campsite. I was thinking about all my clothes and electronics being drenched when we pulled up but lo and behold, Carmen, Aarushi, and Drew had already put on all our raincovers for us which was very sweet of them.

    Afterwards, Tatiana wanted to go to the pie shop on the campsite. They make the pies fresh everyday. Their usual flavors include peach, apple, cherry, mixed berry, and strawberry rhubarb. By the time we got there they only had mixed berry and cherry left so we got a mixed berry to share and a cup of homemade ice cream each. It was seriously delicious.

    After the pie pit stop, we planned to take the Capital Reef scenic drive. Earlier in the morning we passed by a sign that had a meter showing the likelihood of flash flooding, it read “not expected.” The second time we passed the sign on our way to see if our tents were covered from the rain, it read “possible.” This time, on our way to begin the scenic drive, it read “probable.” We ignored it and kept driving only a few more minutes before being stopped by a park ranger who was stationed specifically to tell cars to turn around because of the flash flood warnings.

    We rerouted to go back to Tatiana and Noah’s hotel in which all the rest of us were leeching off of for the shower, pool, hottub, air conditioning, power, etc. The two of them dropped us off to loiter around while they went to take a nap. We waited for Carmen, Aarushi, and Drew to come from lunch with Mr. K (our car) and traded off to drive somewhere for lunch too while the three of them loitered around the hotel. We ended up going to a very yummy Mexican restaurant and split three things three ways—we cleared everything. At 3PM, we went back to the hotel to pick up Carmen, Aarushi, and Drew to go to the local farmer’s market which we had seen signs for the night before.

    We wandered every booth before sitting down to listen to the live band sing and play some songs. I bought a fresh squeezed lemonade and a zucchini bread and banana bread to split with Aarushi and Carmen.

    After the market, we went back to Tatiana and Noah’s hotel where we had some time to all blog and do other miscellaneous housekeeping tasks. Around 8PM, a group of us headed to a local film festival called The Bicknell International Film Festival (BIFF) in which they meet annually to do a showing of a “bad film.” Aarushi, Carmen, and Drew had seen flyers for the film festival that morning while wandering the town and so we were intrigued. It was Tatiana, Noah, Aarushi, Carmen, and I. When we got to the theatre we bought a large popcorn to share and found our seats.

    The festival started with a very enthusiastic raffle of random items like water bottles and a small box of goldfish! They one by one called ticket numbers that were associated with the tickets that they gave us at the venue entrance. I was feeling particularly lucky as they held up this small box of goldfish and to our great surprise, Carmen and I’s number was called! I jumped up in excitement to claim our prize. As we sat and waited for the movie to start we read our pamphlets. “(BIFF) celebrates the cultural icon of B movies…” “B movies now have cult status with their awful dialog, cheap plots, or overall campy style. BIFF celebrates all three!”

    The chosen movie of this year was called, “Hello Down There” released in 1969. It has a 5.7 IMDb rating and a 59% on rotten tomatoes. To be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. And maybe it’s because I had extremely low expectations going into it because of the context it was being introduced to us in but I can’t remember the last time I was so engaged in a movie that was actually very silly. Everything about it was so bizarre but in a way that kind of went well together and made me laugh. The best part of the whole experience was the audience. I’ve never watched a movie in a movie theatre where you can react so freely at what you’re seeing. Every twist and turn and funny moment had the whole audience laughing together, it was just so much fun. Definitely a worthwhile experience.

    After the movie, everyone shuffled over to the afterparty which was at a local bar. Unfortunately, because not all of us are 21+, we realized we couldn’t go and turned around to go back to the hotel and then the six of us (minus Tatiana and Noah), drove Mr. K back to our campsite and tucked in for the night. As I fell asleep, the movie’s soundtrack played in my head as I appreciated our rest day full of loitering and side questing.

  • Day 54: maybe mars is a small town in utah

    Day 54: maybe mars is a small town in utah

    Green River State Park, UT to Capitol Reef National Park, UT — 94.3 mi, 4398 ft

    Just finally starting to feel cool in the stuffy 2-person tent I share with Carmen, duty unfortunately called at 5 am for us to break camp and hit the road. I, of course, would be hitting it on 4 wheels in the car with Carmen for my “driver” (passenger princess) day, but the rest of the group would be on 2 wheels and be facing some pretty high temps, necessitating the earlier wake up time. It was a quick deconstruction of our campsite and a few snacks for breakfast, and they left at 6:30 am. 

    Carmen and I had some tasks to do, namely getting ice, a phone case for Tatiana, and  toothpaste for Drew — specifically charcoal toothpaste. The only market in the area was a gas station, so I wasn’t too hopeful about our chances. No charcoal toothpaste to be found, no phone case, but plenty of ice! We got the goods and sped to our very important second stop: Tamarisk. This was the restaurant where we had our AMAZING dinner the night before, which also quite conveniently had a coffee shop attached. And a hotel? Not quite sure how the businesses work together, but they seem to be all doing great. We timed our arrival nearly perfectly: the coffee shop and restaurant opened at 7 am, and we were there at 6:50 am. We loitered in the parking lot for a bit, camping out the store as if some big deal was happening. Employees slowly rolled in as well, and we gave them a courtesy wait of 5 extra minutes after 7 am to finally jump inside. We were eager to get some food because this was basically all of the fun we could have today — the rest of the route was through relatively desolate land with few towns (if any), so we figured we were justified in spending some of our day here, given of course that we wouldn’t be late to the first rest stop. 

    I got a dirty chai latte + a normal chai latte for Tatiana, as we have similar tastes and she asked to get whatever I got! It was actually the BEST chai latte I’ve had all trip. Carmen got her classic latte and a hugeee cinnamon roll that proceeded to last her the whole day. I also got a hugeee burrito that also managed to last me the whole day. A couple bites were taken here and there between stops.

    Carmen really enjoying the cinnamon roll

    We got Nunu and Aarushi’s orders of peach and raspberry iced tea and rushed to the first rest stop. We took I-70 on the way there, which is also what the bikers had to take for around 13 miles. Although it had a pretty decent shoulder and there were few cars at such an early hour, the “Speed Limit: 80 mph” caused Carmen to stress about how she “put them there” as one of the route planners. It was all good though, and we soon exited the freeway at the same time as Tatiana was, and enjoyed the slightly comical sight of a cyclist taking a freeway exit. I saw Tatiana waving at us as we drove by so I waved back, but I later learned she was trying to signal that she wanted a draft from the car and instead watched us speed away, waving back almost cruelly. Sorry Tatiana! 

    Our first rest stop was a luxurious gravel pullout. We angled the car to provide shade and set up our trusty picnic blanket right as Drew, Nunu, and Nate arrived. It was a pretty standard stop: we handed out our haul of drinks, people sat in the shade, and we had a mini debate about carbs. 

    Once everyone left the first stop, Carmen and I hopped in the car for the 2nd leg, which felt quite long… even from the car. The reason for this longer leg (20 miles) was that I had helped Carmen decide the night before with the route that we should make the first 2 legs slightly longer because A. More time to get ice and goodies in the 1st leg and B. Take advantage of going more miles in the cooler morning weather. Thus, we had plenty of time once we arrived at the 2nd rest stop, which was another luxurious gravel pullout. We decided to explore some mini sand dunes close by, running barefoot through the soft sand and enjoying the warmth between our toes. It was the perfect consistency you look for in sand: soft, not too chunky, and cool when you buried your feet slightly below the surface. As we roamed around, we found out how cool the sand was in the small shade of brush as well as animal tracks presumably left by a small bird. 

    Hiding in the shade and experimenting with shadow puppets

    Our last mark was to write MIT SPOKES in the sand and to draw a bike, which Carmen did a spectacular job of despite writing upside down and without an actual bike to reference. We also found a hubcap that we considered keeping as a souvenir for our dorm next year, but ended up leaving it. 

    We waited for people to roll in, doing the basic driver duties of getting ice and snacks out for people. Something of note is that every rest stop ended up being staggered today, aka people ended up coming and going at different times. Normally this is not the case, but the imminent threat of the heat led to naturally larger gaps between groups and also rest stops with minimal dilly-dallying to minimize biking time later in the day. As a result, Carmen and I had a lottt of waiting ahead of us. Compounded with no service (aka no scrolling 💔) and literally nothing to do around us, the day felt very long, but we were much better off than the bikers, whose day would unfortunately only get worse.

    We drove to the 3rd rest stop, a cafe in a small town that was the only town on the whole route. Despite our best efforts, we were late for the first group (Drew, Nunu, Nate) 😦 Despite the size of the town, the cafe was quite nice and had wifi that allowed me to do some blog posting! We must’ve looked insane to this singular employee at the cafe as more identically dressed bikers kept rolling into this small town at random intervals, each taking turns to order a drink. The first group then left and the rest of us went to a nearby market. On the way, we saw an interesting roadside attraction.

    The views on the way to the 4th rest stop were INSANE. We saw rock formations that truly looked otherworldly, easily passing for Mars or some other far-away planet. Late once again due to the large gaps, the first group were sitting sadly under the only shade for probably miles: an information sign for the recreational area. Apparently the strange black dunes are popular for motorbikes to go up and down on. Nate and Drew tried their own hand at it before we arrived.

    The sole structure

    It was clear at this point the heat was starting to take a toll. I handed out cold Pepsis that were quickly slurped down, and we all just kind of sat there as if contemplating the decisions that led to this moment. At some point, Nunu and Drew started loudly singing “Never Enough” from the Greatest Showman, which may be the first sign of heatstroke or some other mental break, in my professional opinion.

    One good thing about being in the middle of nowhere is that when nature calls, the world is your bathroom. After some people took advantage of this and reapplied sunscreen, they slowly trickled out of the rest stop and into the second-to-last leg. Tatiana, who was listening to Disney music most of this ride, got “Colors of the Wind” stuck in my head, which was very fitting as I watched the colorful rocks flash by the car window. The camera cannot do it justice. Purple, orange, yellow, blue, truly any color could be seen in the unique landscape that surrounded us. 

    Now, a very important question: where do you think our final rest stop was? If you guessed another gravel pullout, congrats! 

    More specifically, it was also a gravel road, but we took up most of the entrance because we figured it didn’t get much traffic ever due to how remote it was. Of course once we made that assumption, 3 cars tried to enter during our time there, causing us to wonder where they could possibly be going on this road that seemed to descend into obscurity.

    ???

    As the first group arrived, the wind became extremely intense, synced with a looming storm that threatened lightning and thunder. It’s very impressive how often a thunderstorm seems to spring out of nowhere and interrupt our biking days with fear/mild concern. This one, however, was thankfully all bark and no bite, and the wind became our main issue. Unfortunately for Tatiana and Aarushi, this timing meant that the wind hit them on the final climb… As a result, morale was pretty low after the grueling combination of climb + heat + wind, leading Tatiana to play “dumb ways to die” in her head as she biked. Aarushi procrastinated the final stretch, reallyyy making sure her gloves were on just right before getting back on the bike (totally valid btw). 

    The views of Capitol Reef as we drove in were so amazing, even better than I remember from the last time I was here! We passed tons of fruit orchards, remnants of the original settlers of the region who managed to farm and live in an area that often appears barren. Most of the team wanted to nap after such a long ride, but Tatiana, with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, wanted to turn her 95 miles into a century by biking an extra 5 miles. Drew expressed his interest in joining this performative century, and I decided to join as well, having not biked at all today and wanting to enjoy the views of the park. A brief exit of the campground and a couple loops later, they hit the glorious 100 mile mark!

    The plan for the rest of the night was to go into the nearby town of Torrey (outside the park) and meet Noah, Tatiana’s boyfriend who was visiting and making his second appearance of this trip! We rendezvoused at Subway, where I chowed down on a tuna sandwich and enjoyed what is likely my 109485th lemonade of the summer. Afterwards, we took full advantage of Tatiana + Noah’s hotel, as the campsite in Capitol Reef had neither showers nor laundry. A shower line commenced, and some people also went into the pool. Truly getting our (Tatiana’s) money worth out of the hotel. 

    At 11 pm, we finally hopped back in the car to make the drive back to the campsite, requiring a bit of squeezing and interesting techniques to fit, as per usual.

    Getting veryyy creative with it

    We ended the day back in our tents, asleep and ready for a rest day in our 3rd national park in Utah!

    See you soon,

    Caroline

  • Day 53: Reliving History

    Day 53: Reliving History

    Moab, UT to Green River State Park, UT — 55.6 mi, 1805 ft

    I often think about how this crazy cross country biking experience the seven of us are having feels so extraordinarily unique to us, but in actuality is anything but singular. Not only have we met multiple cross country riders this summer (shoutout Stanford Spokes), but we are literally living the exact same days as the MIT Spokes team before us, and probably the MIT Spokes team before them, and before that, and so on and so on. Today we are going on almost the exact same route, rest stops, and destination as MIT Spokes 2025. But did we have the exact same day? It’s a good thing we have the blogs as the bookkeepers as history.

    Moab, UT -> Green River, UT — 56.8mi, 1900ft

    Even with the same endpoints, somehow our genius route team (me and Carmy) managed to cut out a mile and a hundred feet of elevation. How did we accomplish this, despite our Moab Airbnb being a bit farther than last year’s? We rounded the corner of the route that went on Interstate 70 onto a gravel road, avoiding an 80 MPH highway. Before you, my dear audience, erupt in a round of applause for Carmen and I, we must acknowledge our forefather: Joseph Alvarez of Spokes 2025. Joseph singlehandedly made all 55 bike routes from scratch last year and very charitably shared them all with us, including details about where they took rest stops and how paved the road is. We are incredibly fortunate to be building on top of the strong foundations he left us. He also happens to be the author of last year’s blog on this day, Day 53, which was his driver’s day. Since today is also my driver x blogger day, I thought it would be interesting to compare our Day 53s, one year apart.

    Spokes 2025 Route
    Spokes 2026 Route

    It’s that time of the week again, its Joseph’s blogging day! But it’s also my driving day, woot woot. This morning, we would finally leave the Schmitt’s, who pretty much enabled us to go full vacation mode while in Moab. It would be back to reality for us. The thing was, the people weren’t ready. In fact, the spokies were very disorganized today and locked out. As people were leaving, Charles remembered that he shipped his cycling shoes to Moab, then spent half an hour finding if they were shipped to the Airbnb we stayed at. Simultaneously, everyone decided last minute to go to a cafe in Moab before the first rest stop, but Ramona never got the message. I too pulled up to the cafe, partially to hang out but also because I was ravenous from a smaller than usual breakfast. I got myself a fire sandwich.

    We also were fortunate enough to stay in an Airbnb in Moab, but not fortunate enough to get to stay with the Schmitt’s, Sarah’s family (another 2025 Spokie, but you should’ve already known this from her sweet comments on our blogs). I want to say a HUGE thank you to Margaret, the Airbnb host who very generously donated us our stay in Moab—we could not have had a more beautiful and relaxing double rest day. It really was hard to get back to reality after full vacation mode, and it was a dilly-dally morning for us too. No cafe stop in the Moab downtown though; even I broke the driver coffee shop run tradition because of my recent realization that every penny I spend so thoughtlessly on coffee now is directly coming out of the amount of money I have for my gap year.

    After Charles eventually realized his cycling shoes weren’t delivered, he too started heading towards the cafe. Hearing this news, I also remembered that Ramona was nearly at the first rest stop and I still needed to get groceries before I left Moab. You see, Moab is a bit of an oasis in the desolation of southwest Utah. Green River, our destination for the day, was a lot smaller and I suspected there wouldn’t be as much variety in groceries. I rushed to the grocery store to buy ingredients for today’s dinner, a gnocchi and rigatoni soup, as Ishaq went off on his own sidequest: buying new Specialized tires. Ishaq’s tires may have been slightly leaky, but it wasn’t enough to warrant getting new tires. This was entirely a luxury purchase (Ishaq paid for it himself of course). Ishaq delivered me his new tires as I was walking out of the grocery store. I then rushed over to the first rest stop, where I was sure people were already waiting. Ramona had long since passed the first rest stop after refilling her water and I figured she was going to get to the second rest stop before me. The big issue here is that our last two rest stops were in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road, meaning that the bikers wouldn’t be able go self supported. This meant that I really had to be able to support the bikers and be there, especially in the heat. This is the start of my driver struggles. I get to the first rest stop, a gas station, where everyone but Ishaq is waiting for me. I get them all sorted, then wait for Ishaq to eventually show up. While he was getting himself sorted for the next stretch, I went to fill up on gas and realized that gas was pretty darn expensive out here, so I only put in like 5 gallons. It’s enough to get me to Green River.

    The land of nothingness we bike through, the only interesting thing being this very long train

    I also realized the oasis that was Moab and wanted to knock out grocery shopping and toiletries restocking before I left, but I wasn’t in the same rush. I LOVE grocery stores, wandering each aisle lovingly brushing my hand over color of cereal box you could possibly dream of, eyes wide with the capitalistic idea that I could and should have anything I want all the time. I actually tried to be much more efficient than I usually am, but it took time to think of the perfect ratio of new exciting and old tried-and-tested snacks for the team: green grapes, apricots, citrus slices in sugar syrup, piña colada Naked smoothie, kettle corn Popcorners, lemon Oreo thins, and Wheat Thins; jalapeno sourdough, swiss and smoky-hot colby jack cheese, chimmichurri hummus, Grillo’s pickles, and sundried tomatoes for sandwiches; powdered country lemonade and Pepsi for drinks; face wash, body wash, detergent, anti-itch cream, and toothpaste for toiletries; and 3 bags of ice. This somehow took me an hour and so I too was very late to the first rest stop. Spokes 2025 had a lot of gas station rest stops which I usually change into whatever looks interesting when I zoom in on Google Maps, which has resulted in some bizarre rest stops. Today it was some tourist attraction called Moab Giants, “an indoor and outdoor dino experience.” It was $18 for entry to see a bunch of huge plastic dinosaurs, so naturally I found the team camped out at the cafe instead. Fortunately, nobody’s buying new tires, nobody had left the rest stop early, and so this was NOT the start of my driver struggles. I didn’t fill gas here because I kept telling the team excitedly about this alien themed gas station I wanted to check out next…

    After Ishaq left, I rushed to meet Ramona at the second rest stop, passing the bikers along the way. They seemed to be struggling a bit. This road was heavily trafficked, high speed, and there was almost no shoulder. This is probably the worst possible combination of conditions for a biker, and I was a bit worried for them. Charles was stopped on the side of the road, seemingly to take a breather from the stressful biking. I eventually make it to the second rest stop, but then realize that making a sharp left turn on this single lane highway with cars going 80 was going to be impossible. I pass the stop and pull off a bit later. I prepare to make a very scary u-turn. It’s like making a U-turn on an interstate, but you can’t even see the cars coming until half a mile away. I manage not to die and finally meet Ramona, who had been waiting for around 15 minutes. This is where everything goes wrong. Ramona’s back derailleur cable had snapped, leaving her unable to shift gears. This wasn’t something we could fix ourselves, so Ramona’s bike would have to get to a shop. This was very inconvenient. There were no bike shops in Green River and tomorrow was not a rest day, but a long cycling day through a desolate part of Utah, meaning that driving a long distance for a bike repair was not an option. Our only two options were to either have Ramona be a passenger princess until we reached Escalante three days later or to speed back to Moab, where bike shops were abundant. We decided to speed back to Moab. As we were preparing to drive back, some of the bikers arrived and I was able to serve them, but for those who were further behind, I left them a care package of waters and food that I would later pick up. The plan was to drop Ramona off in Moab, drive the 40 miles back to rest stop 3, then drive back to Moab to pick Ramona up, then drive all the way to Green River to set up camp. This was going to be complicated and very annoying for me, the driver. But alas, this is part of the job.


    I drive back to Moab and drop Ramona off, then prepare to make the drive back. This is when I receive a text that the bikers had found a wacky alien themed gas station/convenience store, where they were able to fill up on water. I ask if everyone’s good with me staying in Moab, as this would make the day a lot easier logistically. I do worry about Greta, as she chose to take a stint on a dirt road to avoid the scary highway and she wouldn’t pass by the ufo store. This meant doing 30 or so miles in the Utah heat self supported. She said that she was fine with it, so I decided to stay. I go back into the bike shop and see Ramona intently watching the mechanic do his thing. She really likes this mechanic, he’s very down to earth and knows what he’s talking about. I go to the food truck park that we had stopped at two days ago and grab myself a fire quesadilla. I’m just able to finish my quesadilla when Ramona finally comes out with her fixed bike.


    Despite reading this portion of Joseph’s blog the night before, there was literally no other road out of Moab and our bikers again had to brave our most dangerous road yet. The team arrived at the same highway turnout second rest stop and told me they had just biked through hell, if hell was 70 MPH cars flying a foot next to your bike. I, on the other hand, told them I just drove through heaven, if heaven was “a wacky alien themed gas station/convenience store” called Jackass Joe’s. It was on the corner of the dangerous highway and I-70, the corner we cut out of the route in favor of dirt off-roading (perhaps the same road Greta took?) so the bikers wouldn’t be able to see it, which was a real shame. It was genuinely the most bizarre gas station I had ever seen, but bizarre in a way that was like wow only a human could have fever-dreamt up this place and wow the categorization of gas station store is so loose that you can really maximize free will when designing one. The story behind it goes:

    I found Lightning McQueen outside of Jackass Joe’s!!! Which is crazy because I just watched Cars yesterday!!! And I kept thinking about how Utah was literally modeled after Radiator Springs

    “After the 1947 Roswell crash, the U.S. government began more than just a cover-up—they built a secret tunnel system under the codename AREA-STUPID. The first route stretched west to Crescent Junction, Utah, where Exit 182 and the roadside stop known as Jackass Joe’s became its hidden gateway. Beneath the surface lies a network said to connect to a top-secret lab within 1.5 miles, guarded and off-limits to the public. Conspiracy theorists claim this facility houses Roswell artifacts—and perhaps even extraterrestrial beings—making Jackass Joe’s an unlikely front for one of America’s deepest secrets.”

    This was all written in the back of the convenience store in a room labeled MUSEUM. The museum was about the world’s largest piece of beef jerky, which I can assure you was heavily advertised on many signs littering the exit of the interstate. There is also a story about the beef jerky of course, which goes like this:

    This is the whole museum

    “You’ve found it! Hanging right here on the wall of Jackass Joe’s, displayed like a sacred relic. A massive, leathery slab stretching nearly 8 feet wide: the world’s largest slice of jerky. The locals say it didn’t come from any ordinary cow. Oh no. Back in the late 1950s, when the desert skies were buzzing with UFO sightings, a herd of cattle went missing from a nearby ranch. A week later, the cows came back… but something was different. Their eyes glowed faintly green, their mooing echoed like a broken radio signal, and the rancher swore they hummed when they chewed grass.

    Not long after, strange lights were seen circling over Crescent Junction. Witnesses claimed to see beams of blue fire lift the cattle skyward, as if the aliens had returned to reclaim their radioactive prize. But one cow—legend calls him Big Bessie Joe—never made it off the ground. Rumor says he was too heavy and too stubborn for even aliens to abduct. When Bessie finally wandered into Jackass Joe’s parking lot, folks say he collapsed right there under the neon sign, his body humming with otherworldly energy. The government tried to whisk him away, but Joe was faster. He carved and cured that cow himself, and what was left became the largest, most mysterious jerky slab on Earth.

    Some say it still pulses faintly at night if you turn off all the lights. Others claim it smells different depending on who’s standing near it—like mesquite for humans, but something unrecognizable for… less human visitors. And every now and then, a traveler swears they see faint handprints burned into the jerky, as though aliens keep coming back to check their work.”

    The store was full of weird jerky flavors, weird candy flavors, weird soda flavors, weird chips flavors, etc. that were all advertised in handwritten green neon posterboard signs telling you not to be lame and try the exotic flavors—I don’t know how they were importing KitKat flavors only sold in Japan to Crescent Junction, Utah. Overwhelmed by all the options and not wanting to be late to the second rest stop too, I left with nothing but a FREE communal fountain drink for the team and many photos to show the team. On my way out, I met THE Jackass Joe himself and I expressed how impressed I was at the place he had created, a place so unabashedly unashamedly unapologetically weird AF that it was even kind of inspiring. Jackass Joe if you are reading this, I LOVED IT!!!! 

    Every corner of the store looked like this

    Anyway, back to the story of the day…

    We rush out of Moab, hoping to catch the bikers before they reach the third rest stop, but then realize it’s a pointless effort and change course straight to the campground. We arrive and see half of the cyclists sitting around, waiting for us. We set up camp relatively quickly and laze around for a bit. We actually have electricity and good signal for once, which is a nice change from most of our camping. Some people go for a dip in the Green River and I eventually start to set up dinner. Ruth goes to a laundromat and I cook up a feast. There’s not much else to report for the night, it was pretty calm following a bit of a hectic day. I got good sleep, rare for camping nights. See you next time, where we ascend into Zion’s backcountry!


    I drive straight to the third rest stop where I have about 40 minutes to work on my national park post card coloring book I bought yesterday in the nice AC of the car, which I was extremely excited for. The bikers, meanwhile, rode through straight mud in the 90+ degree desert heat. It turns out that the “clever” dirt road we re-routed to cutoff the highway corner was completely swamped. Caked in mud, dripping in sweat, panting like dogs (jk), the team made their quickest rest stop ever to finish fast towards the campground.

    Most of our campground days this summer have been my driver days, so I knew the drill. I spent an hour setting up camp by myself, which is always much harder than I think. As I fumbled around trying to stick one end of the tent pole into place, the other one would unstick and the whole tent would collapse because there was nothing holding its shape. This went on for a couple minutes, during which a neighboring couple came up to me to ask if I was waiting for other people to show up and if they could park in a spot near our site, which then made me conjure the image of me camping in this state park with all this gear all by myself, which was pretty funny but also extremely chuddy. Then the team showed up with personal cantaloupes for everyone and finished setting up. Some people finally decided to eat the yummy food I had got for lunch and had been asking them all day to try, some people went for a dip in the Green River with our floatie in an optimal shaded position, some people worked on their blogs in our cute campground setup.

    X marks the spot
    Nunu looking cute holding her melons
    AMAZING
    VIBE

    I have no idea how last year’s team COOKED in their campgrounds; I genuinely think it would take us three hours to even set up a fire or whatever the heck you need to operate a grill. We drove to Tamarisk Restaurant instead, who very generously donated us the most delicious chilaquiles and french dip subs, and whose house-made raspberry iced tea was SO INSANELY DELICIOUS that I asked the drivers the next day to get me one for the morning, which singlehandedly kept my mood up for a solid 40 miles straight (foreshadowing for tomorrow), and that I still think about all the time to this day (foreshadowing for the ten days this blog is late). Afterwards, Nunu went to the laundromat, we all turned in for bed, it was a pretty calm evening for Spokes 2026 as well. I also got really good sleep at this campground. Maybe there was sleeping magic in the air. See you next time, after a couple of extremely buns* days in which we were apparently climbing Zion’s backcountry (I didn’t realize it extends so far)! 

    Before
    After

    PS: This is from my last driver day so this is two weeks late, but I want to give the biggest bestest hugest shoutout to Joe from Trek Highlands Ranch in Denver, who fixed up all our bikes so smoothly that none of us have run into a single tire or derailleur issue since. Joe if you are reading this, you are truly a hero of our trip and I often look back just to think about how awesome of a bike shop experience that was.

    PPS: To answer Sarah’s question from two blogs ago about who everybody’s godly parent would be if we were in the Percy Jackson Universe (these were communally decided, for the record):

    • Carmen: Artemis
    • Nunu: Hecate
    • Aarushi: Aphrodite
    • Tatiana: Hermes
    • Drew: Mars
    • Nate: Pluto
    • Caroline: Pan

    One could say we are the chosen seven on a grand quest to fulfill the Great Prophecy…

    Sending love and tailwinds to all the Spokes teams who paved the way for us,

    Aarushi

    * “In modern slang, buns means ‘bad,’ ‘terrible,’ or of very poor quality. If someone says ‘that movie was buns’ or ‘you’re buns at this game,’ they mean it is awful or that a person is bad at something… According to Merriam-Webster, this usage evolved as a short, milder version of other posterior-related slang terms like ‘cheeks’ or ‘ass’ to describe something low-quality.” (Google AI Overview, 2026)

  • Day 52: I Spy 8 Breathtaking Arches

    Day 52: I Spy 8 Breathtaking Arches

    Rest day in Moab, UT — 0 mi, 0 ft

    As Nate began to describe in yesterday’s blog, one of our team’s superpowers is that our very own Caroline Huang is a National Park (and monument… and historic site…) expert. She has been to over 150 of these National designations, earning junior ranger badges from the majority of them. Therefore, when it comes to National Parks, and Caroline says walk, we walk. When Caroline says jump, we jump. If Caroline jumped off a bridge at a National Park, I would jump off a bridge at a National Park. You get the idea.

    Anyways, this morning we woke up to our fearless leader’s direction to visit Arches National Park. I obviously was not fully in the loop about what to expect with this park, considering that I asked Caroline if we would only see 1 or 2 arches and she informed me that the park has over 2,000 documented natural stone arches (lol). The geographic formation of the arches is quite interesting, but we will get into that later when we make it to the Visitor Center portion of the blog.

    As soon as my phone flashed Nunu’s WhatsApp message in the group chat of “Guys thoughts on stopping somewhere for breakfast briefly,” I knew exactly how our morning would go. After a bit of debating between cheaper fast food and a coffee shop for breakfast, we settled on the coffee shop (shocker) and mobilized with all seven of us and Carlos in our orga{nunu}zed minivan. 

    At the coffee shop, various team members bought (and split) coffees and bagel sandwiches, but what most caught our eye was the coffee table book displayed near the counter. It was called “100 Photos: The Most Influential Images of All Time,” and it had the photo of the image inspiring the Edgerton logo (which is on our jerseys) directly on the front! We were all extremely excited to match the book, and I decided that I am going to ask for this book for Christmas so that I can display it on my apartment’s coffee table too.

    We were almost ready to finally hit the road to Arches, until we decided that we needed to make a brief pitstop at McDonald’s for some cheap fountain drinks and a bit more food. In no time, we finished the side quests, and we were off to the races with Caroline fearlessly navigating our car.

    As we drove into the park, I immediately saw that Caroline was not exaggerating. Hundreds of arches dotted the sides of the rock formations we drove by, ranging from collapsed arches to huge free standing arches to little ones that had just begun to form. Despite the hundreds of arch distractions, our eyes were set on the prize: the Delicate Arch. This is the arch that is featured on almost every representation of Arches National Park (plus Caroline said we needed to see it), so we really wanted to visit specifically this arch. We also knew that we wanted to get the 3-mile hike done before it got too hot, so we booked it to the trailhead and started moving!

    The hike consisted of a few winding switchbacks followed by a large exposed section where you just hike up a large slab of rocks. It was a great hike, and we were of course rewarded by a remarkable view at the top! 

    Unfortunately, our success was short lived, since the world decided to show us who is boss almost immediately. All of us were wearing our new Artemis hats, and the wind decided that it was unacceptable that we looked this good. With an extra sweeping gust of wind, Drew’s hat went straight up and over the trail and into the mini valley on the side of the canyon. For a moment, our team despaired, but then our heroes Aarushi, Carmen, and Drew valiantly (and very safely) retraced their steps back the trail to where it diverges from the valley and rescued the hat! We were overjoyed and celebrated by taking 1 million pictures, including the fabulous idea to mog the Delicate Arch with our own clearly superior arches.

    After the Delicate Arch hike, the team was a bit wiped, but we decided to gather our strength for a bit shorter hike to see the Double Arch. I stuffed my face with snacks to gather my strength, and then we hiked the 0.6 mi path to see the Double Arch up close. It was actually phenomenal, and I think that from an aesthetic perspective, I enjoyed it even more than the Delicate Arch. All of us climbed up high into the arch for some shade and cool pictures, and even met an MIT alumna who was doing the same!

    The rest of our time in Arches National Park consisted of a little more emphasis on driving around and a little less emphasis on getting out of the car (it was so hot… AC…), but we made sure to see the Balanced Rock and the Panorama Point on the way to the Visitor Center. On our way into the park in the morning we had already seen the Three Gossips formation and already spent time debating which team member was which rock, so we decided not to make an additional stop in the heat. See the photo below of me, Caroline, and Carmen trying to recreate the Three Gossips in the background.

    At the Visitor Center, we got to buy our cherished postcards, including a Canyonlands postcard for me, which made me very happy because the Canyonlands Visitor Center had been closed the previous day. I am personally hoping to have a postcard from each of the five Utah National Parks so that I can make a pretty collage on my apartment wall in the fall. This means that every time I have to choose a postcard, there is non-negligible thought put into which card looks the best and aligns with my other postcards. With us seeing so many awesome arches, I decided to get a few different postcards and mail them out to my loved ones!

    We also learned about how the arches formed in the geography in the first place. Millions of years ago, the area was covered by a sea, and as it evaporated, it left behind salt beds. This salt was later covered by sand and debris, but as water seeped through the top soil layer, the bottom salt layer became thinner, and the top layers above it cracked. Eventually, erosion led these cracks to wear out, creating thin parallel walls of sandstone, also known as fins. Over time, water eroded the lower layers of the fins, which have higher concentrations of clay, leading to the creation of an arch!

    Aside from discussing how cool the arches looked, a huge part of our day was also spent discussing the heat and how we would manage it on our upcoming bike rides, especially as our ice has been melting at supersonic speeds. Once our Visitor Center trip was done, we decided to address this issue by heading to a nearby bike gear shop and buying new metal water bottles, rather than our current plastic insulated ones. Though the first shop we visited only had smaller-sized water bottles, the second shop had what we were looking for! A team frenzy ensued, with everyone trying to select a different color water bottle while also being constrained by a limited selection. We ended up with Carmen and I having identical pink bottles, Nate and Nunu having identical silver bottles, and everyone else having their own unique colors. Especially with the discount provided by the kind man running the cashier, we were ecstatic to have completed this mission! I was so happy to have cold water that I couldn’t even wait and filled my water at the water-filling station right outside of the gear shop. Considering that previously, our plastic water bottles held ice for roughly five minutes and left us with hot water by the end of each biking segment, the metal water bottles are my new favorite thing in the world. We are in love with our water bottles. I could kiss my new water bottle. She is amazing and everything I could have ever asked for (and she is pink!).

    With some extra time left in the day, we decided to go grab a bag of peaches from a stand on the side of the road and head back to Milt’s, the burger place from the day before. It was THAT good. I had to take a call for 11.011, which is a class called Art and Science of Negotiation that I was a head TA for at MIT last year, so I ate separately from the group, but enjoyed my burger and milkshake tremendously!

    While I was taking the call, Aarushi drove Drew back home to rest, and then came back to take the rest of us BACK TO THE AMAZING SHIRT PLACE!!!! What ensued was quite comical. We each wanted to get a shirt with the design that Nate mentioned yesterday in the blog, but we didn’t know if we should all match or get our own colors. This meant that each person had to choose their shirt color, shirt size, shirt style, and color of the design. Lots of decisions, and a couple of indecisive people. The situation went something like this. Nate was immediately set on his pink tank top with no further discussion (it looks sick). Caroline, Carmen, and Nunu did a normal amount of deliberating, with some hesitation from Nunu between tie-dye and a solid color, but quickly resolved on solid for Caroline and Carmen and tie-dye for Nunu. Aarushi and I took the longest, deliberating between shirt sizes and colors. This involved lots of changing and showing other people our shirts for opinions, but I finally settled on a light blue baby tee, and Aarushi picked an oversize rainbow tie-dye shirt. In my opinion, we look extremely lit!

    With the shirt debacle complete and our stomachs fed, we spent a bit more time exploring the town and wandering between shops on the main street. Lots of them had artwork from different local artists, including an insane photography shop and an indigenous store, and others were more clothing boutique stores. Not much was bought in this period, but lots of dilly dallying was done, and lots of great vibes were had!

    At the end of the exploration period, we realized that we had not taken a photo all together in our new shirts. I made everyone change, to which Nate took a beautiful approach and decided to show off his master “change in public” skills.

    The photos, I think, are worth it 🙂

    Finally, with a long day of exploring and being outside, we all headed home to rest. Aarushi, Carmen, and Caroline finished Cars 1, watched Planes, ate leftover Thai food, and worked on various tasks. Nunu and Carlos went on a drive together. Drew, Nate, and I each called our various family members and rested. Overall, it was a phenomenal day of Spokes in Moab, and we were so happy to have our own beds to rest up in before our next day of biking.

    With more love than the number of arches,

    Tatiana ❤

  • Day 51: does it count as a rest day if we have to bike?

    Day 51: does it count as a rest day if we have to bike?

    Hittle Bottom Campground, UT to Moab, UT — 32.14 mi, 1703 ft

    We didn’t finish our ride yesterday so we have to spend today biking to finish the ride. Strictly speaking, we don’t “have to” since we could’ve just SAG’d the last 30 miles of yesterdays’ ride after we got caught in a pretty bad thunderstorm. But we also don’t “have to” bike across the country. 

    We had left our bikes locked up at a campground along our route last night with the plan of coming back to pick them up and finish the ride in the morning. It didn’t take any convincing to get the bikers to agree to finish the ride on our rest day, 30 miles is a super short ride anyways and is an easy moral victory over an otherwise unnecessary SAG. The one who we did have to convince though, was our driver Tatiana who wanted to sleep in. It took a non-trivial amount of convincing, some laundry day trades, and coffee + pastry offers, but eventually we convinced her. 

    We woke up at 7am in our super nice Airbnb kindly donated to us by the owners. We spent a quick 30 minutes getting ready, deliberating on whether we should wear our white jerseys again or cycle forward to black jerseys (we ended up with black), ransacking the fridge’s ice machine for all its ice, and dragging Tatiana out of bed at the last possible moment. Much faster than our usual 2hrs when we have to pack all our stuff + the car. 

    We arrived at the campsite at 8:30am where we were super happy to see our bikes had neither been stolen nor blown away. 

    We then got to work on topping off water, packing snacks, and applying sunscreen. Since it was a short ride, the plan was to do the 30 mile ride unsupported (e.g. pack all of our own water and food with no car to give us supplies along the route). By the time we were ready to head out at 9am though, it was already feeling a bit toasty and we were probably a bit worried about having enough water in the heat. We headed off though, knowing that our fearless driver would come help us if we needed water and surely would not still be asleep when we finished the ride (Hint: she was asleep, but its ok we didn’t need water). 

    The ride itself was super pretty, and getting biking meant the wind helped cool us off and alleviate any heat/water concerns. The ride started in this huge “bowl” of open space within a canyon for 5 miles. These 5 miles of open space were also the primary concern we had yesterday when deciding not to bike in the middle of a thunderstorm. 

    Swimming in a bowl of canyons.

    We then went into the canyons along a river running through them for the next 15-20 miles. Super pretty stuff. 

    The canyon + river we biked along for 15-20 miles.

    It’s interesting that we had seen the entire route on the drive from the Airbnb to our bikes, yet everything felt so much prettier when we saw it from our bikes. Tatiana pointed this out in her recent Day 45 blog, saying that every view feels prettier when you feel like you’ve worked for it, and I 100% agree. 

    We barrelled through the mile 15 rest stop since we didn’t see any reason for a break on such a short ride, and since we wanted to finish as soon as possible to get back to our previously scheduled rest day. 

    After biking through the canyon a bit longer, we exited out into the city of Moab and biked 8 miles uphill to the exact opposite end of the city where our Airbnb was. Having this house was certainly worth it, but boy did they make us work for it. 

    We arrived at the house one by one between 11am and 11:30am just as the heat was picking up and then headed off to do some combination of showering and napping until 12:30 when we decided to go get lunch at a burger place called Milt’s that Drew had seen along the route. 

    Now, there’s been a lot of deliberation this summer over the best burger restaurant, mainly between the In-N-Out camp and the Freddy’s camp. Both camps came together on this one though, Milt’s was some phenomenal burgers. Best of the summer for me. 

    The team enjoying Milt’s unaware that by saying it was the best of the summer I’ve likely started a war in the comments.

    After chowing down, we headed over to a cafe to do some work rather than be outside in the 100° heat. The work included: writing blogs (10 days behind as of now), calling friends/family, reading, and, in my case, completing background checks for the job I’ll be starting after Spokes.

    Carlos, Nunu’s boyfriend, was visiting the team for the two Moab rest days, and he arrived at the cafe around 2:30pm. After a fun mix of greetings, introductions, handshakes, and hugs, Nunu and Carlos went off to explore the town. Seems like everyone else slowly got the same idea because by 3pm I looked around and I was the only one left in the cafe. Everyone’s stuff was all over the cafe, so I called them back (and inadvertently put them back to work) since I needed to go back to the house to grab my portable charger. 

    I drove back, didn’t find my portable charger after looking in the bed for 20-30 minutes, found it on the bedside table, and then headed back to the cafe. 

    After getting back around 4:15pm, all 8 of us (7 + carlos) went for a quick stroll to check out Moab’s main street and immediately got sucked into a t-shirt store where you can print designs onto different t-shirt blanks. Aarushi and the girls really wanted to buy shirts with a matching “Moab, Utah” design with cartoon-ish bikers on it. 

    The girls spent ~30 minutes figuring out what type of shirt, color of shirt, and color of design they wanted. They didn’t even finish deciding since we had to run to dinner at 5pm, but we made plans to go back tomorrow. Drew and I were skeptical of getting shirts. Drew decided he didn’t want one. I said I’d get one if I could get it as a pink tank top, but I was told I was not allowed to get the pink tank top.

    This is the t-shirt design by the way, for those wondering. 

    We had been very generously donated a dinner at Arches Thai, a Thai restaurant in downtown Moab, at 5pm, and walked 2 blocks down to the restaurant. The food was truly really good, I really wasn’t expecting Moab, Utah to come out with full swing with such great food, but it really hasn’t disappointed at all. 

    The food from Arches Thai, which all had these crazy carrot flowers on them.

    Nunu trying to demonstrate how to make the carrot flowers.

    Around 6pm, we left to go check out Canyonlands National Park. At the exact same time, it became super windy and started raining + thundering lightly. We trudged our way to the cars (our minivan + the Jeep Carlos had rented) with our eyes covered to stop the sand from flying into our eyes, and then started driving ~1 hour towards the park.

    Proof of the storm. The sand stopped blowing right when I started taking a video but it was crazy I swear.

    Throughout the ride, we were receiving various “Flash Flood Warning” notifications to our phones. Resident National Parks Expert Caroline Huang said we’d be fine though, so we stayed on plan to visit the park. 

    Good thing we did too, because when we got there we pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. Even the park rangers had gone home: the front gate said “pay at the visitor center”, but the visitor center was closed. Luckily, we already support the National Park system via our annual National Parks pass, but it still seems crazy to me that we only saw like 3 cars the entire time there. 

    The park itself was stunning, and the storm gave the whole park a sort of other-worldly feeling to all the already other-worldly canyon views throughout the park. There was one instance where Caroline, Drew, and Carmen felt their hair starting to rise, which prompted them to start running to the car (without telling the rest of us!?), but otherwise the storm only meant we got slightly wet while taking in the views. 

    For the record, if I was running from something I would at least tell everyone else they should run too…

    We checked out the iconic Mesa Arch, saw a double rainbow at Green River Overlook (+ also saw where the rainbow ended, no pot of gold unfortunately), and took in some other crazy views throughout the park. 

    The iconic Mesa Arch

    Double rainbow and the end of a rainbow 🌈🌈

    Some other crazy views throughout the park (and everyone taking pictures of them)

    When things got dark enough that we couldn’t really see anything anymore around 9pm, we drove back to the house. We put on the movie “Cars” for a bit until we all started falling asleep an hour in, and then decided to hit the hay at 11:30pm. 

     – Nate

  • Day 50: 100 miles in 100 degrees

    Day 50: 100 miles in 100 degrees

    Grand Junction, CO to Moab, UT — 122.5 mi, 4092 ft (actually 87.9 mi, 2257 ft)

    I try to imagine the sweat on my skin is the glaze of a Krispy Kreme donut. That’s the only way to get through times like these. Only the occasional gust of wind provides some unsatisfactory relief in this land of nothing taller than a toddler. The hair on my arms and legs, usually black, have been bleached blonde by the sun, offering an unfamiliar contrast exaggerated by my skin also being a shade darker than usual.

    My water, as it dripped on my lips from my “insulated” squeeze bottle, was indistinguishable from the hot murky liquid you leave in the pot after boiling a hot dog. 

    Tatiana [today’s driver] calls. 

    I reach in my jersey’s back pocket and scramble for my phone to answer before the call goes to voicemail and the one bar of cell service God endowed me with inevitably fades away.

    “Hey Drew, there’s no ice at all of the 5 gas stations within 30 miles, and I will have to go back to Grand Junction…. 

    I can barely hear her over the sound of the wind in my face.

    …I’ll meet you in…”

    She cuts out.

    I’m out of water. It’s over 100 degrees. The lightly colored packed dirt reflects the sun’s rays back up, cooking me from both sides. 

    Off in the distance, Nate and I see a bridge that gets closer and closer over a period of time that felt like an hour but was probably closer to 15 minutes. We pass by something that looks like a well. I get off my bike and turn the handle– nothing happens. I realize I probably shouldn’t be messing with random plumbing on the side of the road and decide to keep pedaling without the water. We get to the bridge– the first shade we’ve encountered today since the cliffs of the Colorado National Monument 60 miles ago… and we’re only halfway done?

    How did we get here?

    The rolling hills faded away over time revealing an expanse which felt like a static portrait.  I pedaled, nothing got closer. Occasional cameos from different wildlife told me that I was getting further from the place where people should be. We saw a bald eagle and sang him his favorite song (The Star Spangled Banner). 

    I think he liked it.

    Upon reaching the Utah sign, we found a gap in the barbed wire fence that separated our trail from the interstate to which the sign belonged. We all squeezed into through the gap to take a picture with the sign. Meanwhile, Tatiana called us in distress about the car potentially flipping over on the uneven bike trail leading up to the sign. I don’t think anyone on the team, including Tatiana, knows why she decided to use the uneven bike path instead of staying on the highway where the sign was. Perhaps she wanted to push the limits of our rental Toyota Sienna with 3 inches of ground clearance could do. That way, we could have a reference point of what we could do with it in the future, when duty calls. The rest of the team served as counsel over the phone as she went backwards up the path and found her way back to the interstate where she rendezvoused with us at the Utah sign.

    We took the photo. In the background, the sign read “Welcome to Utah.” Everyone smiled, and more. 

    The flow of traffic on the interstate seemed to somewhat fade away as a family of three get out of a car to take the same picture as us. The family, composed of an infant, a middle aged woman, and an elderly woman are discussing a car accident that they witnessed prior to arriving at the sign. We took photos for them, then we squeezed back through the barbed wire fence to access the trail that we were on to avoid proximity to interstate traffic. 

    We resume the trail, which had a lot of up and downs across various terrain types, including sand. It intersected a gravel road which served the purpose of getting us in the general direction of Moab while avoiding interstate traffic. We look to the right and saw a cloud of dust approaching with some large vehicles visible in the foreground. The majority of the team preferred to wait out the passing vehicles and dust. However, I decided to turn anyways, and Nate followed shortly after upon realizing that there were hundreds of cars not passing anytime soon. At first, we had the hopes that we could bike faster than them, as they were going quite slow, however, we soon found ourselves engulfed in a cloud of dust birthed by the passing cars. We covered our mouths and noses with one hand and steered with the other as cars passed one-by-one for over half an hour. I assume this was a detour to avoid the car wreck which had been mentioned by the woman who asked us to take her picture. We came out here to avoid the interstate, but the interstate came to us.

    I’m not aware of how the rest of the team decided to handle the traffic, however, after turning off of the gravel road, it was down to just Nate and I. We turned onto another detour which took off in a random direction into the desert. It added about 4 or 5 miles to the route, a tradeoff I feel is worth avoiding being near cars.

    Statistically speaking, the most likely thing to kill us on this trip actually isn’t dogs or lightning. It’s drivers. Some drivers are bad intentionally. There have been several occasions of pickup truck drivers pulling up next to us, slowing down, and actively trying to run us off the road. I will never understand this behaviour. Like, I get that having to make the conscious decision to move left to pass a group of cyclists is a little annoying, and you feel the need to have some kind of revenge. But I promise you, Mr. Pickup Truck Driver, your life is not harder than mine. You are in an air-conditioned box pressing down a gas pedal; I am pedaling up this hill in 100 degree heat without the help of a V8 engine like a big boy. 

    But, even scarier than people who do see us and decide to be mean are the people that don’t see us at all– the unintentionally bad drivers. And that’s why I’ve found myself in the middle of this desert, with Nate.

    After trudging through a miserable 28 mile stretch in 100 degree heat, we set up a rest stop under a bridge and waited for Tatiana to get there. She arrived after ~20 minutes around the same time as the rest of the group, who had routed themselves onto the interstate💀shoulder to avoid the extra mileage. We camped out there for almost 45 minutes enjoying the shade and recovering from mild heat exhaustion. 

    The next stretch was mostly downhill as we descended into the canyon through which the Colorado River flows. The downhill, commanding much less exertion than the previous leg,  made the heat a little bit more manageable. At our second-to-last rest stop, we decided to swim in the river as we waited out the peak afternoon heat. This would require that we bike in the dark, however, the road was very low traffic, so we decided it was a worthy tradeoff. 

    Swimming in the Colorado river was kind of tricky. Sitting still was hard because the water has a pretty strong flow and the riverbed is mostly loose rocks. Some of us resorted to laying on our floaty tied to a boulder (that they made me move into the river).

    Some of us decided to walk upstream and just float back down. Tatiana was doing her own thing where she grabbed onto a rock and just sat there floating on her belly; it looked really funny.

    By the time the sun decided to obscure itself behind the canyon walls, we were ready to start rolling again, prompted partially by impending darkness, but more so by the suspicious clouds behind us. The next 4 miles where very out of the ordinary. Aarushi was setting a crazy 20 mph pace as we all ripped the next couple miles, biking in a beautiful formation that resembled a 6-count half carton of eggs.

    But, as the dark clouds devoured the sky in front of us, and the winds decided that they did not want MIT Spokes on the road, we were forced to turn back to shelter in a chaotic frenzy intensified by the sudden-onset darkness. 

    Nunu handed out tasks as we repacked the van in a way to accommodate 7 passengers, sort of. 

    We decided we would lock up our bikes at this campground and finish our ride tomorrow, since it would be a rest day. After a quick food run at the Moab Wendy’s, we all went to sleep in anticipation of getting up extra early. This plan, of course, hinged on someone being willing to drive us back to the spot where we left our bikes. So we bribed Tatiana with by offering to do some of her chores, and she reluctantly agreed to sacrifice sleep on our behalf.

    …to be continued.

    – Drew

  • Day 49: MIT Soccer (fans)

    Day 49: MIT Soccer (fans)

    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

  • Day 48: the menagerie

    Day 48: the menagerie

    Glenwood Springs, CO to Parachute, CO — 47.6 mi, 1705 ft

    This third stretch of the trip has become far more. The first was spent trudging up and down PUDS in the east and midwest, the second staring at endless planes of farmland biking on highways. In the third, we have seen shorter mileages and many more centuries, far less elevation and far more striking landscapes. Longer rest stops and fewer sidequests, more luxurious housing and more visits from family.

    It seems we’re building up to something by approaching these extremes. In a good story, the ending is as great as the build up, satisfies the tension woven through the beginning and the middle, and gives purpose to what has been endured. I hope this will be a good story.

    In keeping with this theme of extremes, we woke up at what might be our latest time ever: 10:20 am. But we were all okay with this, since today was also one of our shortest days ever, only 47 miles. 

    Since we got back to our host’s house at 1 am last night (this morning??), we did not have the chance to eat this wonderful key lime pie Greg made for us. So our breakfast consisted of fruit, key lime pie, and the most delicious buttery, flaky, perfectly sweet homemade pastries called Kougin-amann. We all ate two and the smartest of us packed some in the car for later.

    Greg not only provided breakfast, but entertainment while we ate. He pulled out his numerous decks of playing cards and a blue mat, on which he was able to fan out cards in the same way a stereotypical magician might. We sat there watching him do card tricks for about an hour. We tried to reason through how he might make some cards reappear or how he knows to choose the exact same one we had, and normally we made it halfway, understood it was some slight of hand trick, but then got stuck on the rest, unable to figure out how he would signal for the correct one. 

    After the first six tricks or so, Nate and Nunu came inside to let us know they were about to leave and start the ride. We eventually followed suit, but not before my mind was sufficiently blown by this sorting card trick. Essentially, you get a deck of cards and are told to sort the black ones into a black pile and the red ones into a red pile without knowing the color, and then switch sides of the piles halfway through. The story is that Greg has “performed it for Obama” who of course got everything correct because he’s a smart man who was trusted with our national security. So should I be in charge of this country too? Apparently so, since I was able to sort them perfectly with no mistakes. All of us were incredibly confused, until Tatiana remembered that Greg flipped one pile around 180 after turning the cards face up, to give the appearance of the black and red checkerboard piles. But really, there must have been black and red stripes, so all I did was distribute the black cards evenly to each side, and then the red. Sorry for spoiling this one Greg. We were all so excited that we managed to figure out one of his tricks. The other 19 or so are still a mystery though.

    Eventually we had to get going, but Greg gave Tatiana one last magic trick to go: a deck of cards that she’d open later on a call. She’d be doing the magic and surprising even herself. 

    Since Nate and Nunu left earlier, and Drew was driving, it was Caroline, Aarushi, Tatiana, and I who all rode together. The first leg was relatively uneventful, a lot of calling family and old friends. The first rest stop however, was absolutely amazing. I can say that because I was the one who chose it last night, as Aarushi and I put the route together in the dark the night before.

    When we got to the rest stop though, Nate and Nunu hadn’t yet arrived. I had no idea how this was possible, since they left like an hour earlier. But apparently their desire for speed didn’t align with the universe’s, since Nunu had a nail go through the side wall of her tire, which caused it to start spraying bright blue sealant everywhere. After exchanging back tires with Drew, they were on their way, and only arrived a few minutes after us.

    The carnage 😦

    We stopped at an…alpaca farm! They were utterly adorable. All of them must have recently been shaved, since every alpaca looked like a poodle, with fluffy legs and a big floof of slightly matted hair on their head that remained. They also liked to spit at whatever they could target. So we became victim to a few of their attempts.

    fatter, lazier poodles
    Nate was the first victim

    Behind the alpacas was the enclosure for the highland cows. They were also perfect in every way. A little scary to pet though, since their horns could definitely take someone out. 

    Spot the difference

    After spending enough time with animals, we decided to change it up and take the next rest stop with a different kind of animal: homo sapiens who yell at soccer games on their tv. We met up with Tatiana’s mom, Olga, and grandfather, Victor, at a Mexican restaurant with a sports bar in Rifle to watch the World Cup third-place playoff. 

    Soccer obsessed zombies

    When we got there, the game had already been going on for half an hour or so, the score was 4-0, England to France. We didn’t expect much to change, but it turned out to be one of the most exciting games to watch. France locked in and scored three more goals, thanks to Mbappé which secured him the Golden Boot (meaning he’s now scored the most goals at this World Cup), almost tying England. But then England had to go score a penalty kick or, making it 5-3, then 5-4, and then England scored at the last second, making sure France never got a comeback at 6-4. 

    I’ve never been one to pay attention to sports of any kind, but because of this summer, and because of Caroline’s extensive knowledge of soccer lore, the team got me into watching the World Cup. Surprisingly, it’s more than just kicking a ball around on a field while the crowd looks on with crossed arms and concerned faces. Each player on each team has a back story, each team formed through a complicated series of negotiations, each country with a unique history.

    According to Caroline, England’s fans are notoriously obnoxious, but that’s because their league is the most popular. Every player on their team is some famous superstar. France has several star players and apparently young ones with a lot of potential. Both teams lost in the previous round, and in this game were playing for third place, not with any serious hope of advancing rank. The typical way is to play defensively, by focusing most effort towards blocking the other team from scoring a goal. But in these conditions, where the pressure was halfway off, both teams played more offensively and focused on scoring as many goals as possible. Who knew there was an actually very interesting strategy behind each game? Those who avoid ignorance through their curiosity. I’m trying to become one of them.

    From there, we continued biking along this relatively peaceful side road until we reached the hotel in Parachute, graciously provided by Olga.

    My view during the last several miles

    We unloaded as usual, and then split up according to who did and did not want to take a dip into the Colorado River behind the hotel. Caroline, Drew, and I were the first ones out, opting to stay back, shower, and work on our blogs instead. 

    the unpacking ordeal we have to go through every night
    Drew becoming Mrs. K

    Caroline and I then went to a nearby gas station to get some drinks for our evening work session, still in our bibs and shoes. We must’ve looked incredibly stylish because we were stopped by this one random lady outside the front entrance who was showing off her guard dog, this large stuffed St. Bernard, that she carted around with her. It was around this time Aarushi called me to say she made up her mind, wanted to stay back to work as well, and if it was possible to split the drinks. I of course said yes. 

    I realized we had no good way to carry the drinks back besides stuffing them in our jerseys, and so with each of us filling up our back pockets, we looked like ridiculous pack animals, maybe a couple of two-humped camels.

    Showing off our haul

    We got back and soon after learned that Tatiana, Nate, and Nunu did not get the chance to swim, since the river was moving too quickly.

    An unimpressed Tat and Nate

    So we further divided into groups of who wanted to go back to the hot springs we were at last night, and who wanted to stay. 

    In the middle of this discussion, we got a surprise delivery from Olga: Artemis hats! We all were incredibly excited to receive this awesome gift, we even heard our picture would be shared on internal NASA channels?? These engineers and astronauts must have had an appreciation for 7 MIT students biking across the country and teaching STEM along the way.

    NASA hats!!

    Continuing our discussion that tends in a circular direction, I saw our two options as such: 1.) Drive 50ish minutes each way to the hot springs, get back in the early morning and miss out on some good hotel sleep, be forced to wear my same unwashed sulfury rotten egg smelling swimsuit from yesterday, and potentially change the magical memories from last night, OR 2.) Go because there might not be another chance. 

    Apparently there wouldn’t be another chance to swim in the Colorado river or jump in a hot spring for the rest of the trip, fears which a quick google search was able to rectify. But sometimes fear of what might not be is greater than what could be.

    Needless to say I stayed back, along with the same people previously hard at work, now plus Tatiana. I enjoyed my quiet night in trying to be productive, an opportunity I haven’t had in a while. Nate and Nunu enjoyed the hot springs and a midnight McDonalds run. 

    The McDonalds workers were as happy to see them pull up at 12:30 am as Nate looks here

    Sleeping in a queen bed was a wonderful feeling. 

    – Carmen

  • Day 47: hot springs and hot people

    Day 47: hot springs and hot people

    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.

    So cute!! There were dogs inside already, greeting their friend as they got on.

    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. 

    Thank you so much for having us!

    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. 

    The bird + an impressive giraffe made by another student

    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.

    A glimpse of how messy our table gets + the completed houses

    While demonstrating the cardboard animals, I also made an elephant I thought was cute, so it’s getting its own moment to shine. 🙂

    Ignore the abnormally wide legs

    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. 

    Sooooo yummmmmm

    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.

    Dinner + really checking out the Stanford van

    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.

    Fence volleyball with the beautiful setting sun!

    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.

    Imposing the jumping photo way of life (rather unsuccessfully)

    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.

    The UTO
    Guess who parked after dark!!

    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. 

    Our EXTREMELY pruned hands post hot springs
    McDonald’s hates to see us coming

    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