A tailwind, compared to a headwind, can cut the amount of time you spend on the bike in half. I think all of us have gotten to the point where the limiting reagent in determining how far we can go in a day is not our physical capability, but rather how long we can tolerate being hunched over as our butts are pressed up against the saddles. This is why the most wonderful gift you can receive biking from east to west across the US is a tailwind. Prevailing Westerlies driven by Earth’s rotation and the jet stream result in such a gift being painfully rare.
Today, we reaped the benefits of a massive tailwind departing Dodge City. Considering that “Dodge” is one of the windiest cities in the world, nestled in the great plains with no trees or geology to stop wind, I’m especially grateful that the wind was behind us and not in front of us.
The only thing that went wrong this morning was Aarushi’s first flat tire since installing a tube in her punctured rim/tire. The tube-change went smoothly on the side of highway 50.
Everybody told me Kansas was this flat expanse of nothingness. This is the part of Kansas they were talking about.
I sent a picture of what I saw as I was biking to my roommate, Jonas, and he responded, “This looks what they show when I get an eye exam.”
We biked through this huge field of wind turbines that seemed to go on forever. I’d never seen a wind turbine up close before, so I was very surprised by how big they were. I was even more awed as we biked past a factory where they assemble the turbines and saw the massive blades on the ground up close.
For the last several days, we have been biking on U.S. 50. And considering that we will continue to be biking on highway 50 until we get to Colorado Springs, I try to push for us to take every chance to take an alternate route whenever it makes sense. U.S. 50 has it’s pros and cons. The main pro is that it has a massive shoulder which accommodates us very very well. The cons are that it feels kind of demoralizing as trucks blow past you at 70 mph all day and you’re stuck on your little contraption peddling for eternity on the same road. One more con is that you bike past cattle feedlots which smell horrendous. Imagine the most packed concert in the world, except, instead of people, it’s cows. I promise I’m not that sensitive, but I almost had to yack on the side of the road today.
We decided to take an alternate gravel route which was really really fun. Occasionally it would turn from gravel into a bit of a more sandy texture that presented an added challenge in the midst of geography that is rather understimulating.
Aarushi’s back tire popped again. Nate says that this is just part of the life of running tubes as opposed to tubeless. This is my first time being in the proximity of somebody cycling long-distance using tubes, so I accept Nate’s opinion as fact and mentally prepare for many more roadside stops.
The best part of the day: The POOL! I’d been begging the team for the past several days to go to a pool because it sounds like the best thing ever after a day of biking in 100 degree weather. We spent an hour or two at a public pool outside of Garden City, Kansas for our final rest stop. After judging each Spokie’s diving form we moved on to draining the pool concession stand of everything they had. We are very hungry, all the time.
The day concluded with dinner at Victory Baptist Church in Lakin, KS with several church members. They were very kind and fed us homemade sloppy joes and homemade ice cream, and a ton of other stuff that was very tasty. They also, out of extreme generosity, provided us with rooms at the local inn as our sleeping accommodations. This was the best place to sleep I could ask for, considering I have to wake up and…
Macksville, KS to Dodge City, KS — 62.6 mi, 957 ft
Have you ever woken up to the feeling of your entire body itching from the very top of your head to your smallest toe? Well that’s how we all woke up this morning—everybody except Tatiana because mosquitoes don’t like her.
Last night our team went to a local park to celebrate July 4th. We ate from a Mexican food truck and played a little bit too intense game of ultimate frisbee. Our team is very competitive. Unfortunately, despite drenching ourselves in bug spray and then also using a kind stranger’s entire second can of bug spray, the bugs still got to us. Here’s a rough estimate of how many mosquito bites everyone on the team has now. Nunu: 25, Caroline: at least 30, Drew: 20-25, Aarushi: 20, Tatiana: 0, Nate: like 10000000000000.
So, we all slowly got ready and complained about our aches, sores, and itches more so than usual this morning. Also for some reason, we decided to spread out across different rooms of the church basement to try and hide from the sounds of the fireworks that had gone on past our bedtime the night before.
Nate sleeping in a supply closet with no windows
We had our alarms set for 8 and almost everyone was out of bed by 8:30ish but we had to be completely out of the church by 9:30 because Pastor Russell was hosting a breakfast then and guests would be arriving. We rushed to clean our mess and were done by 9:28.
We then shared an amazing breakfast with the Macksville Christian Church community full of so many fruits, pastries, and the fluffiest biscuits and gravy. We stuffed ourselves and I of course went back for seconds. Drew then serenaded everyone with some piano and we said our goodbyes around 11.
Recently, our group has all been biking together in a sort of blob which ebbs and flows, stretching close and then far apart. We’ve also been biking on highway 50 for the past two days so even if I’m a couple miles ahead or behind, I can see the rest of my team because we’re literally biking in a straight, flat line for the entire 80 mile day.
Our first rest stop was at the same park that we had gone to the night before to watch fireworks. Aarushi, our driver for the day, sarcastically exclaimed, “doesn’t this look familiar?” Me, not catching the sarcasm, moments later told everyone, “wow it’s the same park we were at last night!” Everyone on the team seems to think that I do this a lot and don’t pay attention to what people are saying but I genuinely just believed that Aarushi thought the park looked familiar…
Anyway, we continued our ride and made it to THE HALFWAY POINT OF THE US!? Or so we thought. It actually was not the geographic center, just the center between New York and San Francisco—which is still pretty cool. It’s crazy to think that we are basically halfway through our trip both in terms of distance and timeline. When I think about it too much I feel sad because I don’t want this summer to end. Our first bike day feels like so long ago yet also like time has just flown by.
We also stopped by the museum associated with this halfway point which had a bunch of old furniture, technology, and clothes. Most interesting to our team was this old bike that someone had ridden basically the same distance as us thus far. The only difference was that it was a single gear, no brakes, bare bones road bike—something we all agreed would be impossible for us to have done.
As we kept biking, we began to see hundreds and hundreds of… windmills! Not only that but they were facing us. This can only mean one thing… tailwinds!!!!!! We later found out that in this county alone they have 700 windmills.
We continued biking suspiciously faster than usual until we made it to our third and final rest stop of the day, a pool! But, unfortunately it was closed. Instead, Tatiana and Nate decided to jump through the sprinklers that had gone off across the lawn. Here’s when I noticed Nate’s back covered entirely with mosquito bites.
We then sat and ate our usual overpacked sandwiches as well as more snacks than you could ever comprehend. I chose this moment to take inventory of everything we’d finished eating after Tatiana and I had just gone grocery shopping the day before.
30 pack of capri sun
11 oz box of nilla wafers
90 slices of pepperoni
3.5 lbs of grapefruit
2.25 lbs of gummy worms
24 pack of gogo squeeze
2 trays of watermelon
And probably much more
We had an extremely long lunch break, I think starting from 4PM and ending at 6PM. The more we sat, the more I ate. We also realized that our biking to rest time ratio for today was becoming a whopping 1:2. Just extreme bums eating extreme amounts. Eventually, we decided to depart on our last leg to our hosts, Lindy and Warren’s house. Because we’d eaten such a late lunch, we decided to switch up the order of our usual night routine of dinner first. Everyone showered first. Then while some people blogged, Drew and I went outside to pump tires and oil chains. This took maybe 30 minutes and within that time I think I got bitten at least 10 more times by mosquitoes. I came inside with a mosquito bite on my forehead and on my cheek!
We sat down for dinner around 9PM and had some amazing lasagna and iced tea! Lindy and Warren told us all about the history of Dodge City and why it’s called the “Wickedest Little City in America.”
We ended the night by doing a popcorn reading of Nate’s blog. As a team we also love when a new blog is posted and enjoy laughing at them together. We also know that we’ve been behind and we really appreciate all of our friends and family that keep up with them despite that.
250 years ago to the day, half of Britain’s colonies seceded from King George III’s grasp and the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, creating a permanent separation between the American and British people.
We have reinforced this separation, through the creation of rather distinct cultures. There are some things that are uniquely American; the Brits would agree, and so would everyone else on this tiny globe.
To celebrate, here is my own version of the most American things we’ve seen and done on this semiquincentennial.
The day started as early as we now normally do, at 5 am, afraid of the humid 95 degree weather we’d have to face at noon. After saying goodbye to our hosts Janet and Orvin, we set off on our first leg of the day.
Today, only four of us were biking: Nate, Drew, Aarushi, and I. Tatiana was driving, Caroline was taking her rest day, and Nunu was going to urgent care to address the ever present issue of chafing.
This first 18 mile stretch went by quite quickly. We drafted the entire time (beautiful), held a 17-20 mph pace (amazing), and just tried to go fast, since that’s the only entertainment this ride along highway 50 can provide.
Hundreds of miles of a long, empty, flat road with a shoulder as wide as the driving lanes
Until about halfway through we had an ugly headwind, which then turned into a tailwind, and then into a diagonal ish crosswind. I could barely draft the last mile as I had to keep bobbing left and right to try and oppose it…
Our first rest stop was at a gas station. We were lucky we got there when we did, since it looked like a horrendous storm was brewing, only a mile or so in front of us. Drew is the one who normally calls the rest of us lame when we chicken out of biking in a thunderstorm. But when he saw this one in the distance, he even suggested we wait it out. All of us were so concerned we considered sagging out the rest of the ride, all 74 miles.
Terrifyingly windy storms that last as quick as they arrived
The audacity to bike on a hunk of metal through a thunderstorm with the belief that everything will be fine
Drew decided now was the perfect opportunity to go and play basketball with a local team for a July 4 event, even though he was the one who said it looked like tornado weather. The rest of us began to prepare for the worst. Tatiana started the hour drive to the church to drop off our luggage and free up sag spots. This time it was Nunu who got left at urgent care, and Caroline gallantly stayed at the church to ensure enough seats were open in the car.
Nate attempting to hold onto his hair in the wind
While waiting for either the storm to pass or for our car to return, the four of us camped out in the corner of the gas station.
We bought every Peelerz flavor there was under the sun and tried them all together, while Nunu made a tik tok.
Overconsumption, the incessant need for variety, and the availability of infinite options to choose from, even at a small gas station in the middle of nowhere in Burrton, KS
Making a tik tok about overconsumption, the incessant need for variety, while choosing from an infinite number of options provided by a small gas station in the middle of nowhere in Burrton, KS
Miraculously, the weather cleared up after about two hours and then we were on our way. Not sagging out of this 90+ mile day after all.
Drafting means you feel less hot with the wind cooling you down, you go at a faster pace with less effort, and hours of biking shorten. But also you’re bored out of your mind, staring at the back wheel in front of you, your concentration narrowed down to the 6 inch gap you’re trying to maintain with your life because falling back means falling out of line permanently and biking alone for the rest of the 20 miles until the next rest stop. This may be an exaggeration, but illogically, sometimes, it feels this way. To tamp down this boredom we all, at last, decided to give in and join a Spotify jam. We listen to the entirety of Hamilton.
With this raw musical genius and patriotism rushing through my veins, I was propelled to the second rest stop, one of those small cafes that Nate and Drew love so dearly.
Listening to Hamilton for hours on end, voluntarily filling our heads with red-blooded American pride
On our way in, the four of us were having that exact discussion: the merits of coffee houses. We were walking through the doorway, two baristas standing behind the counter staring us down, when Nate said something along the lines of “We’re just not going to get the same satisfaction as you when we stop at random coffee shops.” We stared at him, eyes raised. He turned around to face the barista with the neon green buzz and said, “but not this one” and laughed awkwardly.
Having zero subtly
Drew and Nate then start ogling everything on the menu, saying “ooh that looks so good”, probably trying to save face. It was hilarious. I had to stop myself from laughing otherwise it would take away the sincerity they were trying to convey.
They ended up ordering 12 quesadillas each.
On our way to the third rest stop, we began to cross more and more cow territory. After Kentucky I’ve developed a fondness for cows, since they don’t try to bite our ankles. When biking by, we all noticed that if we MOO at them, every single cow will turn their head to look towards us. Hundreds of big black eyes stare at probably the most interesting thing they’ve seen all day.
Kansas may be flat but in a charming way
At this point we’ve also created our own unique moos. The rest of us moo like normal people would, but Drew has decided to moo in a high pitched moan that manages to startle me more than the cows.
During this stretch, Drew also decides to show off his aerodynamic pose that he learned from a Tour de France champion. Incredibly skillful.
Being less graceful than the French
At the end of the third stretch we finished all of Hamilton. As I was listening to his dying thoughts, the rest of us were also contemplating our deaths as we had to trudge through this horrible sand pit for several miles.
The next rest stop was at the Oasis gas station, where we met the new owners who had recently renovated the place. When we first walked in, the lady behind the counter immediately started making conversation with us, asking why we looked so coordinated. Two things first stood out to me: 1) that she was so curious and outgoing, and 2) that she had an accent I couldn’t place. We later learned that she and her husband (the owners) had moved from South Africa to start a life here in Kansas. They had a farm and had also taken on this business within the past few months.
The American dream might actually be real. These two people uprooted their whole lives to move to a different country and now live on their own terms
By the time we were about to leave, our car finally showed up. They surprised us with bomb pops that we eagerly devoured in this sweltering heat.
On the second to last stretch we listened to the Mamma Mia soundtrack (we’re really into this jam thing now), while I hopelessly attempted to explain the plot to Aarushi, and usually just called in Nate to show off his extensive musical knowledge.
As we arrived at the last rest stop, we were surprised with a patriotic FEAST! Red, white, and blue everything: gatorade (limited edition Uncle Sam flavor I guess), those delicious plastic cookies, all the fruit we could eat.
What was even more beautiful than our lunch was the public bathrooms. Pristine. After being scarred from all sorts of smells emanating from dank holes in the ground, this clean, wintergreen scented restroom instantly made the next twenty ish miles bearable and me that much happier. I noticed this was unique to Kansas. Top tier bathrooms alongside roads in the middle of nowhere. Always a 7-8/10
Roadside janitors
The last leg was uneventful but Tatiana made sure we’d remember our arrival to the church. She surprised us with her very best twerk while shaking even more red, white, and blue flavored drinks.
We were staying in the small town of Macksville; they’re so small they don’t host July 4th celebrations. Our contact for the church, Katrina, told us there was one in the next town over. So to not waste any time (relatively) we all decide to skip showering, change, and hop in the car, our stink masked by a build up of deodorant.
It had a wonderful vibe. It made me realize how important community is, especially in a small town like Lewis. Kids were playing at the playground, parents lounging on the field, families in the surrounding neighborhood chaotically setting off their own fireworks. Genuinely everyone and their cousin were lighting fireworks in the middle of their front yards. The sound and the smoke was intense, but really added to the MURICA of it all.
Setting off fireworks from the trunk of your car
We got these utterly delicious barbacoa tacos and ate them on the grass while trying to avoid being eaten alive by bugs. And then, the next course of action was obviously to play a game of ultimate where we “randomly” divide up teams based on who has and has not played frisbee for MIT. I wonder who won.
Aarushi took some very cinematic photos of us, with the fireworks bursting in the background.
Finally the real fireworks show (put on by the fire department, not Gary from down the street) was about to start. As we sat down to watch, we got mauled by biting flies and mosquitoes. Throughout the show we (well at least I was) were just slapping ourselves. It got so bad that we had to ask the man behind us for his bug spray, and then proceeded to use up the whole can. Our generosity knows no bounds. Tatiana did try to pay for it but the kind man refused her offer.
Gary’s fireworks getting mogged by the professionals
Kind people willing to donate what they have without expectation of anything in return
The fireworks were beautiful, and from this photo it looks like they moved us to tears. Maybe we all were about to sneeze at the same time, I’m not sure.
At the end of the show, we decided we’d had enough of the bugs and escaped into the car. While driving back, we saw hundreds of kids on the side of the road throwing gunpowder popper bomb things at the ground, twirling sparklers in the air. In the small town of Lewis, Kansas it seems like July 4th is one of the major holidays they go all out for.
Kids being trusted to not burn their fingers off
The next morning as we biked out of Macksville, the road looked like a battlefield with red, white, and blue shrapnel everywhere. In the daylight it was slightly dystopian. It’s interesting how that’s simply evidence of a lively community.
Rural communities bound together in their local group through traditions and town-wide celebrations
This list is my realistically absurd representation of the American spirit. I hope it’s at least somewhat coherent.
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,
On all of the alarms we set, we have this option to delay whatever is so important that necessitates its own reminder, merely for another 9 minutes (the default on an iphone). Yet those 9 minutes can feel like an eternity — or nothing — before the alarm goes off again and you are faced with the decision of delaying life just a bit longer again. I had never used the snooze button until coming to MIT. Whether that means I’m just more tired most days or don’t look forward to class is something I have yet to unpack.
Today was a snoozing day. We always agree on a time to wake up the night before, and we agreed on 7 am since it wasn’t forecasted to be as hot as the previous days that necessitated much earlier wakeups. That 7 am slowly became 7:40 am as each individual alarm went off, got snoozed, went off again, rinse and repeat. Finally, after 40 minutes of this symphony of alarms, I pulled myself out of my warm sleeping bag and hurried downstairs to get ready. Drew also took the chance to put his corn onto his helmet, since he didn’t get to meet Helmet Flair yesterday but took the uni-corn decoration for the road. After a long debate over the placement, he settled on a slightly askew orientation that suits him perfectly, in my humble opinion. It’s been the subject of many jokes ever since, as you might imagine.
We left the church at around 9:40 am, and soon joined US Highway 50, a road we would soon become very familiar with. Apparently it is a major east-west route that spans the US, and it seems that we will rejoin it in Nevada for the stretch that is “the loneliest road in America!” But to not get ahead of ourselves, the 50 will be our friend for a bit longer before we leave it, or at least for the majority of today. While I’m not a fan of large highways, this one has at least a massive shoulder (most of the time), which provides some protection from the semis that roar by and gives me some wiggle room when I inevitably swerve from the gusts of wind they produce. Additionally, most drivers are pretty respectful — many like to switch entirely into the oncoming lane, which is slightly comical but I appreciate the commitment to not hitting us. However, there is always a car who gets a bit too close for comfort, to which I inch a little more to the right and keep pedaling as fast as I can.
Capturing the 50 experience
With how exposed we are on the highway and in tandem with the naturally flat and sparse landscape, wind is our biggest friend and foe. I learned this a couple of days ago with our rough ride into Kansas City, and discovered that the most important thing was to truly bike at my own pace. I think I challenged myself last time a bit too much early on, which led to a miserable experience in the second half. I went ahead of the group initially, pushing against a headwind + crosswind that seemed to follow us across Kansas. Carmen, Drew, and Nunu joined, and we biked as a group to our first rest stop. It was a pretty straightforward stretch, except for the brief scare when Drew decided to bike hands-free — on the shoulder, on a downhill, with a strong crosswind. I looked up to see him nearly swerve into the traffic after losing control, which prompted a slightly guilty look back and a “maybe let’s not do that here?”
For our first rest stop, we had the choice of a coffee shop or a park. So naturally, we chose the coffee shop. Many of you have probably read Drew’s laments over our coffee drinking tendencies in his blog, but objectively the coffee shop was a better rest stop in this case… not only are there other options besides coffee 99% of the time, it provides a break from the natural elements (mosquitos, heat, etc.), and we get to interact with locals. While I agree all things should be in moderation, I digress.
Right as we started biking to the coffee shop, Nate (today’s driver) pulled up behind us on the same road. As I’m biking, I look to my left and see the minivan pass me, but with Drew biking behind it with maybe an inch to spare. He yelled, “THIS IS THE BEST DRAFT EVER,” so of course I tried to catch up with Carmen in tow. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience the draft for long as I remember “ooh I’m blogging!” (a universal blogger experience) and slow down to take a photo. Please appreciate this super gorgeous amazing photo because I missed out on the best draft ever for this 😞
Outside of the 30 mph draft, Nunu and I biked the actual route to the shop, taking a pretty sidewalk through a park and across a cool water feature. The downtown of the town, Cottonwood Falls, is also super cute and has a beautiful courthouse!
We went inside the coffee shop, called HeBrews CoffeeHouse. It was both a place of worship and a café, which was pretty unique! I ordered a delicious smoothie and breakfast burrito to make up for our haphazard breakfast, and everyone else followed suit with their food/drinks of choice. While sitting there and relaxing, we were asked by another customer named Lola about our trip and our biking experience. As we were sharing our story as usual, Tatiana and Aarushi asked Lola about her experience with sports as a rising junior in high school. After briefly mentioning running, she casually dropped the fact that she does RODEO competitively.
Inside the shop
For anyone unfamiliar (I sure was), rodeo involves several different equestrian events that are rooted in the practices of cattle herding in the US and tests abilities associated with ranching. Lola showed us a couple videos of her riding one of her horses and roping a calf, where the competitor is evaluated based on the time it takes for them to successfully rope the calf. Her average is apparently 2 – 3 seconds?? Unsurprisingly, these times are winning times. She had won $4,000 the night before and was traveling that night for another competition. Lola also showed us a video of her older brother competing in an even larger rodeo, to which we all crowded around her phone and got to watch him in the tie-down roping event. Our jaws were dropped.
As we spoke some more, we learned more about ranching, which is her family’s business. I learned about all of the different steps and businesses involved in raising cattle, as many are transported between many facilities at different stages of their life. We also learned that Vonda, our barista, and Lola are best friends! She was just stopping by before we had our conversation, and she soon had to leave. While we prepared to leave as well, Vonda generously donated a box of yummy pastries for us on the road.
Thank you so much for your kindness, Vonda!
On the way out of the town, we wanted to try drafting Nate + the minivan again to experience it. Even on his driving day, he’s still the one breaking wind for us… However, we quickly noticed a loud sound coming from the floor of the minivan, stopping to find that a part of the oil pan (?) had come loose and was dragging on the road. A kind lady from the house we stopped by came out and directed us to a nearby auto shop, which was thankfully just where we came from wasn’t even a mile away. Shoutout Dieker Oil for fixing it up for free!
The next leg involved the only bit that was close to climbing along our extremely flat route. We went up a hill that felt like the highest part of Kansas, as I saw endless green fields stretching from all around once at the top. Kansas is honestly the state that has surprised me the most in terms of its flora and fauna, as I have definitely seen some crazy insects and plants that I wouldn’t have initially attributed to it. I coasted down the crazy downhill, and hit some gravel before joining back onto our friend, the 50.
Exhibit A of Kansas’s bugs
At this point, I was not feeling super well and slowed down a bit as I fought back some nausea. I took an advil from Aarushi, which helped a lot. We biked as a group to the next rest stop. I learned about Tatiana’s grandparents, Brenda and Tom, who are visiting us soon in Colorado! This stop was an old mill and abandoned town with many “property for sale” signs littered around. We had lunch for the first time in like 5 days under a large tree, slightly crammed onto our picnic blanket and enjoying the routine of making our sandwiches. After eating, several of us took a much needed power nap. I think naps are the cure to everything. Everytime I’ve felt slightly off, a nap has freed me of all ailments — any doctor reading, look into this. 👀
The next leg is… you guessed it, more Highway 50! But before that, I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack with Tatiana and Drew, achieved by all pressing play at the same time. Except we can’t all press play at the same time, so we were off by maybe 2 seconds between the 3 of us. This made singing together a bit more challenging but 10x funnier with the offset.
We all biked together along the shoulder, risking at most going 2-wide to talk to each other occasionally. As our last rest stop, Dollar General, loomed closer, Aarushi suddenly pulled over to stop. She said she had heard a pop, and following our trials and tribulations with tires yesterday, we were prepared for maybe some sputtering sealant or a slash to repair. What we weren’t prepared for though, was a GIANT nail puncturing her tire all the way through the rim. It was quite impressive. As Drew said, “you didn’t see the Washington Monument in front of you?” This is just the first of many tire issues for Aarushi, sadly…
Nail outlined for reference
Once at Dollar General, a grand discussion commenced. As a non bike-savvy person, I let the experts debate how to handle the potential repair and what to do for the last 20 miles. We wandered the aisles in the meantime, buying all sorts of junk and justifying it by the cheap prices. I snagged a Snapple Mango Madness, a Starbucks frappuccino, and a Naked smoothie, please don’t ask me about my sugar consumption.
The council in the “as seen on TV” aisle
We settled on switching Nate’s tire with Aarushi’s for now, and let Nate use his extra time waiting for us at our host’s home to use gorilla tape and a tube (our tires are originally tubeless) to work some magic.
Now, the final stretch of Highway 50 — for today, at least. In a rare event, we got everyone in the same jam to listen to the Book of Mormon soundtrack. Everyone on the team had been exposed to some extent thanks to Tatiana and Drew, but now we finally sat down and got everyone to listen to the whole thing. Drew downloaded Spotify just for this, so you know it was serious. Carmen and I then sped to the end, enjoying the sun as it lowered in the horizon and spared us from its harshest rays. At one point, to my right, a great blue heron flew out of nowhere and glided along me for quite a while, which was magical. As someone who is relatively interested in birds, every interaction or sighting of birds besides the common ones (red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, etc.) are something special to remember. It was there for so long that I decided to pull out my phone and get a picture, but I’m still working on my on-bike photography skills.
Please enjoy these attempts
Not bad…
Right up in the corner
Missed completely
We pulled off the highway with a couple of miles to go and enjoyed some gravel to round out the ride with the side of another dog running out on the road. I got to practice my dog-shout since I missed most of Kentucky. Slightly worried about the dog, Carmen and I waited for the rest of the group, then arrived at our WS hosts for the night, Janet and Orvin!
Their dog, Enzo, longingly looking for a snack. And Phoebe, their adorable + cuddly cat.
For dinner, we finally had corn on the cob, something we’ve been craving after passing through a bajillion corn fields every day. We also had Janet’s AMAZING mulberry + rhubarb pie, which was the perfect balance of sweet and tart for me. For the cherry on top, all of the ingredients for this meal were sourced locally, as Janet explained where she got each fruit/vegetable used. It made me think fondly of home, where most of the vegetables in our meals are from our garden.
As the night wound down, I watched some pre 4th of July fireworks in the neighborhood with Janet, Orvin, and Aarushi. I’ve heard so many fireworks go off before the actual 4th that I’m excited for what the actual holiday has in store. For now, I’m grateful to have a full stomach, a mattress, and excitement for the days ahead, even if it is Highway 50 as far as the eye can see.
The answers to my lying blog last week (did you spot them all?)
Drew doesn’t snore
Nate had exiled himself from the sleeping bag room from the start because he states he needs his alone time or something
They both have healthy relationships and don’t feel the need to stay on call with their girlfriends overnight
Never a joyful mood in the mornings
Drew did not enjoy his carrots (he doesn’t eat vegetables) and Nunu hardly drank her coffee in fear of needing to poop on the ride and nobody supports my idea of splitting all our coffees round-robin style.
Tatiana didn’t stick her mouth on the snow cone machine (although this was the most believable lie, even she forgot if she had actually done this or not)
No tarantula on Drew’s face and nobody petted it and he definitely didn’t want to adopt it
Neither did Carmen try stealing a butterfly
We sliced the sausage with knives like normal people and put it in our sandwiches
We spread guac and hummus on our sandwiches with cheese slices; no fingers were put in the communal spread. But this doesn’t really matter because people’s hands have rummaged in our communal ice bag at least twenty times a day. But this doesn’t really matter because we smash the ice bag against the dirty ground as hard as we can multiple times each rest stop in order to break the ice chunks, and then we put the dirty ice bag into our cooler with all of our food.
Nate could not care less if we rode the carousel, especially if we were riding it together
Caroline did not cross the Missouri swimming, nor did she get saved by a beaver (hopefully the lies were obvious by now)
Nunu and Tatiana didn’t start running away at the sound of the thunderstorm
Nunu didn’t fall through the floorboards of an abandoned hostel building and definitely didn’t pee in it
Drew didn’t sneak away to find a cheeseburger in an abandoned ghost town
Note that everything insane I wrote about the 1904 Olympics and World Fair is actually true! I would also like to add an addendum that perhaps my reflection that I’ve started to enjoy biking was an unintentional lie as well because the next few days of biking have been pretty brutal, as you will come to read…
Now to today’s blog. Playing with the format again to keep things interesting. Notice anything special with this one?
As we woke up this morning, I had but one thing on my mind:
BREAKFAST!!! Today we were in for a special treat as our host Scott took us to the retirement community he owns in Overbrook to eat breakfast with the retirees.
Carmen and Caroline, Nate and Nunu, and Tatiana, Drew, and I all dispersed upon arrival to three tables where we got to converse with some of the retirees who were in the cafeteria for breakfast, and got to munch on the best waffles I’ve eaten in a long time, complete with every topping we could ask for (except for our resident plainmaxxer Drew, who only got syrup).
Devouring the waffles, the team all chatted with people about where they were from, who their families were, what their professions were, what’s going on in their lives, etc.etc. Often times I find that we are the ones talking endlessly about ourselves to the people that we meet, launching into our spiel about biking across America and how many days it takes and where we are going next and all the standard questions about our strange logistics, so it was refreshing to hear about the rich and full lives of the people at our breakfast tables. I’m still thinking about how Linda, one of the retirees at our table, said that people forget that they are all not just old people left in here, forget that each and every one of them have lived long and interesting lives in their own right.
Every conversation I’ve had on this trip has felt like I’m diving into a different world that I’m trying to learn as much of as I can, because the world of the people I’m talking to has felt so different than my own. It has made me think a lot about this concept of sonder that has always fascinated me, defined as the realization and understanding that all other people have lives as complex as one’s own. Throughout college, especially because of my close friends like Tatiana, I’ve really grown out of my shell and come to love and appreciate striking conversations with strangers around me. It’s just fun and unserious and a way to spread some love.
Finally we said our goodbyes and headed out on the road just past 10:30 AM, biking along with our awesome host Scott.
Going out the door, we all felt a little sad leaving, as I think a lot of us were thinking about our own parents getting old and how they would want to live. We didn’t have enough time to feel too sad, however, because as soon as we headed out, we heard a
HISSSSSSSSSSSSS……
Various shots of the six engineers at work figuring out our flat tire
It was Caroline’s supposedly-repaired tire, puffing out semi-dried sealant. Our third flat in the last 24 hours. Our GOAT host Scott went back to the car with Caroline to switch out her tire with Drew’s (today’s GOAT driver), a feat that took them mere minutes when Drew did it, but had taken Tatiana, Carmen, Nunu, and I half an hour and a lot of painful heel smashing in an attempt to unscrew the axle yesterday.
Just a couple minutes after we headed out again, though, we heard another HISSSSSSS. It was Carmen’s!!! Our fourth flat tire… this could not be real.
Kentucky had its dogs, Missouri had its storms, Virginia had its hills, and I guess Kansas’s new curveball for Spokes 2026 was… flat tires?
Lucky for us, bikes come with not one but TWO tires so Drew’s had another we could switch out, which left his bike looking uncomfortably naked on the bike rack (see below). At this point we had to hug goodbye to Scott, since with our chatty breakfast and two flats, we had probably taken a good hour and a half longer than he had probably expected to be out riding with us. As we waited on the side of the road for the Carmen-Drew handoff to complete, I look down to see MY tire suspiciously bubbling with sealant… no way we were getting a fifth flat.
Drew’s joker-looking tireless bike after Carmen and Caroline stole both
My solution was to start pedaling furiously to the next rest stop, channeling advice from the all-knowing ever-wise sage Drew that tires need to keep spinning for the sealant to spread from the edges of the tires enough to cover the puncture. My rare lead ahead of the team didn’t last long, however, as I stopped to chat with some bikers heading the opposite direction along the Flint Hills Trail.
Never missing an opportunity to lollygag means never missing out on FREE STUFF!!! It turned out that one of the bikers, Shaun, is the founder of a company called Helmet Flair that specializes in things like horns and cat ear decorations for bicycle helmets, and it turned out that he carries some extras on him to give out to bikers he passes by!
Of course, we had to get blinged up. Here are some selfies of our new #FIERCE #SLAY #BEASTMODE #UNAPOLOGETIC #STYLEINSPO #GLAMSQUAD team. We kept chatting with Shaun and Jake about the ceramics learning curve and sailboating around the world until we heard a…
POP!!!
Quite unfortunate that we were now at FLAT TIRE NUMBER SIX!! But this time it was Shaun’s!! We were bringing the flat luck wherever we went so we decided to pedal on before we somehow popped Jake’s tire too. The flat luck stuck with us however, because pretty soon after, Carmen’s second tire popped.
Really.
SEVEN flats.
The universe had thus given us a sign to stop in Osage City and sidequest while Drew came back to SAG Carmen to a bike shop at the end of the route, having no more tires to give. Finding that everything downtown was closed, we congregated in a grocery store where we spent an hour roaming joblessly up and down every aisle, looking longingly at all the fruit that seemed too expensive to buy (Nate said something about the dollar-to-calorie ratio), asking each other hypothetical questions on which new snacks we could introduce that the majority of the team would still support (Drew said he doesn’t understand this constant chase for novelty), and knocking over peaches and KIND bars and everything else we touched (Nunu claims the display case itself is unstable). We ended up supporting a long-awaited splurge on fruits, and we had the absolute most delicious feast of oranges, grapes, watermelon, grapefruit cups, and Naked smoothies!!!! It was a glorious break from the Cheez-its and fig bars at gummy worms that we had been stuffing our faces with. We would all highly encourage checking out our donation page if you’re interested in a healthier diet for our team.
Nunu knocked down an entire case of KIND bars and four engineers hard at work to put it back together organized (peanut butter on one side, chocolate on the other)Most delicious haul ever devoured
Unfortunately, now it was time to start getting serious: somehow we still had 60% of our ride to finish, and it was 4 PM. Now I have nothing more to really say about the next few hours. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, none of us blog about the actual biking portion of our days, because genuinely nothing interesting happens. I tried starting the Heroes of Olympus audiobooks because the original Percy Jackson series was getting boring (they just fight monsters all the time, and it is too clearly written for ten year olds). I adjusted my seat position every 15 seconds because my butt was aching so bad. I called my dad to distract me from the mild hills but instead had to listen to him like a podcast because he couldn’t hear anything I was saying over the crazy strong headwind.
I was not having the very best time, but it was gorgeous.
Very slowly, the hours passed and we reached the 12th Avenue Baptist Church of Emporia. I want to give a HUGE shoutout to Vickie at the Didde Catholic Campus Center who helped us find housing, Pastor Brett for hosting us at the 12th Ave, and Diane and Elaine from Didde who awaited us with a warm and very very delicious meal as we came in!!
Kansas City, MO to Overbrook, KS — 75.5 mi, 3771 ft
GUESS WHAT, BABY??? NEW STATE UNLOCCKKEDDD 🔥🔥🔥
Personally, I was most excited to feel like Dorothy entering Kansas, especially since I have never been to the state before and have a wonderful place in my heart for the Wizard of Oz.
Our morning glory of waking up at the hotel was only slightly dampened by the 4 am wakeup time enforced by the extraordinarily hot temperatures displayed by the weather forecast, but otherwise Aarushi and I basked in our final moments in the queen bed before grudgingly getting out of bed and getting dressed.
With a little bit of extra speediness, Aarushi and I finished our morning routine earlier than expected and decided to take on an extra task: repacking the cooler for lunch. Fatal mistake. One of our condiments had spilled throughout the cooler, and it smelled absolutely TERRIBLE. Imagine dirty feet and rotten eggs all at once. I gagged.
We began “Operation Clean Cooler”, which involved me rinsing all of the condiments and Aarushi scrubbing down the cooler in the shower with the hotel’s body wash and a bar of soap. Multiple “we need a new cooler” phrases were exchanged, but alas, the same cooler is still sticking with our group.
At some point, we left the cooler in the shower to soak in soapy water, ate our breakfast bars, and headed downstairs to join the rest of the group. After a few minutes of applying sunblock and pumping up the tires, our group was off!
A few minutes into the ride, we passed the slightly underwhelming “Kansas City, KS” street sign marking our transition into Kansas, and the team was only a little sad that we were now missing photos with both the Missouri and Kansas signs. The morning ride was beautiful, especially as we rode through a slightly sleepy western Kansas City and wondered as a group if the trend of western sides of cities being more affluent than eastern sides of cities was accurate or just our extrapolation.
I think that this morning segment has been one of my favorite biking segments thus far on the trip, as we rarely get to bike through developed cities, especially in combination with the sunrise. It felt serene and like I was seeing a different, secret side of urban life. The ride itself to the first rest stop was also quite speedy, especially since Aarushi and I yapped on the ride and got to discuss impressive people in the computational biology space and the significance of being published in Nature magazine.
The day only got better as we pulled into the parking lot of our first rest stop, met by the beautifully tantalizing sight of Dutch Bros (sorry, Drew). The entire team decided to get drinks, with everyone being normal except for Drew and Nate, who got an Electric Berry Rebel and a Strawberry Colada Rebel, respectively. The Electric Berry Rebel is their “vibrant, fruity energy drink combining blue raspberry and lime syrups,” and the Strawberry Colada Rebel is “their signature Rebel energy base with coconut, pineapple, and sweet cream, finished with fresh strawberry fruit on top.” You tell me if you think their drinks were yummy or not…
Afterwards, I used the bathroom in an extremely luxurious “Body Lab” and saw the most Pilates reformers I have ever seen in my life, and then we were off again to the races.
On this next stretch of the ride, we saw some of the coolest clouds I have ever seen in the sky. Caroline accurately described them as “fish scale clouds,” and I seriously loved biking with my face to the sky rather than down to the Earth.
Almost immediately after identifying the beautiful sky, the team came across a section of the road that was closed. At this point, we capitalized on a very important feature of Kansas geography. All of the roads are perfect squares, with mandated “1 mile by 1 mile” plots of land as described by the Public Land Survey System. For context, this system was established by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to have a systematic way to partition, sell, and settle the land acquired by the US through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. This system was also particularly helpful in providing funds for the US to pay off its Revolutionary War debts. It is also very helpful in navigating a road closure: bike one more mile and take the next turn!
After our detour, I biked with Drew through more back-country gravel roads, fittingly called Edgerton Rd (thank you Edgerton Center for sponsoring us!), and a mailbox with a metal plane on it pulled us into an intricate conversation about the international history of fighter jets. Drew is an Aerospace major and knows everything about planes, literally, so it was awesome to get the insider scoop. We both wonder if the Kansas resident knows that he is, in fact, displaying a Russian fighter jet on his lawn…
As we approached our rest stop, our Garmin sneakily tried to route us back to the pre-detour route, but Drew and I used our amazing math skills to realize that we would have to go back a mile east on the square grid only to do another mile west again later (not efficient!). Instead, we kept riding straight down the road and quickly hit our rest stop.
The team was met with our usual spread of snacks and an excited Nunu, who had already visited a delicious pastry shop and amazingly shared her glorious haul of a yummy breakfast sandwich and delicious pastry. This rest stop, like almost all others, involved a lot of sitting around and stuffing our faces with food (calories… we need more calories…).
When we hit the road again, this time I biked with Carmen and Aarushi. My side questing dreams were quickly fulfilled when I saw a plant nursery on the side of the road and begged the girls to stop with me. It turns out that Vinland Valley Nursery is far more than a plant nursery. It is a family-owned business that combines a pick-your-own flower lot, a ceramics shop, hundreds of species of plants for sale, in the springtime, a coffee shop, and year-round activities and workshops that the community can participate in. We daydreamed about starting flower shops of our own, drank generously provided iced beverages, yapped with the family that owned the nursery, and meandered around the property soaking in the pretty plants.
We also got to experience a personal favorite part of the nursery, the fun chicken! See the video below for what a fun chicken is and how much joy it brought the three of us.
At this point, we were naively hopeful that we were near the last rest stop until I heard a terrifyingly horrible sound beneath me. My tire popped on the gravel. A call to Nunu also let us know that Caroline’s tire suffered a similar fate further on in the route, only seconds after mine. Thankfully, this problem was alleviated by some elbow grease from Aarushi and Carmen, as well as by stealing Nunu’s tire off of her bike. Caroline’s bike apparently sealed itself! Still not fully clear on how this sealant stuff works in the tires, but hey, I’m not one to complain!
Nunu told us that before coming to rescue us, she had gone to visit an extremely cute town called Lawrence, where she found postcards and also saw a Trek bike shop that could fix my tires. With this in mind, we decided to skip the last rest stop and sent Nunu to the end of the route, where she unloaded our things and undertook a mission to Lawrence with Nate, my tire, and Caroline’s seemingly stable tire.
Meanwhile, you may have noticed that our team hadn’t actually eaten lunch. We thought that the 4 am wakeup would let us arrive at our destination by 1 pm, meaning we could eat lunch afterwards, but of course, the universe had other plans, including an irresistible side quest and two popped tires. This meant that on the last few miles of our trip, I bonked, AKA experiencing a severe drop in energy when the body runs out of stored carbohydrates. Not fun. Thank you, Carmen, for distracting me with a great conversation about our personal opinions on what aspects of Spokes we enjoyed most and for offering your emergency bars as fuel.
What IS fun, though, is the rest of our evening with the team. Upon arrival, our lovely host Scott told us that after showers, he would take us to the local tavern for BURGERRRSSS!!!! And not just any burgers, these were insanely delicious burgers that the tavern was apparently famous for (success, Drew). Nunu and Nate, who were still in Lawrence taking care of the bikes, also loved this idea and met us at the tavern. Paired with a World Cup match playing in the corner and a deep conversation (my favorite thing ever) about marriage, politics, wealth, and our personal experiences as team members from different parts of the United States, dinner made my heart and stomach extremely happy.
The only thing that could and did make this day EVEN better was Scott’s offer to play pickleball and his reminder that we needed to be even more fun than last year’s team. Of course, we couldn’t resist, and our entire team headed to the courts. Sitting in Scott’s truck, we saw a water tower that very fittingly proclaimed, “Don’t Overlook Overbrook!” and honestly, we tend to agree. Awesome town.
Spokes Pickleball was seriously the most fun thing ever. We have some crazy sleeper agents on the team, with Caroline having an absolutely overpowered serve and Aarushi awakening her deep pickleball skills later in the night. The tension accumulated when Drew and I played Caroline and Nate. We played the first game with my team facing into the wind and lost BADLY to Caroline’s demolishing serve. Drew began to claim that we only lost because of the wind (which, for the record and as a past tennis player, I think Caroline was just good, but who am I to break my teammate’s momentum), and he quickly earned us a rematch on the other side of the court. Maybe Drew was in fact onto something, because despite the rest of the team going crazy to support Caroline and Nate, Drew and I swept with a wonderful score of 11-1. See the video below of the turn of the tide with us winning the second game. In the interest of keeping peace on the team, no tiebreaker was played, and the real winner was our friendship. On the down low, Nate and Caroline, I’m ready for that tiebreaker whenever; just let me know.
I also took the cutest photo of Nate rocking Nunu’s sunglasses. Please enjoy.
After our awesome game, the team rode back to the house in Scott’s huge truck, briefly considered going in the jacuzzi, and finally decided that we had already experienced more than enough fun and joy for the day (it was 11 pm). We turned in with happy stomachs, happy hearts, and happy minds.
I also want to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. This day was seriously awesome, and also at times sucked. The beauty is that we are doing a crazy hard thing and get to experience the range of emotions and experiences that come with it. I still can’t believe that we are actually BIKING ACROSS THE COUNTRY!! Good thing there are 44 more days of it 🙂
As part of this blog, I also wanted to add something fun for our loyal readers 🙂 I’m a huge puzzle fan, so I made a crossword for you to solve! Hopefully it is not too difficult, but I will happily Venmo a $5 prize to the first person who emails us at spokes-2026@mit.edu with the correct answers. There are no spaces or punctuation marks in the puzzle. Enjoy 🙂
Today everyone in the world woke up at 8am excited to attend our learning festival in Kansas City. I’m not sure how the rest of the world handled their excitement in the morning, but I managed it by going back to bed for 20 minutes before leaving from the hotel, kindly provided to us by aSTEAM Village (the program hosting our learning festival), with the team at 8:45. Along the way we munched on some breakfast burritos from a nearby cafe that Aarushi picked up for us.
The rest of the world must’ve been too overwhelmed by their excitement to make it to the learning festival because, after arriving and setting up, we had 15 students in attendance. We’re used to having somewhere around 60-80 students and, while we certainly always want to be able to teach as many kids as logistically possible, having fewer students also means we can work more directly one-on-one with the students. I also personally enjoy making our workshop more of a conversation which I feel works best with fewer students.
To start off our learning festival, Tatiana led the students through an introduction circle and then a rock-paper-scissors (RPS) tournament. I don’t know what they put in Caroline’s burrito this morning, but she was feeling particularly merciless as she once again annihilated the playing field without an ounce of guilt towards the many RPS careers she was prematurely ending.
So young, so much hope, gone in an instant.
With Caroline’s RPS rage sedated, we continued with our regularly scheduled workshops. Drew and I teach a workshop where the students build a brushless electrical motor using an electromagnet, circuit board, magnets, and legos. Along the way, we talk about magnets, what makes materials magnetic, the Earth’s magnetic field, Lenz’s Law, and solenoids. It’s pretty cool stuff 😎
Students intently learning about electric motors, and their unconcealable disappointment when Nunu distracted them from the riveting lesson by taking a picture.
The other workshops we ran at this LF were: Carmen and Aarushi’s chemistry workshop where students mix and run an iodine clock chemical reaction; Nunu and Caroline’s design and architecture workshop where students work on 2D to 3D designing and visualizing; and Tatiana’s circuit workshop where student’s build a circuit that senses motion to turn on a light. A big shoutout to Amelia Alinkil for her help in developing the ideas for our circuits workshop! Amelia is one of the founding members of Yuva Impact and we are very grateful for the non-profit’s support of our mission.
The lessons went by very smoothly by our standards and just like that the festival was over. During the LF, we got to take a peak at one of the student’s Iron Man helmet that they were building, complete with lights, a speaker, and a lithium battery of questionable safety with two open wires dangling out.
After the workshop, we had agreed to do a “mini-LF” for a student that wasn’t able to make it for the original LF that we were told was very talented and interested in the LF. We spent an hour running through Aarushi + Carmen’s chemistry workshop and then Drew and I ran through our workshop.
The student’s parents kindly offered to take the team out to dinner at a sushi place after wrapping up the mini-LF. Unfortunately, the team also had accumulated 3 days worth of dirty clothes from the ride into KC + rest day + learning festival – things were getting dire to say the least. Since we already needed to head to a laundromat to do laundry, we decided we should also finally wash the stinky sleeping bags and tents while we were there.
Nunu and I volunteered to do the laundry (sending one person alone to do laundry while everyone else ate sushi felt a little cruel), so we quickly drove back to the hotel to grab our laundry and then drove to drop off the 5 others at the restaurant for dinner at 5:30. While dropping them off, we noticed a lot of soccer fans for team Mexico walking around – this will be relevant later.
Nunu and I then drove off to begin our laundry adventure at a nearby laundromat. We got straight to business claiming three washing machines: one for our clothes and two for the sleeping bags and tents.
After waiting for ~30 minutes (and paying $8.50 per machine ouch) we began moving everything over to the dryers. As we were taking the tents out though, water flooded out of the tents into the walkway creating a huge river of water from the washers to the dryers. Our commotion must’ve got the attention of the laundromat owner because she came over and immediately told us that we wouldn’t be able to dry our tents with any heat because they would melt inside the dryers and that we couldn’t put them into the dryer soaking wet because that would ruin the dryer.
We decided to take the tents outside to dry on some handrails, per the laundromat owner’s suggestion. We pretty quickly realized this wasn’t gonna be very helpful since it would take forever to dry, and we also didn’t want to leave the tents hanging outside because we wanted to go grab dinner ourselves while the dryers ran. So we decided to shake out the water from the tents so they weren’t dripping wet, and then take them in to run in the dryer on “No Heat”.
Immeasurable disappointment after our laundry did not go as planned.
With our laundry maybe becoming dry, we decided to reward ourselves for our maybe hard work by going to grab dinner in the same area we dropped the rest of the team off for dinner since we wanted to see if we could catch some “World Cup Vibes”. Kansas City is the only city along our route hosting games for the World Cup so this was our way of trying to remind ourselves about what the outside world was like.
When we got to the area, called the Kansas City Power and Light District, we found a lot of eager (mostly team Mexico) fans ready to watch the Mexico vs Ecuador round of 32 game starting in ~1 hour. Unfortunately, we also found a huge line of said fans waiting to get into the watch party area.
If you look closely at the picture on the right to the right of the brick building, you can see the rest of the team standing above the line contemplating getting in line. We only realized my picture included them after this blog was already posted.
With our laundry only running for an hour, we decided to forgo watching the game to just grab food and head back for the laundry. We spotted Joe’s BBQ, a well-known BBQ place in KC, and decided to eat there since who knows when you’ll next get to enjoy some great BBQ between now and California.
We headed inside to a nearly entirely empty restaurant, and were initially seated in some back corner. While walking in though, I noticed that there were some large windows that looked out to the crowd of fans at the watch party, and asked if we could be moved there so we could at least visually partake in the “World Cup Vibe”.
As we were moving to a table by the windows, we realized the window was actually a window to an outdoor patio… right next to the huge crowd of fans waiting for the game to start. We immediately asked to be moved again and ended up seated outside in the super nice patio, with only a tiny fence separating us from the huge crowd of fans. We later realized that the fence had a gap in it where one could walk straight into the crowd. This was a little concerning since one could get into the crowd without going through any of the metal detectors/security that the rest of the crowd had to go through, but ignoring that this was super lucky for us.
World Cup Vibes acquired
We spent the next hour-ish eating the best BBQ we’ve had on this trip, and maybe my favorite meal of the trip so far, while an MC on stage hyped up the already incredibly hyped crowd.
Ribs, toast, mac n’ cheese, a brisket sandwich, and fries 🤤
I would think that, in theory, Kansas City and the group running the watch party should be an impartial 3rd party to the Mexico-Ecuador game, however, that was very much not the case. The MCs and the entire watch party crowd was incredibly skewed towards Mexico. The MCs spent a good 75% of the pre-match time leading the crowd through “Viva Mexico”, “Mexico! Mexico! …”, and “¿Quien Gana? ¡Mexico!” (“Who’s going to win? Mexico”) chants. At some point, the MCs even brought up a fan from the crowd with a HUGE Mexico flag and had him wave it in front of the crowd. TBH, I feel bad for any Ecuador fans in the crowd.
They weren’t even trying to pretend to be impartial.
Besides that, they also had a live band and a DJ playing music that the crowd really enjoyed dancing to. We also got to see several cool outfits including various Aztec-related costumes and someone dressed as El Chapulin Colorado1.
The most fun part was looking out and seeing people being literally thrown up into the air every couple of seconds across the crowd, which is apparently very common in Mexican soccer culture.
Nunu is lucky the rest of the team wasn’t there, otherwise we would’ve had her flying to the moon.
Speaking of the rest of the team, seeing how great the vibes were here, we decided we should tell the rest of the team to come check out the game after they finished dinner. When we checked their locations though, they were already back at the hotel!
Turns out they had been in line to get in at the same time that Nunu and I walked into Joe’s, and even saw us walk into Joe’s. They ended up deciding the line was too long though and went home.
Anyways, we had finished our food and spent a bit of time in the crowd, and decided we should actually head back to finish our laundry before we got a fine for our 1hr parking that had just expired.
We got to the laundromat at 8:30, picked up the clothes, rolled up all 7 sleeping bags, and folded our 3 tents. Since our tents had been spinning on “No Heat” this whole time, they were, unsurprisingly, still damp. We decided to put them back to dry for a bit longer while we rolled up the sleeping bags. Without realizing though, we put them back to dry at “Medium Heat” (recall that the laundromat owner said that this would melt them IMMEDIATELY). By the time we realized this, it was too late… our tents had become… perfectly dry Yea I don’t know why we got fearmongered into not drying our tents with heat but whatever that’s life.
We left the laundromat at 9:15 (and also took a peek at the score of the soccer game: 2-0 Mexico).
When we got back to the hotel, we painfully realized that the car also needed to be packed before our early departure tomorrow at daybreak. Nunu and I used two luggage bags to chaotically bring our minivan’s worth of gear down from our rooms upstairs (only nearly tipping over the carts a few times) and packed everything into the car. By 10:10, the minivan was ready for tomorrow’s adventure.
Not sure who let these hooligans into this nice hotel.
Afterwards, I spent some time cleaning and lubing my bike chain, as well as fixing (?) my front brake which had been acting up lately.
After finishing up and getting ready for bed, I got under the covers at 11:00pm sharp. Perfect, a whole 5 hours of sleep before our 4am wakeup tomorrow! I then went to bed. I then got back up at 11:04pm to see who had won the Mexico vs. Ecuador game. Mexico 2-0, nice.
I’m in a pickle: I don’t like coffee. Why is this a problem? Because 5/7 Spokies slurp that foul-scented mud like a pig at the trough.
“Guys look it’s the first of 17 cafes on our route we have to stop!” cries one of the addicts.
The supermajority rules so I have to stop.
Every day.
Every time.
I just don’t understand. I don’t stop every time I see a burger joint, and I couldn’t imagine somebody loving any consumable item more than I love cheeseburgers.
Every day, I roll past at least 8 opportunities to eat a burger in a magnificent display of self control. Learn from me, fellow Spokies.
This is what was on my mind the morning of June 29 as I read the message in our group chat asking for my “drink order.” You guys have to know by now that I am never, ever, ever ordering anything from one of those overpriced copy-paste millennial cafes.
Instead, I went downstairs for hotel breakfast. I had french toast, eggs, bacon, and cranberry juice. It was very good. Everything tastes better when you’re in a calorie deficit.
In the meantime, the team decided to go to a nearby plaza where there was a lot of… shopping.
I’m not a shopper either. At this point, I really started to feel like the Spokes ball and chain.
However, I looked on google maps and found things that made me very happy: ShakeShack and Barnes and Noble.
When we got there, we quickly separated into a group of shoppers, and a larger-than-expected group of nonshoppers consisting of everyone other than Nunu and Aarushi. I convinced the group of nonshoppers to go to Barnes and Noble. Upon arrival, everyone immediately dashed to their section of interest.
Nate picks up a book on the history of the Chinese industrial revolution.
I go to the section about Founding Fathers read a biography on John Adams.
Caroline finishes all of Animal Farm in one sitting.
Tatiana and Carmen both read philosophy books about happiness.
After I finish enough of my book to feel appropriately informed on John Adam’s role in the American Revolution, I snuck away to Shake Shack while everybody else finished reading their respective literature. I got the double bacon cheeseburger. It was very good.
(I’m sorry this blog is turning out to be somewhat photo-deprived.)
I return to Barnes and Noble and find that tyranny of the majority has forced the team into another cafe. (I recommend checking out The Federalist Papers no.10, an essay written by James Madison, in which he describes my predicament.)
I try Nunu’s Matcha Latte with Blueberry Ube Cold Foam. I presume I’d be a much happier Spokie when I find something at a coffee shop that I like, so I really tried my best to like it, but it just kinda tasted like what I imagine a witch potion would taste like.
Afterwords, Tatiana, Carmen, Caroline, and I went to Auntie Ann’s where we got some different flavors of pretzels, and I had one of the best lemonades I’ve ever had. In the meantime, Aarushi has taken it upon herself to arrange a free yoga class with CorePower Yoga in Kansas City.
As someone who can’t even bend over and touch my toes, I was pretty scared. It ended up being really fun, and honestly a lot more physically demanding then I expected. I have a lot more respect for yoga-ers now.
Thank you to the staff there who arranged a wonderful beginner-friendly class and even let us borrow yoga-appropriate apparel.
We took a break for a little while and returned to the hotel before heading to a restaurant hosting a Dutch watch party for the Netherlands v. Morocco game. This game was actually nuts. Netherlands led Morocco 1-0 for the entire match until Morocco scored during the second-half stoppage time. They finished in overtime tied 1-1, sending the teams into a decisive penalty kick shootout. There were multiple airballs, making it likely the messiest shootout I’ve ever seen, even considering my high school soccer experience. I can’t blame them though– this is one the fiercest rivalries between national teams and a single shot can determine whether or not they advance– and it did. Morocco defeated the Netherlands 3-2 in PKs.
The crowd went silent. Everyone went home… including us. Even the smallest amount of empathy is enough to feel devastated in a crowd of disappointed Dutch fans after such a loss even despite having no connection to the Netherlands. It was just that sad. I think we all felt it.
We went to bed, and I dreamt of a day on which no breath was expended ordering a $9 item off a chalkboard menu, a day on which it seemed to be common sense that no amount of daylight was worth spending sipping on some concoction, a day that embodies my vision for a happier, healthier future for MIT Spokes.
Marshall, MO to Kansas City, MO — 86.2 mi, 4953 ft
There’s many things I never thought or cared about before this summer that now, literally makes or breaks my days. This includes how hot it is and at what times of the day, and how windy it is and in what direction that wind comes from.
We’ve been trying to take this summer day by day so last night we looked at the weather forecast and saw that it is going to be the hottest it has ever been thus far and close to the windiest it’s ever been thus far as well as somehow super hilly again? This surprised most of us because we’d been under the impression that we were done with the Appalachians and were going to be on flat roads until Colorado. Unfortunately, as Carmen and Aarushi drafted up the route as they usually do the night before, our GPS app showed us a very spiky, very hairy up and down graph that no one likes to see.
Ride with GPS graph, the x-axis is our mileage and the y axis is our elevation. Our route was showing a 5,000 ft elevation gain which we hadn’t seen since Virginia and Kentucky.
So, this morning I woke up feeling unrested. This is because we slept at 11 PM and woke up at 4 AM in the hopes that we could finish our ride early enough to avoid the peak “feels like 107 degrees” and peak “30 mph crosswind” conditions. Stressed, rushed, tired, and in pitch black, I used my phone flashlight to pack the car with all our luggage. We ate a quick breakfast provided by our wonderful and kind hosts, Shandra and Dave. Then we said our goodbyes which included a very sad goodbye to their puppy, Percy who the whole team agrees is the cutest most lovable dog we’ve met so far.
And with that, we started our ride at 5:30 AM—despite being 30 minutes late of our goal, it was still a record early departure time for the team. And at first, the ride was feeling great… for the first five minutes. The sun was rising over the landscape and the sky’s horizon was just slightly pink.
We defaulted into biking in a draft line because, even so early in the morning, we were already feeling some wind. Over the course of the summer, our team has slowly caught onto this cycling technique called drafting. This is when a cyclist rides very closely behind another cyclist to avoid wind resistance and supposedly saves the cyclist that is behind, up to 50% of their energy while maintaining the exact same speed of the person in front. You can expand this into a line as the first person breaks wind, the second person drafts the first person, the third person drafts the second person, and so on (see exhibit A). Usually, when we group ride, it’s either Nate or Drew breaking wind for everyone else because they are bigger and faster so their wind pocket is larger. Today, it was both of them leading the pack as we tried to bike in a double line draft for the first time (see exhibit C). So, it was Nate, Tatiana, then myself in one line and in parallel, it was Drew, Aarushi, then Caroline.
The thing about drafting is that in order to actually reap the benefits, you have to bike in a very precise and perfect way. Firstly, you have to bike so closely to the person in front of you that you’re afraid of crashing into them and you also have to bike so consistently and in a straight line that the person behind you can easily match pace and follow you. Unsurprisingly, most of us are not perfect cyclists yet. So being third in line, Caroline and I struggled to follow Tatiana and Aarushi as they unconsciously and totally understandably swayed side to side. At our first rest stop at mile 21 we had a brief check-in and decided we should try to switch up the order. I would draft Nate since I had learned to be more consistent after having drafted Nate many times already and Tatiana would draft me. Caroline decided she wanted to stay third in line because she didn’t feel confident to be consistent enough for someone to draft her. At this point, it was getting hotter, hills were getting steeper, and morale was getting lower as the incoming extreme heat and winds were luring closer and closer. Midway through the second 20 mile leg, Tatiana switched places with Aarushi because she felt it was hard to draft me and keep our fast pace. Despite being consistent and straight with my biking, my wind pocket was too small. At this point, our double draft line operation was breaking down along with our mental fortitude. Aarushi and Tatiana rode side by side in an attempt to both catch Drew’s wind pocket? The hills were also becoming more frequent and steep that on each climb, the draft line would break because people climbed at different paces and we would take breaks after each major climb to drink water and wait for everyone to group up again. Before we knew it, our early wakeup time advantage was slipping away from us and everyone was feeling the heat and wind exhaustion.
We eventually all make it to the second rest stop. Everyone is sad and Tatiana is the saddest. She cries and says that while she wants to bike in the draft line so that she can be faster and make it to our destination early enough, she is really struggling to keep pace. It’s not just her, most of the group is struggling because the pace is faster than usual and tougher than usual. It’s also a lot of mental stress because we are biking in a line that moves so fast we can’t even talk and enjoy each others’ company, so we’re just trying to keep biking fast enough to escape the hotter and hotter weather.
Everyone takes turns peeing behind this tree. Some of us pulled out our cooling towels which we had yet to try out. Spoiler: they don’t work. And Drew kindly volunteers to go at a slower pace with Tatiana so she can keep drafting him. Nate and I head out first.
During this third leg, we turn onto a road called Pink Hill Rd. The name was far too literal for my taste. It was literally an asphalt road that was bright red and pink that went on for miles, of just up and down, up and down. I remember Nate telling me a couple weeks ago when we were in Virginia, climbing another up and down up and down, that I just had to look forward to flat flat Missouri. I brought this up to him and called out his lies.
As we kept biking it felt as if we were biking in and out of pockets of hot hot air. On climbs, it felt especially hot because, as we slowed down going uphill, we no longer had the very slight breeze to cool us down and it felt like literally being enveloped in a huge fuzzy blanket which normally I would love but not in this scenario. Nate and I were not having a good time. As we entered into Kansas City, we’d been so beat down that a train horn going by scared us so badly we jumped out of our bike seats.
Finally, around 2 PM just a few miles from our destination, a hotel in the middle of the city, we decided to stop at Wendy’s (Nate’s favorite restaurant). Since we were still waiting on the details of checking into the hotel, we decided to get out of the heat and kill some time. It was exactly what we needed.
Around 3 PM, we got the call from Carmen (our driver for the day) that we could come check into the hotel. We stepped outside Wendy’s and it somehow felt 10 degrees hotter. We met up with Carmen at the hotel and as we walked into the lobby, I’m blasted by the most glorious AC I’ve ever felt. I also felt incredibly out of place as our sweaty stinky selves wheeled our three bikes through this fancy lobby, up the elevator and into our rooms. We then brought up everyone else’s luggage, making a huge ruckus as usual with our seven duffels, seven backpacks, and other miscellaneous items stuffed onto a luggage cart and wheeled up the elevators.
Once everything was in order, I took the most amazing shower and contemplated never getting out. By now it was around 4 PM and Nate and I decided to watch some TV while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Turns out, they had also just stopped at the same Wendy’s we’d been at just a few hours before.
By around 6 PM, everyone had arrived and settled into our four different rooms. At around 8 PM Carmen messaged that our dinner had just been delivered to our hotel lobby and we shuffled downstairs to eat. It’s BBQ! We stuffed our faces and I felt so happy and full.
I also found out that Carmen and Caroline had doordashed boba without telling me and demanded that we go back so Nate and I could also get boba. We decided to drive there instead because it would be more fun but didn’t realize we’d be crossing into the Kansas side before we biked across the border which felt a little sad but Nate closed his eyes so it didn’t count. On our way out we saw a beautiful sunset and decided to drive around the city a bit listening to music—my favorite pastime.
After a long and very tough biking day, I felt like a normal person again. Not worried about heat maps or wind direction, just thinking about our next two days of rest and how we should spend our free time. Amusement park? Escape room? Shopping mall? World cup? Kansas City was our oyster and we were going to make the most of it. Despite the physical and mental lows of the day, it’s making the highs that much higher and I am so so so excited for the next couple of days to loiter and eat food and hangout.
Politics can be interesting simply because they are messy. Even Spokes politics.
People hold conflicting, complicated beliefs that cannot be pruned into a single, clean solution. I find they naturally intersect and overlap and diverge in a tangled mess. And then people grow emotionally attached to the mess, to the point where it hurts to prune.
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We have created a spectrum which is probably more divisive than it is useful. It attempts to describe our methods of biking, how we like to spend our rides. It goes from speed demon on the far left, to extreme sidequester on the far right. I feel we have presented this as binary, either you choose to push yourself, go fast, don’t even take the time to look up at your surroundings, and make it to the hosts house before 6pm. Or you take your time, stop at whatever draws your attention, go at a comfortable pace for your head to always be on a swivel, and arrive late in the evening having had your adventure throughout the day.
There is a reason why a spectrum has an infinite amount of points to land. Everything is variable. I think our initial intention with creating this spectrum has been overshadowed by the implications of the binary. That’s what I want to rectify through this blog. Just format my thoughts. Show that there’s somewhere in between.
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This morning we woke up to Vince’s amazing breakfast of biscuits, gravy, and watermelon. As soon as Tatiana opened the door to my room, the smell wafted in and encouraged me to finally open my eyes.
Vince was such a great host. He was so patient with us when we took ages giving our bikes a deep clean in his front yard. They were covered in mud from yesterday, which we had been too tired to wash off. I was afraid I had damaged my derailleur and brake discs, since us three riders all experienced horrible squeaking, creaking, and scratching from bits of rocks and sand lodged in too many places to count.
Our ride started back on the Katy trail, which had thankfully dried overnight. Here are some pics of us during the first few miles looking awesome and coordinated.
Soon after, Caroline and I passed by a cute cafe for bikers with the same millennial vibe I’ve gotten from most coffee shops in the midwest.
It is here where I make my first decision of the day: to sidequest or not to sidequest.
My initial thought was to keep biking, because we were less than 10 miles into the 66 we have to finish. But after I physically stopped in the middle of the road, and with a small push from Caroline, we chose to make a detour. The sign for fresh peaches up the road did indeed help me make up my mind.
Aarushia and Tatiana stopped as well, and then a plan was made. Coffee, then peaches. Amazing.
Turns out the coffee was mid. We noted that this was yet again similar to a “government operation”, so many people standing around getting nothing done. The same worker was getting our orders and making our coffees one by one, while the four others just stood behind the counter looking forlorn. But the peaches were heavenly. I had to drink the juice to keep it from running down my chin. We noticed an art gallery across from the fruit stand, and so we looked around at some local pieces.
I felt like a professional dilly dallier, having spent at least 90 minutes off the bike wandering around this cute little neighborhood. After several more minutes of conversations and bathroom breaks thrown in, we were finally ready to finish the ride to the first rest stop.
When we arrived, I learned that Nate and Nunu had left a few minutes ago but had a long break. To make up for lost time, we decided to make our rest shorter in comparison.
To me, this is a trade off, and a good one at that. Instead of spending an extra thirty minutes at the rest stop, we just traded it for time wandering about on our own terms. But eventually, there does come a point where the scales will always be unbalanced, where we dilly dally too much and cannot make an even trade. Where we’ll have to sacrifice dilly dally time later in the day to biking.
I’d prefer to always have the opportunity to sidequest, not have one part of the day be too sidequest heavy. This, I think, is achieved by being conscious of the time we spend. Efficient dilly dallying. This awareness shouldn’t be suffocating, but just add a level of respect to our drivers and to our hosts.
We continued along the trail, until I spotted this wooden bridge sticking out of a small pond. To me, it was less about walking on the bridge and more about seeing if I could find a way to get to the end. I did, although possibly without the approval of the Mennonites.
First solo sidequest. The rest of the group had gone ahead, and so I, rather ridiculously, pushed 18 mph in order to catch up. I found Tatiana and Aarushi stopped on the side of the road, where Tatiana called out to me to ask if I wanted to go to the casino we just biked by. It was a goal of hers to visit one before the end of the trip, and this was the first one she’s seen on our route.
Potential third sidequest of the day? All before we were halfway into the ride? I don’t know. I could see this meant a lot to her, and I didn’t want to prevent her from enjoying herself, but I knew that if I went, I’d be itching to get back on the bike. We still had 40 more miles to go.
Aarushi ended up going with her instead. While I continued they were busy gambling.
Tatiana won an impressive 19 cents out of her initial $5, but I’m sure the memories made were priceless.
Afterwards, they told me they went to this festival Boonville holds once a year. It was apparently very lit as they got to chat with the locals and learn a little bit about their lives. They got to see a quilting circle, where older folks switch quilts between them and add unique designs every rotation, preserving the memory of each other in their art. They also stopped by a vintage car show and got to sit in the back seat of one.
Some decisions must be made without all the facts, as they might only become apparent after. Had I known how much of a cultural insight this festival was, I would have taken the time to explore. But that’s not how life works. If I had the same choice between biking or stopping to play some slot machines, I’d choose to bike. And I don’t think this means I’m averse to fun or whimsy, just in the moment, with 40 more miles, the threat of a storm brewing, and the desire to enjoy such a moment outside of my sweaty chamois (allowing that a 19 yr old can gamble), biking through the trees with a cool breeze on my face as I listen to Fleetwood
Mac sounded more appealing.
I eventually finished our ride’s portion on the Katy trail, and then caught up to Caroline, where we attempted to ride like two sardines squished next to each other until an RV decided to nearly ride us off the road with a foot margin between us. We made it to the next rest stop, where Drew was waiting for us with lunch. Caroline and I made our delicious sandwiches with sundried tomatoes, pesto, pickled onions, and some fancy seed bread.
We then visited an ice cream shop and, of course in Spokes fashion, split two flavors three ways. I have never shared my food (and saliva) more than on this trip, and realized that for the past nineteen years I’ve been missing out on something. Passing around a drink and sharing that same straw amongst seven people brings you much closer than I thought was possible.
Nunu also found some cool glasses in the shop and wanted to show them off.
Caroline, Nunu, Nate, and I left to bike the last segment of our ride, aiming to beat this oncoming thunderstorm. It was ominously brewing in the sky as we biked through backcountry roads.
For this half of the ride, I decided to push myself a little. After doing so for a good amount of our past rides, I was finally feeling more comfortable at a faster pace. But Caroline and I still kept up a good engaging conversation, I was still able to keep my head on a swivel (learning to watch for dogs in Kentucky has truly made this second nature) and take pictures when I felt called to. None of these are mutually exclusive. I find they all add to the experience.
Nunu and Nate had split off, but three miles to the end Caroline and I caught up with them. I thought maybe they were waiting for us but actually they had just crashed into each other. Nunu hadn’t seen a turn and Nate ran into her, almost payback for the century day when Nunu ran into Nate after he slowed down abruptly to check his Strava. His garmin watch and phone bore most of the damage, both screen protectors shattered. “Now we’re even,” Nunu had said to us, “but he didn’t find that very funny.” I definitely did. Sorry Nate.
When we made it to our wonderful host’s house, we were met with iced tea provided by Dave and Shandra, and a beautiful doggo named Percy. He really loved Nate.
While we waited for our remaining team members to arrive, we talked with Dave and Shandra about our journey. To our surprise, Dave had read all of our blogs and even remembered the minute fact that Nunu’s chain had fallen off on the climb into Blacksburg. I’m immediately super impressed. It just goes to show how much of an amazing, invested host he was.
We had a great dinner, and they even graciously agreed to provide us breakfast at the ridiculous hour of five in the morning, around when we planned to leave to beat the 95 degree heat…
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Here’s my take: balance is key. Though what that means may change day by day, depending on mileage and elevation gain. Maybe you’d want to go faster to avoid some weather, or go slower throughout a city, or even push yourself while appreciating your surroundings. Maybe you’d want to delay a sidequest so lunch doesn’t get warm, or maybe you’d want to do so because it’s your only chance to. There are multiple solutions that all vary with each situation and with importance to each person.
Maybe it boils down to consideration. For whom is the question. For myself? For our host? For the driver? For my teammates?
How do I judge the importance of these factors relative to each other? How should I?
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If any thorns were plucked, I hope it wasn’t too painful.
Yea I don’t know why we got fearmongered into not drying our tents with heat but whatever that’s life. 
MIT Spokes 2026 