MIT Spokes 2026

Author: MIT Spokes

  • Day 26: To Journal or To Blog…

    Day 26: To Journal or To Blog…

    Hermann, MO to Columbia, MO — 79.2 mi, 2218 ft

    After quite a hectic day yesterday escaping the thunderstorm, I woke up late and in the comfort of my own bed, thanks to our Airbnb with an 11-person capacity. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the best sleep due to my persistent elbow issue, which flared up periodically during the night with a force strong enough to wake me up. Although there were moments of normalcy between the flare-ups, I decided to take this entire day off after SAGing out yesterday ( 😦 ) to let it recover, which ended up being the best decision since it has been better ever since! 

    Adding to the team of injured/unwell, Nunu decided overnight to also pass on this biking day as she was dealing with a myriad of issues related to chafing that she wanted to get checked out at an urgent care. Thus, the car crew grew to 3 (Tatiana was driving today), and we had to open an extra seat and take on the challenge of fitting 3 bikes on our mediocre bike hitch (she’s doing her best but her best isn’t great…).

    Figuring out the logistics of who’s biking and who’s not resulted in a bit of a slower morning, one of those where the time slips away and you’re not quite sure where it went. Nate left early to get to Columbia ASAP, since he was meeting a friend in the city. The rest of the biking crew (Drew, Aarushi, and Carmen) rolled out quite a while after at around 9 am, in line with the past couple of days. Before leaving, we also met a frog hanging out by our car that took a liking to Drew. 

    Frog stare-down

    Now it was time for the car crew to leave. This turned out to be harder than usual. While I gathered items in the garage, I watched Tatiana attempt to move the car forward in the gravel driveway. Instead of the normal forward-backward movement of a car, the car instead bounced vertically on the suspension several times as I heard the wheels spinning. My first thought was “oh no we’re out of gas,” but we figured out that it was just stuck in the combination of wet dirt and gravel. Tatiana and I heroically pushed the car while Nunu stepped on the gas, finally freeing the car and hitting the road. 

    Our first stop, in typical fashion, was a local coffee shop 😋. It’s a (nearly) universal driver day tradition, although it has recently spread into biking days as well — which I’m not complaining about. We found Stomp’n Grounds Espresso Bar in the nearby town of Hermann, and stopped by while Tatiana got ice. My honey lavender latte was delicious, for anyone who cares 😌.

    So yum.

    We met up with Nate at the first rest stop, where I was also dropped off with all of the snacks + water. The plan was for Tatiana to drive to Jefferson City (around rest stop #2) and drop Nunu off at urgent care and come back for me at rest stop #1. In the meantime, I would sit with the supplies so everyone could get supplies as needed. I had flashbacks to day 10, when a similar situation occurred and I was left alone with everything for several hours as Tatiana drove people around. This time, I was just hoping not to get rained on — funny how history repeats itself!

    Waiting… but at least I have all the food 🤞

    To kill time, I scrolled for a bit (miraculously there was service) and put on some old episodes of Taskmaster (one of my favorite shows) while I attempted to catch up on my food journal. For those who don’t know already, I am a HUGE journaler, if that’s a word. I have been for years, and I have a ¹ traveler’s notebook that I bring around everywhere in addition to other journals. I wrote my “what do you do for fun” MIT essay about journaling. While I’m here, let me shamelessly give you a quick journal tour. 

    This is my traveler’s notebook, in which I have 3 main inserts:

    1. Junk Journal: This is where I put physical mementos, such as polaroids or receipts from special days. It’s also become a sketchbook as I’ve become lazier about bringing a sketchbook around as well.
    2. Reflections: This is where I’ll actually write about certain days, or reflect on a topic.
    3. Food: This is the newest section I’ve added. Normally I added this with the 1st insert, but I wanted to have something more separate to look back on and remember my opinions since I started eating out so much more during college in Boston. The idea is I’ll be able to find and keep my favorites, and also remember all of the social gatherings that are tied with food. 

    I’ve mostly given up on extensively documenting this trip through my typical reflections and spreads due to this trip’s time-consuming nature, which is why I am extremely grateful for the existence of this blog. Without it, I would feel extremely sad about losing so many memories, but many have been preserved here through everybody’s collective effort. However, one that I am trying to update is my food journal, which I spent my time waiting on. Here are some my unsolicited opinions of some Spokes (in pencil) + Boston eats:

    I refuse to get Beli. While my life would be so much easier, every Beli user I know becomes submerged in a special Beli world that I would like to avoid (no shade to anyone who uses it, I just know my wallet can’t take any more indirect spending encouragement).

    Okay, returning to what you actually come here for: a blog.

    While journaling, I kept checking to see when the rest of the bikers were coming as they were taking longer than what I initially thought. Tatiana actually returned before they arrived, so she promptly took a nap in the car while we waited and I sought refuge from the mosquitoes. As someone who is extremely attractive to mosquitoes for whatever reason, I was not trying to add to my 10+ bite count. 

    Several minutes into our relaxation, we get a phone call from the missing bikers, which is rarely good news as a driver. Lo and behold, Drew’s tire has popped! They need our rescue, so Tatiana and I repack our supplies and drive a couple miles to check out the situation. Tatiana bemoaned on the way there how all of her driver days devolved into some form of chaos, joking that she should never drive again. I’m not going to say anything, but there is an observable pattern…

    Drew, Carmen, and Aarushi were extremely proactive in solving the problem and had everything mostly planned and figured out by the time we got there. The tire had actually popped a couple of miles back, but they worked some sealant magic initially to last it a while longer. However, due to the slash in the rubber, it didn’t hold for long. Drew had to jog his bike to this trailhead where we could meet them. The solution was to take the wheel of an unused bike, switch it out with Drew’s, and then drive the wheel to a bike shop to get it fixed. They had found a bike shop in our next city that had the exact tire we needed. Thus, with my bike being the outermost bike on the rack, it was sacrificed and stripped for its parts. A surgery commenced.

    I was a little sad about my bike being used because it’s been so good to me so far and I didn’t want anything to happen to it in the process, but it all worked out.

    The surgery was successful, and the crew was ready to hit the Katy trail again in the pouring rain. However, before leaving, the dire state of the snack box was communicated. It had been stripped down to everything that was unwanted, and a restock was much needed. We reassured them that we were on it 🫡.

    We left and drove to the 2nd rest stop, where Nate had been camping out for a while to avoid lightning. Now that the coast was clear, he was ready to get moving again. In an offhand comment about his plans with his friend once in Columbia, he accidentally revealed that he was going to a rock concert — and I knew it was over for the team. We have some serious concert-lovers. Tatiana immediately told everyone and got everyone excited at the prospect of also going. When in Columbia, MO I guess?

    We then picked up Nunu from her urgent care appointment, which seemed to be helpful! Then we went to Walmart, where we had one of the arguably best hauls so far on this trip. Shoutout Tatiana for getting us a $50 discount!

    This lasted maybe all of 3 days…?

    By now, the 2nd group had arrived at rest stop #2 for lunch. With our new assortment of snacks and sandwich toppings, we created some sandwiches for kings. It was very deserved for the bikers, as they were covered in mud from the trail and rain. Aarushi and Carmen were relatively clean since their rain jackets (including my jacket loaned to Carmen) took the brunt of the splatter. However, Drew was another story:

    This required some serious deep cleaning…
    Nearly all my pictures are food, but for good reason I SWEAR

    Now we had to rush to the bike shop before it closed and drop off our wheel for a new tire. We made it a bit late, and arranged for it to be picked up by Drew the next day, as it was (conveniently) his driver day.  

    She’s wheeless 😦

    We finally arrived at Vince’s (our WS host for the night) and rejoined Nate. I’ve decided at this point not to go to the rock concert as I wanted to relax and continue recovering, and since the logistics of going seemed pretty complicated (it was an underground/local concert that involved knowing someone and meeting up at a Target). Aarushi and Carmen wanted to join as well but unfortunately couldn’t make it in time due to the long ride, so I also waited for them at Vince’s. The others who were going got ready and left. While waiting for the bikers to arrive, I chatted with Vince about his many travels and watched Cape Verde qualify for the knockout stage of the world cup! As a big soccer fan, watching the world cup has been a fun thing to keep up with, and Cape Verde’s run so far has been a fairytale. 

    Vozinhaaa

    At 9 pm the bikers finally arrived, admitting to taking longer to stop and admire the sunset. We reheated Vince’s lasagna and enjoyed a tub of local ice cream that another cross-country cyclist claimed to be the best he had across his trip, according to Vince. I can confirm, it was quite delicious.

    “A light sprinkling of walnuts”

    The rest of us at the house thought about driving around Columbia for a Wendy’s stop or for funsies, but decided not to since we were all a bit tired and couldn’t decide on a concrete destination. Episode 2 of Arrested Development it is. We watched the pilot way back in Virginia, and at this rate we might get 5 episodes by SF! The concertgoers returned towards the end of the episode, at which point I decided to finally tuck in for the night and get as much sleep as I could. I caught up the next day about what they did, which included trying pistol, talking with the interesting characters, and being thrown around in a moshpit. All in all, a very packed night.

    Thanks for sticking along with my journal ramblings, and hopefully the next time I blog, I’ll be on the road again!

    See you soon,

    Caroline

    ¹ A traveler’s notebook is a highly customizable and modular journal system. It typically consists of a leather cover (or of a similar material) that holds multiple separate paper booklets called “inserts” that are held together by elastic bands (or, if you’re me who’s lost the elastics, held together by sheer willpower).

  • Day 25: Unreliable Narrator

    Day 25: Unreliable Narrator

    St. Louis, MO to Hermann, MO — 74.4 mi, 2428 ft

    Today officially marks one third of our trip and the first day I’m feeling like this is normal, like biking 75 miles today is just the thing we do. As the driver yesterday, I was feeling a bit like a chud for missing the team’s first century, especially as they rode into the majestic St. Louis Arch. I looked longingly at my six little cyclists crossing the Mississippi, entering the big Gateway Into the West. It was the first time that being the driver felt unfulfilling instead of a glorious rest day. The switch had finally flipped for me. I had begun to enjoy biking. 

    To be honest, I was never in Spokes for the act of biking itself. Biking is not some all-time favorite activity in the world to the point where I’d want to do it all day every day. Since we’ve all been sharing our reasons on the blog recently, I joined Spokes mainly to meet amazing strangers I would’ve otherwise never met and see parts of middle America I would’ve otherwise never gone to, and hang out every day while doing it. And sure, part of me enjoys a physical challenge; and sure, biking is a cool way to do it. Today we hit the things I love about Spokes, and so I had an amazing day. Perhaps the half of the team whose goal is to bike to the end of the route every day as fast as possible wouldn’t agree with me. But I’m the narrator in this story.

    Today I woke up on the floor in St. Louis after a night of waking up every twenty minutes from Drew’s loud snores in the sleeping bag across from me. Nate had gotten up in the middle of the night to move his sleeping bag in the other room; even their bromance couldn’t will him to stay the night. As everyone started waking up and getting ready, the mood was quite joyful as it usually is in the mornings after biking 100 miles. For breakfast, we feasted on the peaches and cherries I had bought from a farm yesterday as a treat for the bikers. Then we took a 10 minute nap while Caroline posted some blogs. Then we met our host, Alex. We were staying in his second apartment of sorts, and we weren’t able to meet him the night before because we arrived so late, although he had put a delicious homemade pasta shell bake in the fridge for us upon arrival. He came dressed in my favorite biker outfit I’ve seen to date: a biker shorts + biker jersey version of a traditional Oktoberfest lederhosen, complete with adidas sneakers with custom-fitted bike clips. He said he’d take us around St. Louis on our way out of the city, and I already knew he would show us a lit time.

    Pic for reference (Alex not pictured)

    We headed out towards Forest Park, St. Louis’ version of Central Park, where Tatiana managed to run into the one person she knew in all of St. Louis (shoutout Greta) and where we got a mini history lesson of St. Louis courtesy of Alex. St. Louis was the site of the official handover of the Louisiana Purchase from the French to the US in 1803, and served as the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the new territory in 1804. Combined with its key placement at the junction of America’s two largest rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri, and the rise of the steamboat and the railroad, it quickly became the “Gateway to the West” (quite literally, with the famous Gateway Arch built in 1965). The city is also notable for hosting both the 1904 World Fair and the 1904 Summer Olympics, both of which happened in the park we were biking through, and both of which were kind of insane events. 

    The 1904 World Fair was held in St. Louis to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, and the 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St. Louis because the city threatened to hold a rivaling international competition in the same timeframe if Chicago didn’t transfer their hosting rights. Let’s discuss the World Fair first. It ran for seven months with a total of 20 million attendees from 62 countries (how did they even get halfway across the world back then??). Important inventions unveiled include the wireless telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, the earliest version of the fax machine by Elisha Gray, the X-ray machine by Wilhelm Conrad Ronteg, the infant incubator (where neonatal babies in rudimentary ICU units were just on display for the fair) by E. M. Bayliss, the personal automobile, Dr. Pepper, and the world’s first “Airship Contest” (nobody won). The fair also had PEOPLE exhibits, where indigenous peoples including Filipino, Tlingit, Patagonian, Ainu, and Mbuti people were just on display in the name of “Anthropology”, along with a full reenactment of the Second Boer War with veterans from the British army against veterans from South African native villages (admission to watch was 25 cents), and a bullfight riot. Hellen Keller gave a lecture at the fair along with J. T. Stinson, who then spoke the famous phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” And Jack Daniel won the Gold Medal for the finest whiskey in the world.

    The 1904 Olympics were equally weird. This was the first time the Games had been held outside of Europe (the first two Games were awarded to Athens and Paris), and the first time the 3-medal format of gold, silver, and bronze was introduced. The ongoing Russo-Japanese War prevented many top-class athletes from traveling to St. Louis, so only around 10% of the competing athletes came from outside the US and Canada. Highlights include the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals despite his left leg being made of wood, and Frank Kugler, who won medals in wrestling, weightlifting, and tug of war (a real Olympic sport from 1900-1920). They also made a hundred indigenous people from across the world who were brought to St. Louis for the World Fair compete in a bunch of sports for the crowd 😭 The craziest event of this all was the 1904 marathon, which “was run during the hottest part of the day [3:00 pm] on dusty country roads with minimal water supply [to conduct research on ‘purposeful dehydration’]; while 32 athletes… competed, only 14 managed to complete the race, which was a bizarre affair due to poor organization and officiating. While Frederick Lorz was greeted as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified as he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race. The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race, a side effect of being administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine [rat poison] by his trainers. The fourth-place finished, Andarin Carvajal, took a nap during the race after eating spoiled apples” (Wikipedia). The 1904 marathon Wikipedia page is one of my favorites.

    This mini-history lesson was for my ever-curious mom, who informed me that she would like to hear more about the places we travel through. Back to scheduled programming.

    Listening intently to the history lesson with gorgeous park views

    After our layover in Forest Park, Alex took us to Kaldi’s Coffee, where we ordered four different types of lattes to split and went round-robin style around the table taking a sip of each before passing it on. Drew enjoyed the carrots that came as a side of his kid’s menu grilled cheese and Nunu enjoyed her coffees without worrying about where to poop after. 

    We finally headed out of St. Louis at some late time I can’t remember because I never really check the clock throughout the day, usually relying on my Type A teammates to tell me to get a move on. We sped through West St. Louis through Wash U’s gorgeous campus and mansion-esque estates with perfectly manicured lawns, a direct contrast to the economically depressed post-industrial East St. Louis we had biked through yesterday. Interesting how the Mississippi river segregates the haves and the have-nots…

    The first rest stop was at a butterfly farm (!) with a snow cone truck (!) and a carousel ride (!). I felt like little kids again as we tried it all: we stuffed our face with Cheez-Its before getting snow cones, where Tatiana tried to ditch the snow cone itself and put her mouth straight below the syrup taps, then went to the creepy beetles and tarantulas exhibits where we pressed our faces against the glass to better watch the gross bugs do their gross things. Drew had a tarantula put on his face that we all found the courage to give a little pet to (he was missing his bedmate from Pam’s place). He tried to adopt it but the lady at the front desk had to explain to him that that’s not how museums work. Then when we went to the butterfly greenhouse, Carmen was the one who tried to sneak a butterfly into her pocket to take with her and the disappointed conservatory lady gave her a lecture on ecosystem preservation and even recommended her some books to read. I was the chosen one that a butterfly landed on and stayed for almost five minutes! Usually when I’ve gone to butterfly farms there’s not really a lot of butterflies and they’re all kind of shy and hiding. I’ve never seen so many huge butterflies zipping all around you so fast as I did at Sophia M. Sach’s Butterfly House.

    Pic for reference (Tatiana not pictured)
    Caroline really happy about how stick-like the walking stick looks

    At this point, the team was getting hungry so we decided to have lunch at our very first rest stop for the first time ever, instead of waiting for the second or third like usual. Caroline had the brilliant idea to finally pull out this fat sausage that Ann had donated to our team back in Virginia, which was actually so delicious that everyone on the team went round robin just taking chomps out of it. This lunch was also notable for being the first time we pulled out our plastic cutlery that Theresa had gifted us also back in Virginia; we had previously just been spreading communal guac and hummus with our fingers. Our team was getting a little antsy now because we were only 20 miles in on our 75 mile day and it was already afternoon. But Nate still insisted on our entire team riding the carousel together before we left, even though he was the day’s driver and easily could’ve gone himself after we’d left.

    On the next leg, Caroline suffered some intense elbow pain and unfortunately had to SAG out—her pinky had been numb since the very beginning of the trip and the pain had spread outward up the nerve across the arm. Caroline is one of the people on the team who NEVER complains (even after getting bit by a dog) so if she was finally voicing her pain, I knew it must’ve been really bad. We had finally reached the Katy Trail, a 240-mile rail trail meant for biking across all of Missouri, which we rode until our second rest stop on a pier of the Missouri river. While waiting for us, Caroline had somehow managed to swim the entire width of the Missouri and back (approximately half a mile) in rapid fast current, barely making it upstream with the help of a beaver who pulled along the log she was holding on to for a couple minutes when she was close to shore. Apparently backstroke is good for elbow recovery. I still don’t understand why Caroline and Nate (who went on a 3-mile run) refuse to just take their rest days.

    Pretty soon after we left the second rest stop, we started hearing thunder and seeing lightning. We heard Nunu and Tatiana’s yelps before we actually saw any lightning; both of them are so scared of thunderstorms that they immediately got off their conductive metal bikes and started running the 1.5 mile back to the nearest trailhead rest stop at Augusta, MO, leaving Drew, Carmen, and I to walk their bikes back. The little trail town turned out to be a ghost town with three normal-looking storefronts whose insides were just creepy empty floorboards. Nunu went inside the one labeled “HOSTEL” looking for a bathroom and literally fell a few feet through one of the floorboards; Carmen had to reach her foot down into the pit for her to grab onto to hoist her back up, with Nunu almost pulling off her shorts and leg sleeves. Unable to hold her bladder during the 20 minutes this ordeal took, note that Nunu peed in the pit before getting excavated from the situation. Drew would’ve probably been the better person for this job but he had disappeared deeper into the ghost town in an attempt to hunt down a cheeseburger, following his one-track mind even amidst a thunderstorm. We passed the rest of the time in the rain less eventfully: I listened to Drew’s old piano-playing and airplane-flying videos from high school, while Nunu updated our team’s Instagram and Tatiana read some NYTimes articles. Finally when the lightning stopped, it was too late (past 7 PM) to finish our route and Nate came to SAG us all. We had a delicious pizza dinner courtesy of Philly’s Pizza in Marthasville (one of the best of the trip, and we’ve had a LOT of pizza on this trip) before heading to our Airbnb perfectly along the Katy Trail, kindly donated to us by Kate Engelmann. Notably today was also the day our car’s name finally came to us. The true name of the car will only be known by Spokes 2026 members, but ask me nicely and I’ll reveal its pseudonym. 

    Our view of the abandoned storefronts as we sat sheltered in the rain, and delicious pizza after!

    That’s all for today!

    Aarushi ❤

    PS: There are 15 lies in this blog, can you spot them all?

  • Day 24: 100 Things I Love About Spokes

    Day 24: 100 Things I Love About Spokes

    Murphysboro, IL to St. Louis, MO — 101.1 mi, 2678 ft

    Today is an extraordinarily special day. Today is the day we rode our first-ever century!

    In biker terms, a century means completing a ride over 100 miles. In underexperienced biker terms, this means a little bit of added anxiousness, increased speed, and an earlier start time. 

    In honor of this momentous occasion, and inspired by my elementary school’s “100 Days of School” tradition, I want to share a blog post of 100 Things I Love About Spokes, categorized into items from our century day, general moments, and, of course, the Spokes family.

    Moments From Our Century Day

    1. Having amazing, perfectly cooked eggs and pancakes from Jessica to fuel our century
    2. Petting Jessica’s super cute doggie named Echo in the morning
    3. Finally leaving the house by SEVEN AM for our century, a record start time for the team
    4. Seeing a heron majestically dive over a lake
    5. Drafting in a line with the team and calling each other over the phone to *try* and unsuccessfully play imposter
    1. Appreciating Nate and Drew for switching off which one of them would break the wind for the team and which one would look over their shoulder to make sure everyone was still there
    2. Hitting crazy, insane speeds because we had a tailwind for the first time in forever
    3. Eating amazing candy salad courtesy of Aarushi’s idea that saved the day
    4. Meeting members of St Luke’s Lutheran Church at our first rest stop and taking pictures to include in their monthly newsletter
    5. Eating the yummiest Dairy Queen cookie dough blizzard of all time at our second rest stop
    6. Hanging out in a local coffee shop at our second rest stop and meeting a kind man and his super athletic volleyball-playing daughter
    1. Experiencing the support of our awesome MIT Edgerton Center contact, Marvelin Higginbottom
    2. Experiencing the anti-support of the also probably awesome but unfortunately misaligned MIT auditors who have to review our transactions
    1. Saving the state of my butt and thighs with a beautifully timed application of chamois butter behind a building at our third rest stop
    2. Riding the paved and quite scenic Metro Bike Link Trail into St. Louis
    3. Discussing siblings and hobbies with Caroline, including the awesome question of “what do you think you could talk about forever?”
    4. Resting my eyes under a wonderfully placed tree at the last rest stop of the day
    5. Eating the yummy peaches and Cheezits that Aarushi got for us to fuel the last segment of our ride
    6. Seeing the Gateway Arch in the distance as we rode into St. Louis
    1. Getting kind words of encouragement and curious questions shouted at us by the people of St. Louis
    2. *Safely* but scarily crossing the main bridge into St. Louis with Caroline right next to the cars
    3. Meeting Drew’s dad at the Gateway Arch and telling him about our day
    4. Monumentally taking awesome pictures at the Gateway Arch to commemorate our achievement
    1. Buying ANOTHER postcard (Aarushi already bought me three) because I really liked the designs at the gift shop
    2. Riding around the Gateway Arch on our bikes to see the river views
    3. Finishing the ride with Drew and hearing his happiness from spending time with his dad
    4. Passing through the LGBTQ district of St. Louis and seeing the festivities for Pride Month
    5. Eating yummy lasagna and cookies courtesy of our host, Alexander, and his wife
    6. Having a bed to share instead of stinky sleeping bags
    7. FINISHING 100 MILES IN ONE DAY!!!!!

    General Spokes Moments

    1. Meeting a horse trainer on the side of the road in Kentucky, who told us about her life, horses, and personal reflections on devoting her life to one specific thing
    2. Being exposed to my new all-time favorite breakfast of blueberry French toast bake from Sherri
    3. Sending postcards from every state to my family
    4. Helping determined students finish my workshop and watching them light up with excitement when their circuit works
    5. Submerging myself in any body of water (waterpark… lake… river…)
    6. Playing verbal Connections every day with my boyfriend, Noah, where he patiently reads every word on the screen, and we painstakingly do the Connections without me seeing the words
    7. Wearing my amazing new bib from Pactimo that my wonderful MIT friend, Emma Hopkins, express shipped to me, which has saved my butt and inspired Drew to order the same bib
    8. Starting grateful circles at dinner, where everyone shares one thing they are grateful for
    9. Using laundry loops, which make our laundry extremely efficient, and are a fun part of my nightly routine
    10. Growing in my comfort levels with blood (I am deathly scared of blood) and getting to be helpful when Aarushi and Caroline had cuts
    11. Exploring new Gatorade flavors and solidifying that blue is probably the best, even though in my heart I know it’s actually purple, but the team doesn’t agree with me
    12. Meeting hosts who have been keeping up with our blogs and know a few details from our trip
    13. Guessing the plants we pass as we bike through the Midwest and getting mogged by Drew every time for guessing incorrectly
    14. Putting stickers on my bike from every state we pass
    15. Meeting cute doggies that help us get over our trauma from Kentucky and our nemesis Max
    16. Watching my teammates grow in their confidence as teachers and connect with the students
    17. Listening to a Spotify jam with the team and getting to sing along to the same songs
    18. Unlocking new snacks that the entire team likes and wants to share (we have recently moved away from mangos and have hit fig bars and gummy worms in full force)
    19. Alternating riddles with my dad to pass the time
    20. Watching a student at the correctional facility receive a badge signifying that he was a leader of his classroom
    21. Getting Aarushi to braid my hair every morning
    22. Hearing the awesome and sometimes crazy love stories of our hosts (my favorite question ever)
    23. Watching one of our students promote her FIRST Tech Challenge team at a learning festival, especially since I also participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition
    24. Opening my 75 letters for every day of Spokes from my amazing friends and family
    25. Hearing the employees of Fazoli’s, a restaurant that fed us, share their experiences in the prison system and their heartfelt gratitude that we taught at a correctional facility
    26. Showering. No further explanations.
    27. Sharing deep team debriefs of our families and how we were raised to get to know each other
    28. Getting to start my Garmin at the beginning of every ride and feeling my body get stronger at the uphills
    29. Hearing students excitedly tell me about their plans as engineers and scientists, and even their dreams of attending MIT
    30. Watching the joy of parents and families (including my mom) when they share their love in the comment sections of our blog
    31. Getting a little too familiar with Urgent Cares across the country, but at least we know that we can always receive assistance!
    32. Playing the country game (say a country that starts with the last letter of the country said before it) with Nate and Drew to pass time while in Kentucky territory
    33. Listening to episodes of the “Explained” documentary by Vox on Netflix to learn cool facts and pass the time
    34. Relying on Drew and Carmen to fix my slowly degrading bicycle, which now has several broken parts, but I still love her
    35. Watching teammates do acts of kindness and support each other in tough moments, like Aarushi biking with me when I am seriously exhausted and going slow 
    36. Not pedaling sometimes (oftentimes) on downhills, prompting Nate to ask me if I knew I could in fact pedal (I know, but I like to soak in the views)
    37. Noticing parts of nature and the scenery change as I bike, including new plants, animals, and terrain
    38. Drinking lots of yummy lattes across the country. Coffee is definitely universal!
    39. Asking people in diverse communities deep questions to understand the myriad of perspectives on the world that we get to encounter as we bike
    40. Unlocking more Drew lore, including his insane piano skills, which bring me so much joy every time he plays
    41. Hearing the inspiring biking stories of our Warmshowers hosts, who have often biked far more than us and are way cooler
    42. Gaining true appreciation for a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on
    43. Stuffing my face all day every day, with whatever snacks I want because I burn more calories than I ever have in my life
    44. Experiencing thick Midwestern accents and feeling my own southern slang creep through sometimes
    45. Discussing the World Cup in depth with Caroline, my mom, and my grandfather, even though I have not been keeping up with the games at all
    46. Getting to wake the team up in the morning and put some use to my morning-person abilities
    47. Pretending that I live in different towns with Aarushi and imagining what our lives would be like
    48. Seeing farm equipment that is multiple times larger than I ever imagined being driven by me on the road
    49. Getting to walk through the sanctuaries of the many churches we stay at and experiencing the love and community shared within the walls
    50. Joining the extreme ice-loving group of our team, where we will fill our bottles to the brim with ice before adding water or Gatorade
    51. Successfully moving the team away from fast biking and towards side questing
    52. Hearing friendly honks of encouragement from cars on the road
    53. Having a terrible streak of having to SAG too many people out every time I drive on my assigned driving days, but at least we have SAGed everyone successfully!
    54. Learning about Caroline’s artistic abilities and getting to see her draw in her food journal
    55. Seeing “Welcome” signs as we cross state borders
    56. Calling my family members more often since I am on the bike all day, and getting to hear their stories
    57. Receiving random texts of encouragement from my family and friends, especially when the biking is tough
    58. Never burning because the sun sleeves we wear are awesome
    59. Posting on Strava and getting to see my location actually move west across the map
    60. Receiving the generosity of hundreds of people across America, with restaurants providing free meals, strangers donating cash, and people opening their homes

    Spokes Family

    1. Carmen for always being a rock on our team that is down for anything fun and is seriously here for the love of the game 
    2. Aarushi for sticking by my side when the rides get tough and always agreeing to stop and meet new people
    3. Caroline for engaging in my love for deep conversation and discussing life with me
    4. Nunu for bringing insane amounts of spark and awesome ideas to the team, making sure we always have fun
    5. Drew for being a yapper D1 and always being ready to chat about anything and everything
    6. Nate for having one of the quickest wits I have ever seen, and always looking out for all of the members of the team
    7. Greta and Charles for hopping on a lengthy call with me to discuss my Kentucky fears and try to assuage the dog situation
    8. Sarah and Tian for being our biggest blog supporters and making sure we feel like our blogs are appreciated
    9. All of the Spokes alumni for helping us navigate the dog situation and truly stepping up as our biggest resource
    10. The entire Spokes community of friends and family for helping us navigate this extraordinary adventure and being our biggest fan club along the way

    With centuries full of my love,

    Tatiana ❤

  • Day 23: everything except biking

    Day 23: everything except biking

    Harrisburg, IL to Murphysboro, IL – 52.5 mi, 1406 ft

    Today we woke up at 6am.

    Today we woke up at 6:30am.

    Today we woke up at 7am.

    Ok, yea that one stuck.

    Over the past few days, ever since our rest day + learning festival double day of not biking, the teams’ morning routine has slowly slid from our previously diligent 6am wakeup and 8am leave (“diligent”) to something like today where we woke up a bit before 7am, ate breakfast around 7 (delicious blueberry french toast cooked by one of our lovely hosts Sherie), and then did not leave until 9am. 

    Delicious blueberry french toast casserole vibe with sausage and fruit. Thank you Sherie!

    Having gotten ready before breakfast, I ended up getting back in bed for 30 minutes while waiting for everyone else to get their bags ready – later joined by Drew in our 2-twin-bed room after he got ready. Nunu and I then packed the car as the last few bags trickled in. Finally, after all bags were loaded, tires pumped, sunscreen applied, legs stretched, and complaints about our sore butts complained, we headed off for our relatively short and flat 52 mile ride. 

    Picture with Brad, the second half of our amazing hosts. Sherie and Brad’s story about how they got together is crazy and would require its own blog. They’ve also done their own cross-country bike ride (among other rides) and are super cool.

    Caroline and I ended up pulling ahead within the first few miles (read “speed demons”) and biked together to the first rest stop at mile 17. Along the way we talked about how fit + active her dad Forest is, how her family vacations were always hiking/camping related, and how my family would never survive her camping “vacations”. 

    I also spent the first few miles worried about whether I would have any knee pain flare up since I spent the last 17 miles of yesterday’s ride biking with just one leg after I was forced at gunpoint to do so by absolutely no one. Biking like that puts a lot of strain on your knee but I did so anyway because I’m cool like that. My knees also ended up being perfectly fine, further highlighting the fact that I’m cool like that. 

    We arrived at the first rest stop a couple minutes before Nunu arrived in the minivan, and the rest of the squad pulled up ~10-15 minutes after that. We all quickly devoured the grapes and oranges that Nunu had bought at the store (that were meant for the whole day whoops), and then continued our snack-demolishing reign of terror towards the next rest stop. 

    Caroline and I had left ahead of the other four (Tatiana, Aarushi, Drew, and Carmen) and ended up biking by a thrift store after biking ~5 miles. After a little game of “should we go in, no its ok, well maybe we could…”, we turned back and checked out the store under the guise of looking for Illinois postcards. 

    We found absolutely zero postcards, but we did find an adoption center with baby kittens inside. We ended up playing with the kittens for 20-30 minutes. Many pictures of said kittens are included below for your viewing pleasure. The name of the store/adoption center is “Finding Forever Animal Rescue & Thrift Store” in case anyone reading this is in the Marion, IL area (for some reason?) and wants to adopt. 

    Enjoy the seratonin 🙂 Sorry my leg is in nearly every picture

    Caroline and I then got back on the road for 0.01 miles before we saw (and smelled) a BBQ shop that we also turned around to stop at after the aforementioned game of “should we go in, no its ok, well maybe we could…”. Usually we would never stop this much on a ride, but with a short ride today we figured might as well.

    Inside the BBQ store we found some crazy deals including $19.99 for a rack of ribs (yes per rack, not per pound, we asked) and $7.99/lb pork steaks. I’ve personally been craving ribs all trip, and without my dad nearby to make some of his delectable ribs (seriously, they’re easily the best ribs you’ve ever had), I really wanted to make do here. 

    Unfortunately, despite burning several thousands of calories per day while biking, I don’t have the capability to eat an entire rack of ribs myself. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve spent the school year training for eating instead of biking. In any case, I ended up getting a pork steak and devoured it outside the store caveman style and it was delicious. 

    Some great deals on meat and some not so great angles of me eating the meat.

    Afterwards, Caroline and I biked another whopping 0.05 miles before we stopped at an art store (Little Egypt Art Association) still in search of postcards for the team + now a bathroom. We found out Nunu had already stopped at this store in search of postcards when the store owner, Meliah, let us know that she was surprised by the fact that we were the second people today to ask about Illinois postcards. We didn’t end up getting any postcards but we did get a bathroom break, as well as a picture with Meliah who was super excited to hear about our trip and to brag to her family about how she had met some MIT students.

    It was great to meet you Meliah!

    Meliah also pointed us to her favorite cafe, which was around the block – considering we were already this deep into not biking, we figured why not keep it up. We biked over to the cafe and ordered some drinks and sandwiches, including a lavender lemonade that Meliah recommended to us (and that was super good). 

    Around this time, Caroline and I found out that the other group (Tatiana, Drew, Carmen, and Aarushi) had done the exact same stops as us (adoption center followed by BBQ) just shifted back 30-60 minutes. They also had plans to head over to this cafe, independent of us. Clearly, there is not a single original thought in this team. 

    After a bit of coordination, the whole team decided to cut our upcoming lunch rest stop in favor of all meeting at the cafe for drinks + food. Nunu, who had been on the hunt for Illinois postcards + stickers, had found them and would also meet us there (she actually had already been to this cafe in the morning, but she had no problem coming back for seconds). 

    You’d think we were in Friends the way we all ended up at this cafe.

    After this, we decided that since we were a “biking team” we should actually bike.

    Just kidding, we then went to an antique store down the road and looked around for an hour.

    Simulating how we’re gonna have to drive in the van to the end point since we don’t seem to have any plan to actually bike today.

    Ok then we actually biked. 

    We left the antique store around 3:30pm and rode as a group for 30 minutes before we had to make an emergency bathroom break at a McDonald’s for Tatiana. 

    Us looking really freaking cool.
    Us making sure to spread out as much as possible to make sure no part of the road (road, sidewalk, grass) goes unutilized.
    Drew seeing if he could order and eat a cheeseburger before Tatiana finishes using the restroom. Drew won. 

    Afterwards, we went back to biking. Shortly after, we ran into another aggressive Great Pyrenees! Aggressively cute that is. This one was named Bart and, unlike Max, Bart is a very good dog and did a great job of breaking the bad run with Great Pyrenees that the team has been having lately. Here’s another animal picture montage for your viewing pleasure.

    Bart is huge and we collectively agreed he would destroy Max. Also, both Bart and Echo (see below) were interested in Caroline’s dog bite leg. Not sure what that means but I feel like there’s something interesting going on there.

    After a good 10 minutes of petting Bart, his owner finally got away from us and so we had to start biking again. This time, we actually got into it and had a great draft line going. My favorite time biking is when we go fast as a group so I’m always so happy to break wind for the group so that we can zoom (we hit a avg 18mph pace for the last 20 miles of the ride 😎) (also subtle foreshadowing for tomorrow’s 100 mile ride). 

    We arrived at our Warmshower host Jessica’s place around 6:30pm. We met her dog Echo, learned about how she was a mayor of a city (!?), and absolutely devoured a watermelon. 

    Afterwards, we had a quick team meeting about how our blogs were 6 days behind and are often egregiously late (not mine though, this one was done on time) + how we need to work harder to get them out on time to avoid us working on 2 blogs at a time. We also discussed how we needed to be more disciplined about our morning routine after today’s very slow morning. Finally, we planned for tomorrow’s 100 mile ride (commonly called a
    “century ride” or “century”).

    Afterwards, everyone did some blog grinding – including some blogception of me writing this blog – since everyone except Tatiana had a blog that needed writing.

    Real blog grind hours.

    The last thing we did before heading to bed was make a giant bowl of candy that Aarushi and Nunu called a “candy salad” to fuel us for our century ride tomorrow. Still not really sure what the purpose of it was, it kinda just got the sour dust from the sour candy all over the other non-sour candy and you still just ate each piece of candy individually – but I don’t ask questions, I just work here 🤷‍♂️.

    That’s all for today, wish us luck on our first century ride tomorrow. I mean the ride already happened and it went well so we don’t really need the luck but not sure how to end this blog otherwise. Ok I’ll just stop here.

    – Nate

  • Day 22: A Stench and A Storm

    Day 22: A Stench and A Storm

    Madisonville, KY to Harrisburg, IL — 81.8 mi, 2380 ft

    Crossing the country on a bike is… STINKY. Some things are stinky for obvious reasons. Our clothes, for example, smell absolutely foul after a day of riding. And I often find myself holding my breath as I cross the minefield of deer/armadillo carcasses that make up rural American roads. 

    This morning, however, nobody could seem to figure out why the camping pads smelled like garbage water and spoiled meat. It was bad enough that some of us found ourselves struggling to sleep in the presence of the scent. Aarushi had resorted to rubbing perfume under her nose to sleep last night. Hers was especially bad. I got a whiff of it when I was packing up the camping gear and almost fell over dead. We’ve got to do something about this, but we can’t, because we have a 87 mile day ahead of us. Sooo, back into the camper top they go to keep getting stinkier until we decide to confront this issue.

    Pastor Jon and Life Christian Center left us a plethora of food to pack, and I had an incredible strawberry protein cheerio breakfast. Thank you, Pastor Jon for allowing us to sleep in the church’s gym on such a busy day (Sunday, Father’s Day, Funeral plans, etc.). Spokes is very appreciative of Life Christian Center for the support through the years.

    The ride went as usual in the morning. It rained just a little bit for the first 20-mile stretch. Here’s some pictures.

    On the contrary, I was borderline submerged for the stretch leading into the lunch stop. We were so soaked by the rain that we had to change out of our jerseys out of fear of getting too cold. We all put on rain jackets– I borrowed one from Carmen because I didn’t think to pack one. We ended up having a very diverse array of colors, giving our team a striking resemblance to the Power Rangers.

    We waited for the rain to die back down to a sprinkle and continued onwards, eventually crossing the Ohio river from Kentucky into Illinois. 

    We’d done it.

    We made it out of Kentucky.

    My yelp review of Kentucky is 3 stars. It is a beautiful state, with some incredible people. The kids we taught were extremely talented, and there was certainly no shortage of memorable interactions. However, some of you guys really need to do something about your dogs. Just because your pet timberwolf is named “Sweet Princess” does not mean you should let it roam the streets freely.

    Side note: we reviewed the route midday and found that Spokes 2025 added an unnecessary 7 miles to the route seemingly in order to intersect an ice cream shop. We’re not quite as down bad for ice cream as our predecessors, especially considering the weather conditions, so we decided to divert south, cutting that segment of the route and shortening the day to 81 miles.

    Upon entering Illinois, the sun started seeping through the clouds, illuminating the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all summer: endless, flat land.

    Nate felt particularly inspired by the godrays and cycling-optimal landscape, so he decided to start biking using only one leg to pedal as the other dangled off to the side. I joined and suggested that we finish the final 17 miles of the ride pedaling with just one leg. 

    I tapped out after 6 miles, but he just kept going… and going… and going…

    Why?

    Who knows.

    Perhaps he just wanted to feel victorious.

    Somehow, he did it. I recall hearing him groaning in pain for the last 3 miles to the finish.

    We arrived at the home of Brad and Sherri, where we would be staying for the night. They took good care of us, feeding us incredible chicken burritos and telling funny stories. The night went as usual: we did our chores and went to sleep.

    That’s it for day 22. This blog is shorter as I’m writing it the night before our first century (100-mile bike ride), and I’m trying to actually get 8 hours of sleep– a feat I’ve found pretty challenging this summer. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

    – Drew

  • Day 21: Alternate Reality

    Day 21: Alternate Reality

    6:00 AM

    I wake up to my alarm ringing in my ear and immediately turn to snooze it.

    6:10 AM

    I wake up again 10 minutes later and once AGAIN, press the snooze button.

    6:20 AM

    It rings again and finally, I guiltily roll out of my own personal king size bed and begin my morning routine. I take a quick shower, brush my teeth, change into my biking gear, take out my dried laundry, fold my clothes, pack up all my things that I’d strewn about my room from the past three nights, say a very sad and longing goodbye to my beautiful master bedroom, and head downstairs. To my surprise (my own fault), the house is dead silent. I sent a message to our group chat, “Hi, who is awake?” To which I get no reply.

    7:00 AM

    I go outside to put my things in the car and to my second surprise, the car is missing?? At least from where I’d parked it last night. I hastily sent another message to the group chat, “guys, where is the car?” I finally use my brain and check the garage, where I find the car. 

    7:10 AM

    I then pull the car outside so we can begin loading our luggage where Nate finally appears with his things. I then wonder to myself why no one else other than myself and Nate are ready to go (already an hour and a half after our agreed wakeup time).

    Unfortunately (for us) this morning, Tatiana, our usual wake-up caller, was missing in action because she’d been staying at a hotel nearby with her boyfriend who was visiting. Even so, as I sat in the kitchen eating breakfast, I looked around and I became very puzzled as to why everyone was moving even slower than normal. Something that our warmshowers hosts always comment on when they greet our group in the morning is how we are all obviously NOT morning people (except Tatiana). This was not more obvious than it was this morning. 

    8:00 AM

    The group had finally all stumbled downstairs and it seemed we would be ready to leave soon at last. Just one final step, we all need to load the route onto our bike computers. Suddenly, Aarushi asks aloud, “Where’s my bike computer?” Uh oh.

    8:10 AM

    Everyone is thoroughly checking throughout the house for Aarushi’s bike computer: behind dressers, under beds, in the luggage that had already been neatly packed into the car.

    8:30 AM

    Everyone is still looking and I decide to do some “looking” in my master bedroom, in my bed, under the covers.

    8:45 AM

    I go downstairs and Caroline has just found Aarushi’s bike computer in Aarushi’s backpack! Which Aarushi swears she checked like five times…

    Right before we finally start pedaling, it’s revealed to Tatiana, Nate, and I that while we’d been peacefully sleeping by 10 PM the night before, Aarushi, Carmen, Caroline, and Drew had stayed up until 2 AM! It’s all making sense to me now…

    9:00 AM

    And with that, we were off on our 87 mile day!

    For the first time ever, our entire group of 6 somewhat biked all together for the whole 24.2 miles to our first rest stop. Whenever this happens I always get super excited because it just feels so much cooler. Like, yeah hey we ARE MIT SPOKES! And we bike in a line in our matching jerseys, bikes, and helmets. Today we also passed our first other bikers to which we tried to lock in and look cool for. Today was also going to be one of our last super hilly days as we left the Appalachian mountains so we were going through many PUDS (pointless ups and downs) and took a number of quick breaks at the various peaks.

    Many different photos of us throughout the morning taking short breaks after each hill

    At some point during the bike ride, Nate asks me what day of the week it is. I checked my lockscreen which read, Sunday, June 21st. We realized there were cars parked outside all the churches we biked past and there was a sign that read, Happy Father’s Day! I’d forgotten today was Father’s Day and as we continued to bike, the team members all called their dads.

    1:00 PM

    We all make it 43.1 miles to our second rest stop for lunch! We had an awesome view of a raging river where many people were fishing below us as we sat and ate lunch. This is when Aarushi discovers some funky tan lines that she’d developed from just this morning.

    1:30 PM

    I called my dad and talked with him for 45 ish minutes.

    2:15 PM

    I hang up, look around, and everyone is SLEEPING?! Literally all over this park, a Spokie is sprawled out and unconscious.

    3:00 PM

    Admittedly, I wake up from my own 20 minute nap and Nate and I wonder to each other why everyone but the two of us and Tatiana are still sleeping? How come our team is always napping? Why is everyone so tired? Who is going to be the one to get us going again? How are we only halfway done with the day?

    3:30 PM

    Nate and I have an epiphany. The only people still sleeping are the exact people who stayed up until 2AM. With that, we decide enough is enough and we need to keep biking.

    5:30 PM

    We all arrive at our final rest stop and we take turns peeing in a massive porta potty.

    6:00 PM

    We leave for the last leg of our ride.

    6:30 PM

    We come upon a road closure in the middle of our route but decide to keep pushing through.

    7:00 PM

    Nate and I decide to speed off because sometimes it’s more fun to go fast, especially when you’ve gotten a proper 8 hours of sleep and not 4 hours of sleep. It’s dusk and the landscape looks beautiful.

    8:00 PM

    We meet up with Tatiana and eventually the rest of the team at Fazoli’s for an amazing Italian dinner. Thank you so much Morgan and Eddie for your kindness and support to our team!

    8:45 PM

    We finished the last few miles of our ride to the church in Madisonville where Pastor Jon was waiting to greet us!

    9:15 PM

    We unload our luggage from the car and Nate gives me a boost up to the roof of our car to unload our sleeping bags and pads from our car top storage. Nate tells me he thinks my feet are stinky.

    9:30 PM

    We run a quick shower line.

    10 PM

    We unroll our sleeping bags and sleeping pads to discover that it wasn’t my feet that were stinky (or at least not the only thing), it was our camping gear! For some reason, all our sleeping bags, pillows, and mats smell like old dirty socks…

    10:30 PM

    There’s nothing we can do but try our best to fall asleep, despite the stench, so we can hopefully wake up on time at 6 AM the next morning to do it all over again.

    I tried to write my blog in this time stamped format to illustrate what exactly our day to day routine has become. It’s crazy to think that we are now at a point in the summer that we don’t even remember what day of the week it is. We’re living in a kind of alternate reality bubble that feels very disconnected from the real world at times. And it’s even crazier that we all chose to take an entire two and a half months off from reality, which means inevitably missing major life events of family and friends. At the same time, in our bubble, it feels like we are somehow always busy, moving around, tired, and maybe even a little stressed. Literally from 6 AM to 10 PM every hour is filled with activity.

    Despite all these maybe stressful factors, this summer has already felt like an extremely fulfilling endeavor. Being busy and tired means we have big goals that we are chasing and working hard to achieve. And even though we are living out some alternate reality, we are literally experiencing the real world, pedal by pedal, city by city, and state by state. We are meeting so many wonderful and kind people across the country who have fed us, housed us, talked to us, and cheered us on.

    Even when it takes three hours to leave the house in the morning and the remaining hours of the day just slip by, I am so happy and grateful for the opportunity to spend my days this way for another 54 days. Sorry for always being cheesy but it’s true.

    With love,

    Nunu

  • Day 20: we the people

    Day 20: we the people

    Learning Festival in Bowling Green, KY — 0 mi, 0 ft

    Before starting this trip, I, for some reason, had this feeling that Bowling Green would be a singular experience. Whether it was from last year’s team hinting at some suspicious activity (I really don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t at me) or going on about the amazing Airbnbs (plural) we got to stay in, I was subconsciously preparing for, well, something.

    That something, I’ve discovered, is the intensely wide variety of people that live here, eccentric people with many stories to tell.

    Our learning festival was held at the WKU Innovation Campus, a “hub” for entrepreneurship in Kentucky. 

    At the beginning of the festival, we played an icebreaker game of rock, paper, scissors, the tournament version. Basically you play with the person next to you until you’re out and until there’s one pairing left. All of us decided to play as well, setting a good example and all. However, since Caroline is apparently the rock, paper, scissors god, we all watched from the sidelines as she crushed every last one of her opponents (eight year olds) as she made her way to the very middle of the circle as one of the last two standing. 

    At last it was 1 v. 1.

    Caroline facing off her opponent

    And then Caroline obliterated the poor girl.

    Post win reaction (it was really funny, maybe not to Caroline)

    This was our largest learning festival to date, with almost 100 kids. It could have been far more overwhelming if the kids in each group of 25 were on the whole younger, but for this one they ranged from third grade to high school. It was actually really optimal, at least for Aarushi and I. 

    Our mindset as a team has been to prioritize the kids having fun over developing a really good grasp on the fundamental concepts we teach. This means that the youngest kids, kindergarten age, love to craft felt monsters but more loosely understand the connection to genetics.

    With this older group, they were really getting into the science behind the activity, asking good questions and being more intentional with their choice of traits: blue or brown eyes? Horn or no horn? Triangle or square nose? Which trait is dominant versus recessive? I hadn’t seen this kind of engagement before, and it inspired me to rework our workshop, to see if we can get the even younger ones to ask similar questions.

    Additionally, we’ve all noticed that Kentucky kids are a unique breed. For both learning festivals in the state, they were advanced for their grade level and all had some special interest that they loved and devoted a lot of brain power to learning. I figure that something about this environment filters and attracts these kids to their local educational summer camps. Some were so incredibly dedicated that their families drove several hours to these learning festivals. And some even stayed in hotels.

    At the end of the festival, we got a picture with our wonderful hosts and admin at WKU who helped make it all happen.

    We then went out for our ritual post-LF ice cream, but without Aarushi, who had to pick up her bike from the bike shop. After her crash, all her bike fit measurements were thrown off, and her derailleur had started creaking almost as loudly as our knees. Shout out to Howard’s bike shop, who re-measured and realigned everything on her bike for free!

    Half of us left the town square to rot at our beautiful Airbnb, while Tatiana and Aarushi stayed to work on their blogs.

    We attempted to play mini Catan, but determined it was too mini to play, before Nate and Nunu took Caroline to the emergency room to get her third (technically eighth) rabies shot. Drew and I stayed back, and decided to make use of our free time by biking to Zaxby’s. Nate and Nunu eventually abandoned Caroline to wait alone, and met up with us.

    Nunu and I have always been strong Cane’s supporters. But I had heard from my friend Hillary, who’s from the south, that Zaxby’s is far superior to Cane’s, and so I was willing to test her theory. After having the Zaxby’s equivalent of the Cane’s three finger combo, I can attest, hand to my heart, that Cane’s can never be topped. The chicken is juicer, breading crunchier, the toast thicker, and the sauce more balanced. It’s just peak. Sorry Hillary, and sorry Drew.

    Nunu took it to the next level, since after Zaxby’s, her and Nate went to Cane’s directly after to do a taste test. In her words, “the bread is better, the chicken is better, and the sauce is better, the only three ingredients any meal has.” I rest my case.

    Nate’s back getting bigger from all the toast

    Drew and I then decided to bike downtown, because what else did we have to do with our time? We still had a glorious several hours to spend before waking up for our biking day tomorrow. We sped back to the town square we were at earlier, went around the perimeter for a bit before we ran into the other half of our team still writing their blogs at a coffee shop. We hung out for a bit before the shop closed and the staff kicked us off the patio. Aarushi still had her bike with her from the bike shop, and so the three of us were about to head back to the Airbnb until we remembered that it was Saturday evening in downtown Bowling Green.

    This is apparently when all the fun and funky people of Bowling Green come out of hiding.

    I had Drew take a picture to commemorate the moment, and he surpassed all of my expectations. 

    Drew’s fire photo

    I mean it’s so good it should be on the cover of some magazine advertising the city.

    Drew and I biked around for a bit before running into one of the kids we taught at our learning festival earlier that day. We were still in our matching shirts, biking all over town, looking like the goofy nerds we are. Maybe they recognized us because of it, but I felt as if I spotted a celebrity in them. It was proof that these kids had lives embedded within these towns we are briefly passing by. It made it surprisingly real.

    A few minutes later, after we were coming around for a second lap of the square, I saw a man with what looked like a small dog running around in the middle of the street. As I got closer I realized it was a cockatoo. This man had a bird on a leash and was taking it on walks in the middle of the city.

    Naturally, we stopped him to ask about the bird, to which he said it only liked girls, and to which Drew looked at me like I had to be the one to make the sacrifice. The man held the bird out and it slowly climbed on my finger, one talon at a time. With a surprising change of pace it then ran up my arm until it was on my shoulder. 

    Armed with amazing photos of me and the cockatoo, Drew and I went to go find Aarushi and Tatiana, who apparently had been talking with this motocross racer. He and some friends were taking their casual bikes out for a ride, and stopped at the square long enough to show us videos of him racing.

    Then the bird man came around to where the bikers were, and both Aarushi and Tatiana got to hold the bird. We then discovered it could dance to 2000s music. 

    We continued our walk around the square in our matching shirts and with our bikes, to run into a group of teenagers who asked about why we’re all twinning. Someone gave them the “We’re a group of 7 MIT students…” spiel and then they dabbed us up one by one. 

    These random encounters all happened within 20 minutes. Bowling Green on a Saturday night is kinda lit.

    Sticking to our original intention of exploring the city, Drew, Aarushi, and I biked back but took a scenic route, stopping at whatever we felt like seeing, namely a church and a rainbow fountain. The fountain was especially fun. Water shot up at random intervals, and Drew had the genius idea that we should bike through it and try not to get wet. We were surprisingly successful.

    Reliving my imagined childhood
    Biking through the fountain

    We agreed that we felt like bored teenagers biking around their small hometown, keeping themselves entertained by doing random sidequests, and occasionally being a public nuisance.

    In keeping with this slightly chaotic vibe of the night, Aarushi and I decided we were going to bake. So at 10 pm we drove to the nearest store and got ingredients to make brownies. We did, after all, have access to an amazing kitchen that we only had to share with each other. I’d never thought to put fruit in brownies before, but blueberry brownies are honestly gas. The best thing I might have ever eaten. 

    Before
    After

    Caroline came down from her Airbnb to join our midnight feast. Drew came as well, although only for the Nannies in Ibiza reality show we were watching, not for the food because of course he doesn’t like chocolate.

    After the brownie had been picked at for about an hour, and the nannies sufficiently humiliated by their narcissistic, filthy rich bosses, Drew, Aarushi, and I decided that instead of getting good sleep before our 87 mile day tomorrow, we’d stay up for an extra few hours yapping about everything and nothing. It was one of those conversations that you don’t want to end, where you slowly stand up, talk for 10 minutes more, move to the stairs, another 5 minutes, loiter at the top of the stairs, another 10 minutes, and eventually realize how ridiculous you are being.

    I, at least, was reluctant to leave our gorgeous Airbnb and give up this rare free time I had over to sleep. It was exactly 2:06 am when we finally did so.

    I regret nothing. It was a wonderful night.

    Bowling Green, you, and all of your delightfully funky people will be missed.

    With love,

    Carmen

  • Day 19: Mogcoaster 🎢

    Day 19: Mogcoaster 🎢

    Rest day in Bowling Green, KY — 0 mi, 0 ft

    Picture this. 

    The room is gloriously silent. No 6:00 am alarm, no sound of sleeping pads being deflated or sleeping bags being rolled up. Your arms stretch out — you’re greeted by an infinite spread of soft mattress on either side, and maybe even some more. This is a perfect rest day in Bowling Green, KY.

    None of this would be possible without the amazing Airbnbs generously donated to us by Lindsey and Adam, supporting our stay before our learning festival tomorrow. We were seriously spoiled, and I felt like a true queen in my queen bed. Probably the longest amount of sleep I’ve gotten thus far, although there aren’t any significant numbers to compare to.

    After waking up at 10:15 ish and laying in my bed for a little bit longer after that, I finally got up and headed over to the adjacent townhouse to reapply my bandages and wait for our breakfast to arrive. Nunu and Aarushi had to head to a nearby bike shop to drop-off Aarushi’s bike to be fixed (still suffering post-tree crash) and of course, pick up coffee on the way. They went to Spencer’s Coffee, which is apparently universally a local favorite, and I can totally understand why. This perfect day continued in the form of an iced dirty chai and breakfast bowl (hashbrowns, peppers, an egg, and miscellaneous deliciousness), and we were seriously munching like kings (a common theme of the day). While eating, I also got to meet Noah, Tatiana’s boyfriend, for the first time. He had driven a crazy 10 HOURS to come meet her, and it was awesome that he got to join us for this rest day!

    Biggg order

    Our plan for the day was this local waterpark called Beech Bend about 20 minutes away, found by Nunu the night before on her usual search for swimming opportunities and volleyball courts. We drafted an elaborate plan to reduce our per-person price with some season pass purchases that allowed free guests and certain perks, the math of which I never fully understood but appreciated since it brought down the price by a decent amount! We loaded into the minivan and started making our way there. 

    Once we arrived, we were greeted by an expanse of cars on all sides, divided into two sections. It seemed that the plot on the left was the location of a drag race, filling the air with sounds of engines roaring as they blasted down the strip, which was quite cool. On the right, bright colors and rollercoasters pointed us towards what was closer to our idea of fun, which seemed to be the same as maybe every other family in the area. Great minds think alike! We parked and got in line for entry, ready to execute our plan to take advantage of the season pass deal, but ran into some hiccups that Noah and Tatiana handled. Since they met as TAs of a negotiation class, I could tell that they had us covered as the responsible adults and let them work their magic!

    Since Beech Bend is both a waterpark and an amusement park, we decided to do the waterpark first and then dry off for the other rides. We all changed, crammed our valuables into a tiny $13 locker, and set off for our first water slide. This one used mats as the protective medium for sliding on, and we realized at the top that we could all double up and of course, promptly dropped our individual mats in favor of that. Drew and Nate went first, and after hearing their screams echo the whole way down, I knew we were in for some fun slides and was honestly a bit nervous. To preface, this was my first time at a waterpark — my idea of fun typically involves much more relaxing and a lot less adrenaline. My hesitance was only overcome as I saw a child half my height get in without a second thought, and from that point on I was (mostly) okay. Carmen and I went down together, which is when I learned that Carmen was much more chill about these rides than I was — she was COMPLETELY silent as I was screaming, prompting me to ask her to scream with me mid-slide so I wouldn’t feel alone. I’m not sure how successful that was? We then rode the rest of the slides, switching up the pairings so that we all rode with each other at least once.

    At this point, I noticed my supposedly waterproof bandage peeling off and revealing my pretty gnarly dog bite to the world. I then embarked on a search for first aid, which was concerningly harder than I originally thought. I ended up asking a lifeguard (who couldn’t be more than 14) for a bandaid, causing him to blow his scary high-pitched whistle and signal 3 whole lifeguards (this time not 14) to start walking towards us. Fearing that they thought it was an emergency, I quickly emphasized that I just needed a bandaid and wanted to know where I could get one. This 14-year-old sternly told me “It’s no problem,” so I stood there awkwardly as I waited for the lifeguards to come up the hill. I got my bandaid and met back up with the rest of the group, who had explored the floatie-based slides for the first time. This is when I realized Carmen had been waiting for me this whole time, which I really appreciated and felt bad since I had to go on a longer hunt — thanks for waiting!!

    This is when stomachs started grumbling, and the food kiosk started to call people over. I was still full from Spencer’s, but the rest of the team + Noah got an assortment of funnel cakes, burgers, hot dogs, fries, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. It looked quite good, and it was all quickly devoured.

    To let the food digest, we went to the lazy river as one long human chain, each person holding onto another and slowly drifting without a care in the world. We cycled around peacefully once, but the second time around was different — the wave pool turned on. Suddenly, we were thrown into a relentless battle against each push of water, and our ability to maintain our chain was seriously tested. Thankfully, Noah was holding onto my floatie, and he was extremely responsible with the two he was holding onto. The same could not be said about everyone else… I had to use both hands on Aarushi, who never escaped my grip (perhaps my biggest achievement of this trip), but there were multiple separations and desperate yells as we continuously broke up, reunited, rinse and repeat. We probably looked INSANE to everyone else enjoying the wave pool normally, but we were in our little world, where staying together seemed to mean life or death. In my head, our group were shipwrecked pirates fighting a relentless storm. It was quite easy to forget that the pool had a depth of not even 4ft!

    After being battered, we returned to the river and decided to do one more lap for the waves, since we somehow enjoyed that more than any other ride in the park. We strategized the best formation to withstand the waves and came prepared. I was holding onto Nunu and Carmen this time, but I soon realized being responsible for two people is a wayyy harder challenge. Nate, at the end of the chain, realizes just as we enter that the only one holding onto him is Nunu, who was allegedly the worst one at holding on. I’ve never seen Nate panic more. He tried to paddle towards my floatie to circle back up and create another connection, but there is unfortunately no handle there for him to hold onto. He slips away from me, and I feel a hand try to grab my foot to no avail. In the meantime, I’m trying to hold onto Carmen for dear life, but I already felt the formation start to crumble. Things fall apart, I think I kick Nate in the face, and many “hand of gods” — as Carmen put it — can be seen all around. At some point, I get separated and am left to drift away.

    Visual for clarity. I’m not sure what happened at the other end, but I imagine most of the same. Michealangelo’s “Hand of God” for reference

    We hit up the floatie slides one more time since Carmen and I hadn’t been yet, and tried the scary red one. From the top, you could see the crazy height you got coming off the slide and into an almost vertical portion, and Nate and I (my buddy for this slide) got to watch as the pairs in front of us experienced it. Can confirm, it felt as crazy as it looked. Nunu and I went down the blue one after, which had a lot of bumpy back-and-forths.

    We then decided to wrap up, get Dippin’ Dots, and head to the amusement park. Dippin’ Dots was another new experience for me! Definitely crunchier than I expected, and while good, the novelty quickly wore off. My ranking of the four flavors we tried: Rainbow Ice, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Cookies and Cream, Strawberry Cheesecake. 

    Our first ride that we hit up was their largest rollercoaster, the Kentucky Rumbler. This is somehow the largest rollercoaster I have ever ridden. Noah, a fellow not-a-huge-fan-of-rollercoasters individual, and I sat together and made it a shared goal to keep our arms up the whole time, which we did! We then hit up the Starship — a ride that purely spins and demonstrates centrifugal force — which I, Noah, and Aarushi skipped to save our stomachs. Then we tried our hands at bumper cars and caused some carnage. Our third ride was a tall dropping ride that brought us extremely high up, or it at least felt extremely high. The drop also felt extremely long. There were a lot of extremes for me, if you can’t tell already. I watched the rest of the group enjoy an airplane ride, and then it was time for our last ride of the day. 

    Before the drop
    Bumpers were bumped

    We revisited the Kentucky Rumbler, but this time with a different objective. Aarushi proposed that we all try to ¹mog the whole time, aka keeping a straight face (or if you’re Drew, an exaggerated facial expression I can’t quite describe). I already knew going in that I would be terrible… and I was indeed. I’m very glad that the final photos from the ride are not available to ever be seen again for my sake. If I had to declare a victor of the challenge, I think Aarushi took the crown.

    Finally, since the park was closing, we had to make our way out, but not without a cheesy jumping photo obviously. For dinner, we decided on getting pho to satisfy our non-fast food cravings (although some people advocated for Wendy’s). It was a great dinner, except for the Thai tea that was a bit too sweet. Someone commented that it tasted like melted ice cream, which was unfortunately too accurate and slightly ruined the taste for me. 

    Supa cool
    PHO

    While eating, Tatiana asked her semi-regular question of us, which was to share something that we were grateful for. Following such a fun day so different from some of the tense days preceding this one, many of us shared a sentiment that we were grateful for this being such a nearly perfect day. I echoed this, especially since I hadn’t had the best couple of days recently. To be 100% honest, while I have felt incredibly supported by the rest of the team as I have been healing from my dog bite, there are a lot of other things outside of their control that have been stressful to deal with. I have a couple of complaints about the healthcare system and some other systems. This day has reminded me of better days to come, and took me out of that bubble that felt a bit overwhelming. It’s a shame the next rest day is not for a while, but I’m sure that things will continue to look up 🙂 Until then, we’ll have this amazing day to look back upon, and we’ll have our season passes for the rest of the year. Let’s run it back at Beech Bend?

    See you soon,

    Caroline

    ¹ In modern internet slang, to mog (or “mogging”) means to outshine, outclass, or look significantly better than someone else. While it originally referred to dominating someone in physical attractiveness, it is now commonly used as playful banter across gaming, sports, fashion, and social media. (citation: Google AI Overview, 2026)

  • Day 18: BUSS*-EEs

    Day 18: BUSS*-EEs

    Mammoth Cave, KY to Bowling Green, KY — 35.6 mi, 1393 ft

    Reading the latest blogs, it feels like emotional whiplash the way the team has experienced the lowest of lows and highest of highs together, often within the span of a couple hours. In the last week, I crashed headfirst into a tree, Caroline got bit by a dog, Tatiana sprained her ankle, Nate/Tatiana/Drew battled through a literal war zone of rabid dogs, Nunu/Drew’s butts have been on fire, Caroline/me’s numb hands are losing fine motor skills, we’ve all gotten some of the worst sleep of our life, and all while biking a few hundred miles. At the same time, we’ve rock scrambled up a gorgeous secluded emerald-moss-green waterfall that I stuck my face in and felt reborn, danced on top of stools on a splash pad in the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky pretending it was Ibiza, listened to Riptide around a bonfire on a warm summer night, slept in hammocks underneath the stars, and eaten free meal after free meal, all thanks to the kindness of dozens of strangers we’ve gotten the chance to meet. As the normalcy of this insane routine has been settling in, I’ve been forgetting lately that the rest of the world is still spinning as it usually does. My family is still following the same routine I’ve witnessed for ten years, my friends are still waking up to go work their internships every morning, my lab is still working on the research projects I left a month ago, and I’m in some la la land where my main concern is that my blog is late.*

    I’ve been lucky to have had some pretty amazing summers and IAPs in my four years at MIT, yet every time I come back to campus and get back into my normal semester routine, what had previously seemed like some of the best moments of my life quickly fade into some distant fever dream. I always wish I somehow had a better record of my life but I am ordinarily too lazy to actually do anything about it, so alas it has stayed merely a wish. Until this summer. And so, I will now describe to you today’s events in as much detail as I can muster.

    Carmen waking up at 7 at the campsite to write the incredibly detailed blog that inspired this post.

    It seems like everybody’s circadian rhythm has adjusted to the 6 AM daily wakeups, because  everyone was up around the campsite before Tatiana’s alarm rang at 9 AM, our latest wakeup of the summer. We were biking in the afternoon today because we booked a 11:45 AM Mammoth Cave Historical Tour. Today marked the HISTORIC RETURN OF SPOKES 2026 because for the first time in a week, everybody was ready to bike, in spite of lingering injuries and dog fears. It was the second shortest route of the summer, a beautiful 35-mile downhill, and I was the chud* who was driving it, selflessly switching my driving day with Tatiana so she could spend more time with her boyfriend Noah who was coming to visit this weekend. 

    Since nobody else wanted to drive, we had to return the extra car we had rented while half the team was sagged out these last few days. Nunu and I decided to make use of our later morning to go return it to our destination for the day, Bowling Green. I learned how to drive the massively wide ½-ton Ford F-150 pickup truck for the first time, checking the side view mirrors every fifteen seconds to make sure I was still barely within the lane lines. Nunu was driving our team minivan, whose overhead storage bag was now pretty empty as our camping gear had been taken out for the night. We’d previously run into some issues driving the minivan with a flaccid overhead bag (stuff falling out on a side road in Luray; the bag itself half falling off on the freeway in Elkhorn City…) yet we still didn’t think to remove it before starting off to BG. Speeding down I-65, I saw the back of the bag thumping up and down on the car roof, so I kept an extra careful eye on it to make sure nothing flew out. Unfortunately, I lost Nunu halfway down the interstate since I was driving cautiously with the F-150, until I get a call from her as I take the exit: the bag had completely unzipped on the highway. As I went to fill the truck up with gas, she took stock of what was left in the Enterprise parking lot. Two camping pillows, a sleeping pad, a camping chair, a hammock, and Caroline’s nice blanket had been lost in the wind (they were nowhere to be seen even when I drove down I-65 again later that day). Nunu and I drove back to the team feeling like serious chuds*; even the extra $100 the kind Enterprise lady gave back to us for returning our rental a day early didn’t improve our moods. The chud-est part of it all was that right as we pulled into our campsite, we felt the first drops of rainfall, and found out that there was a flood warning issued with thunderstorms predicted for all day. So we probably shouldn’t have even returned that extra rental car. 

    Just feeling like some chuds…

    We arrived five minutes after we were supposed to have been checked out of the campsite to our whole team suited up and ready to load the car. We threw everything in and biked to the national park’s visitor center, just barely making it to our tour group in time. 

    I actually really enjoyed the cave tour, which I spent goofing off saying stupid stuff to the rest of the team, making sure we stayed at the front of the line, taking really blurry photos to put in my blog, resisting the urge to touch every rock I walked past, and trying to remember everything the guide said so I can repeat it back to you all. The legend goes that Mammoth Cave was discovered by a guy named John Houchin, who stumbled upon its cool breeze while hunting a bear in 1797. The cave became a hotspot for saltpeter mining, a key ingredient in gunpowder, from 1810-1815, with the value of a pound of saltpeter increasing from two cents to a dollar to back to nothing in the span of those five years, as America cut itself off from trade with Great Britain during the War of 1812 and then went right back to it. In 1816, a year after everyone had abandoned the site, somebody who was looking to buy it came knocking, and the cave has been an active visitor tour site since. The cave is full of artifacts from indigenous people dating back to 5000 BCE, everything from stone tools to limestone tombs containing human bodies with skin and nails intact. It’s also the longest cave system in the entire world!! 

    Some amazing cave photography for you all

    That paragraph pretty much sums up everything we learned on the whole tour. After two hours of looking at rocks, we were famished as usual and we replenished our bodies with cheeseburgers and pizza at the overpriced visitor center cafe. Despite the thunderstorm forecast, we felt barely a few drops of rain so our fearless bikers decided to continue forward with the plan to bike, starting off around 3 PM (our latest start to date).

    As the driver, I instead went to the Mammoth Cave Post Office to mail the postcard I had picked up earlier in the visitor center to my family. As the performative young adult I am, I’ve collected postcards from wherever I’ve gone around the world but always just as wall decor. Thanks to WikiHow, I learned how to actually mail a postcard for the first time in Virginia, and, copying my teammates, I’m trying to send one to my family from every state (SURPRISE!). Now that I’ve found out how they’re actually meant to be used, postcards really are such a cute concept!! It feels like I’m slipping in a sweet secret surprise every time I slip the card through the slot of the blue USPS mailbox.

    After that, I drove to our one and only rest stop for the day: BUC-EE’s!!!!! I had been told by my fellow Texan teammates that BUC-EE’s was like if Costco was a gas station convenience store, like if the American Dream could come true from aisles of gummies and soda and fudge and brisket sandwiches, because there was nothing more American than the row of soda fountains only being available in 32 (L) or 44 oz (XL) cups—except maybe the rows and rows of AMERICA’S 250TH merch. As soon as I walked inside those doors, I lost myself. Red, white, and blue kool-aid ran through my veins as I ran through every aisle scoping my options, the white of my eyes as wide as saucer plates as I took in the enormity of the snack selection before me, and I thought to myself, how amazing what capitalism has done for our country. Nunu, Nate, and I finally settled on an electrolyte can, sour peach gummies, caramel popcorn, candied almonds, lemon soda, cheese and pretzels, and an XXL brisket sandwich. Caroline, Carmen, Drew, and Tatiana split another XXL brisket sandwich, rainbow-sprinkle cookie dough, dark chocolate caramel fudge, spicy pickles, watermelon, and Arizona soda. As we sat in a circle on the cement outside BUC-EE’s to devour our haul, the sudden amazement, patriotism, and greed for capitalism that took over me was quickly replaced by a fierce belief in communism: I held out my hand for a piece of every snack that every Spokes member had bought. Team tax isn’t cheap.

    When the bikers left for Bowling Green, I went straight for our Airbnb to unload all our bags. When I saw what greeted me upon arrival, I literally wept tears of joy and jumped for joy at the same time. Two neighboring townhouses, each with 3 full bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen with an island, a cozy living and dining room, in-unit laundry, and all brand spanking new. We each got our own bedrooms to sleep in. Let me repeat that: WE EACH HAD OUR VERY OWN BEDROOMS COMPLETE WITH A KING SIZE BED!!!! After cold campground nights and deflated air mattresses and three people crammed on sofa couches, this was genuinely heaven. I literally cannot thank our hosts enough: Sam, our thoughtful Bowling Green learning festival coordinator, and Adam and Lindsey, the couple who very kindly let us stay in their home for free.

    I singlehandedly unloaded every single thing in the car to make enough space for all eight seats in the car to go up, so we could drive around together on the following rest day + learning festival day. As I stocked the fridge with two of every kind of soda/drink we had so every possible option would be cold for the team upon arrival, I felt like a serious hero. Until I later realized that Tatiana’s boyfriend Noah was coming tomorrow with an extra rental car, and nobody really drank anything I had put in the fridge, so may be I was DTM*. I don’t mind though; my favorite part of being the driver is being able to do things that make the team happy.

    I joined the team at Thai Thai, where they had stopped 3 miles before the end for a free dinner graciously provided by the restaurant owners. After days of fried chicken in Kentucky, the vegetables and noodles and basil and fried rice seriously hit the spot. A huge huge thank you and shout out to Thai Thai of Bowling Green; the best Thai food I’ve had in a long time!

     Happy campers

    When we came back to the Airbnb, we allocated one hour of shower and blogging time until 10:30 PM, when the moment I had been waiting for for eighteen days finally came. I had genuinely been asking the team every single day what the move was tonight and if tonight was the night, to the point where it felt like I was Curry shooting from the moon hoping one night I make the basket, and the joke became that it would never happen all summer. I am talking, of course, about MOVIE NIGHT!!!!! 

    I was actually so excited I thought I would explode from happiness as Nunu put on We’re The Millers, a comedy about a small-time pot dealer turned international drug smuggler with the help of a fake family of four he put together (The Millers) to look less suspicious. Although half the team went to bed before the movie finished, I thought it was really funny so shoutout Nunu for a great pick.

    And then I also went to sleep, splayed out across my king bed in the master bedroom. It’s crazy how in one day you can wake up with every muscle feeling like lead in a sleeping bag that smells like feet and then end the very same day with all your dreams coming true.

    Sending love to you all as per usual,

    Aarushi

    *For reference I timed this blog and it took me 8 hours across 5 days (1, 3, 1, 1, 2). Hope you enjoyed the detail because this might never happen again.

    *In modern slang, “buss” (often used as “bussin”) means that something is excellent, impressive, or amazing. It is primarily used by Gen Z and younger generations to describe great food or a really fun experience. Common Usages: “This taco is bussin!” (The food tastes incredible.) “That party last night was bussin.” (The event was a lot of fun.) (citation: Google AI Overview, 2026).

    *In internet slang, a chud is a derogatory term used to insult someone perceived as boorish, unintelligent, or socially maladjusted. It comes from the 1984 sci-fi horror film C.H.U.D., which stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller—a movie about radioactive, man-eating sewer mutants. On platforms like Reddit, Twitter/X, and political forums, it is used to describe toxic, bad-faith internet trolls or far-right reactionaries.Outside of politics, it is often used similarly to words like “nerd,” “creep,” or “loser,” specifically implying that someone is physically unappealing, socially awkward, and terminally online. Interestingly, the term has recently been co-opted by some young internet users as a self-deprecating joke to describe themselves when feeling hopeless or “cringy”. (citation: Google AI Overview, 2026).

    *DTM most commonly stands for the internet slang “doing too much”. It is used to call out someone who is being overly dramatic, over-the-top, or trying way harder than a situation requires. Think of it as a quick, modern way to tell someone to chill out or relax. (citation: Google AI Overview, 2026).

  • Day 17: Fake it till you make it

    Day 17: Fake it till you make it

    Liberty, KY to Mammoth Cave, KY — 88.8 mi, 5427 ft

    Some of you may have heard about my recent sprained ankle. Today was the day I began to pretend like it no longer existed. Yes, reader, you read that correctly. Only two days after I sprained my ankle and a day after visiting an urgent care, I have decided that my ankle is NOT sprained and therefore will not be treating it as such.

    My hubris, however, is not completely unlimited, so I did begrudgingly convince myself to drive one of our two cars (I took our usual minivan and left the obnoxiously ginormous 5.8 L V8 GMC Sierra to Drew) and let my ankle rest at least ONE more day.

    Part of this probably awful mindset could be explained by a recent conversation with my brother, Daniel, who accurately said, “bro, you better get back on the bike soon or else you’re a FRAUD,” followed by my deep conversation with Caroline asking if we were frauds. Short answer: maybe, but all of us are kind of frauds since we have to drive every 6 days anyway, so an extra few days in the car really can’t matter that much. 

    When we began the morning, I knew that if I was gonna be stuck in the car, I HAD to make the most of the day and was gonna sidequest max. Fitting with the vibe of the day, I also want my blog to be extra whimsical, so I will be adding in haikus for every major portion of the day. If you feel particularly moved, I would be happy to accept nominations for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. 😆

    On the note of sidequest maxing, I also really wanted to feel useful despite my injury, so I decided to cook breakfast for the team with the farm-fresh eggs that Pastor Roger Allen had given us. My scrambled egg endeavour was going well until I remembered that at home, my family always adds milk to our omelets and scrambled eggs. Of course, the fridge did not support this idea at all, but I was undeterred, as the pantry had dried milk!!! Note: I have never used dried milk before. Second note: I will never use dried milk again. 

    Unbeknownst to the team, I poured the dry milk powder into the eggs and watched my 12 eggs of hard work go to waste, with ALL of the dry milk sticking together in huge clumps that refused to mix into the egg mix. Alas, I decided that I couldn’t go down this easily and spent the next 15 minutes fishing the dry milk powder out of the egg mix. Nate definitely walked by me a couple of times while I was doing this, so I am really not sure if he actually didn’t see or just decided to spare my ego, but regardless, team, don’t even worry; all of the powder was successfully removed, and a slightly rubbery but cooked plate of scrambled eggs was made!

    Haiku #1:

    I tried to cook eggs

    Dry milk does not mix with eggs

    Eggs are served anyway

    After packing up our team’s sprawling possessions from Pastor Allen’s fellowship hall, the team finally rolled out, with Caroline and I whipping the minivan and Drew following us in the 5.8 L V8 GMC Sierra. Since Drew was on a voice call with us, we quickly realized that Drew couldn’t listen to his music, so I selflessly offered to be his radio. My terrible singing turned into the worst rendition of Adele’s “Hello” that you have literally heard in your entire life. Let me set the scene.

    I cannot sing to save my life. Caroline and Drew can maybe actually sing, but Drew has a half-second delay due to the call between cars. Our car sounds something like this:

    “SO HeLlO – SO hELlo – FrOm ThE OThERsIDe – OtHeRsIDeEeEE”

    Actually, I’ll just let you experience it yourself.

    Haiku #2:

    Tatiana “sings”

    Caroline has burst eardrums

    Adele says “Goodbye”

    When we reached our first rest stop, we were greeted by a very nice doggy who actually looked just like Max (the dog that bit Caroline), as well as a BEAUTIFUL playground with lots of sports equipment, swings, a basketball court, and a volleyball net. Obviously, we had to pet the dog (successful), climb on the playset (successful), swing on the swings (successful), and teach Caroline how to throw a football (unfortunately unsuccessful). In the vein of the football endeavour, Drew and I also tragically lost to Nate and Nunu in a backyard football game. Sorry, Drew, that one’s on me.

    Haiku #3:

    Max has now returned

    Throwing a football is hard

    We get to be kids

    It was then time for us to move to our next rest stop at Harden Coffee. Last year’s Spokes team had hyped this up in their blogs as the best rest stop so far, so our hopes were incredibly high, and the team was GEEKED to all get coffee and explore the town.

    Drew, Caroline, and I used our extra time to roam into an extremely cute stationery store and a book shop with paperbacks for $2. One of my roles on the team (aside from morning duty as described in the other blogs – you’re welcome, Drew) is to be the shameless person who calls places and asks for donations. On this note, people have been SO incredibly kind to us. My job has been beyond easy, and it takes me at most three calls per city to get our team a meal. The trip is truly a monumental effort from the entire community, not just our team of 7. As the three of us walked around the town, I made a single call to La Cabana Mexican Bar and Grill near Mammoth Cave, which immediately agreed to feed us for dinner.

    Soon after, however, Drew was summoned to be our team’s hero and returned to the first rest stop where Nunu had unfortunately left her phone. Meanwhile, the rest of the team carefully chose from the coffee selection, with significantly high worries expressed about where and when the team could take their “post-coffee poops.”

    Haiku #4:

    Drew is a hero

    Yummy coffee makes us lit

    We all need to poop

    Sooooo next rest stop? Duh. What else could possibly be the purpose of Spokes?? 

    At this point, Caroline, Drew, and I head to the third rest stop of the day at Brush Creek Baptist Church. We are greeted by the most insanely awesome surprise ever. THE CHURCH HAS A RIVER AND A WATERFALL!!!!

    Obviously, the three of us go and explore it (me hiking on my “no longer sprained ankle”), diving back into Caroline’s Conservation Council roots where she got to engage with the nature and soil of different ecosystems. Drew climbed up the side of the waterfall, leaving the two injured people sad and lonely at the bottom (rude). Soon after, we were joined by Nate and Nunu, who also marveled at the incredible beauty of nature.

    So what’s for lunch?? You guessed it. SANDWICHES! I’m sure you can’t be more excited than me, proven by this beautiful moment where I was so eager to start making my sandwich that I accidentally mistook the sunblock bottle for mayo!

    At this point, Aarushi and Carmen STILL had not arrived, so Drew had his second opportunity to be a hero and make sure that they were okay. Once he finally found them, they arrived with beautiful gifts of free cantaloupes from Mike and Nancy Tucker at Milby’s Produce (thank you, guys!!!).

    After they ate, we, of course, had to show them the waterfall, and Aarushi, Drew, and Carmen, of course, had to climb it, ditching the sad and lonely injured folks AGAIN. This time, though, they were able to climb higher, with the three of them edging each other on. When they came down, they were covered in mud, and we especially noticed that all three of them had dirty butts.

    Drew and Carmen approached this issue like normal people. A little water, splash splash on the butt, good to go!

    Aarushi, however, took a completely different approach. In a horrifying display, she proceeded to crouch in the water, crab style, with her stomach towards the sky, and then thrust her hips up and down to get her butt in and out of the water. Our eyes are truly scarred forever.

    To make matters worse, this now meant that Aarushi had a chamois completely full of water. Do not fear, as she had a wonderful solution to this problem, too! Aarushi proceeded to grip her butt with both hands, squeeze as hard as she could, and say “I’M GRABBING MY OWN BUTT JUST TO FEEL SOMETHING!” She claims that this was meant to wring out her chamois. This is, of course, why she is my best friend 🙂

    Haiku #5:

    We climb waterfalls

    Who will grab Aarushi’s butt

    Maybe only her

    Finally, Drew, Caroline, and I sent off our bikers, and the three of us moved to our last rest stop, Farmwald’s Dutch Bakery and Deli. This store is run by the local Amish community, which is a group that I have gotten to interact with a few times in the past on trips through Pennsylvania with my grandparents, Brenda and Tom. On our last visit to Lancaster County about a year ago, we stumbled upon an Amish and Mennonite auction, and the people there kindly let us stay to watch (I had never been to an auction before!). Aligned with my philosophy of dilly-dallying as much as possible, I wanted to explore the neighborhood around Farmwald’s and see if there were any open shops that we could wander around. Sadly, the nearest one was closed, so we turned around and waited for our bikers in the deli.

    When Nunu and Nate arrived, I immediately knew that my choice not to bike that day was the right one. They were the most exhausted I had ever seen them, telling us about their awful downhill where the wind was so strong that it felt like an uphill. The next group of bikers that came in was in similar shape, so we knew that the team needed emergency fuel to finish the ride. Thank you, Farmwald’s, for our first dinner, consisting of the best pulled pork sandwiches, burgers, and cheesecake EVER.

    Haiku #6:

    The bikers are dead

    Farmwald’s cures the exhaustion

    10 miles to go

    At this point, the driving group was convinced that we would have to SAG our bikers, as there were 10 miles to go and only 45 minutes before sunset. In this vein, Drew got his THIRD chance to be a hero today and went to follow Aarushi and Carmen in the back while Caroline and I set up our tents at the campground. 

    Of course, Aarushi and Carmen are just the GOATs, and even as the light waned, they refused to stop on the last two-mile climb up to the campsite so that Drew physically could not SAG them out. We are definitely a group of stubborn, tough cookies.

    Finally, we got to wrap up our day with INSANELY delicious food from La Cabana Mexican Bar and Grill for the second dinner and GREAT vibes from Louis and Nolasco. Thank you, guys, for being so kind and donating a meal to our team. It was DELICIOUS!! Extra shoutout for the birria tacos that literally brought life back into my eyes.

    Haiku #7:

    People are so kind

    Nolasco feeds us great food

    Our hearts are happy

    At this point, the long day (and long blog) are coming to a close. Nightly routines proceeded as usual, only a little stinkier than normal for some of us due to the coin showers at Mammoth Cave (6 quarters for 4 minutes per person… and guess how many quarters we had on hand).

    Regardless, I was happy that my ankle had clearly “completely healed” and that I got to experience a beautiful sidequesting day in the car with no SAGs. Life is good 🙂

    With love to the moon and back,

    Tatiana ❤