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Spokes 2025
Moab, UT -> Moab, UT
One Schmitt, two Schmitt, red Schmitt, blue Schmitt. Today I was struck with the cruel reality that I cant just call Sarah by her awesome nickname Schmitty because we have two more Schmitties with the gang today. Sarah’s lovely parents, Jennifer and Mike (dubbed mother and father Schmitt) got the team an Airbnb for two days and treated us to quite possibly some of the most fun and adventurous rest days of the trip. Sadly twin sister Schmitt could not join us 🥲.
We had potential plans today for an early morning hike, however, the group collectively decided in the morning that we were not built for that so we all enjoyed some delicious cinnamon rolls made by mother Schmitt then Ramona and I hit the pool for a morning swim. Later, a few of us hit the town to go to a bike shop and book store. We all did our business and Tian introduced me to some game on her phone that she really loves. I, looking at bike tires the first round, was not locked in so Tian easily defeated me. But of course that round was just the training so I proceeded to destroy her the next two games. We hurried back to the Airbnb to set off for our group white water rafting trip on the Colorado river.
Our rafting guide, Jonah, got to know us all and gave us the run through on raft and kayak safety. I really wanted to flip a kayak, but they ened up being pretty much unflippable. The ride down the river was pretty relaxing. We saw 3 bald eagles, an otter den, and even a stunning otter impression from Ruth flailing in the water. I started out in the raft and really wanted to take a turn at the paddles. So I got into the captain chairs and started rowing. Now some would say I was just bad a rowing, but the raft was initially in quite the difficult position near the river bank in almost still water making it pretty difficult to navigate back to the flow in the middle. Charles stepped in to assist, each of us with one paddle and we eventually found the bubble line and started zooming. Others tried, Ramona getting the most praise from Jonah for her steady pace and good navigation. Personally, I believe she received the oars when the raft was already in steady currents due to the labors of all who came before her, but I could never hate on Ramo so I sat there while she was praised, only making a small off-handed political comment about inheriting a good economy to Charles. During this process of us spokies learning how to row a boat, mother and father Schmitt wisely chose to flee to a kayak, avoiding a series of terrible raft maneuvers with one of us spokies in the captains seat. When it was finally my turn in a kayak, Ruth and I locked in. Utilizing her years of rowing experience and my raw power, we successfully paddled around in circles and were far slower than Charles and Tian in the other kayak 😐. But we did have a good time navigating through a few of the rapids and swimming around in calmer areas. All in all, rafting was a great experience for the team, after packing up all the boats at the end we started heading back to moab and hit our spokes signature move: napping in the van.
After our return, we set out on yet another adventure: Arches National Park. We went on a short sunset hike to the delicate arch and I gotta say, it don’t look all that delicate to me. Liiiiiiiike a bunch of birds were pulling up and perching on it and nothing happened 🤷🏾♂️. The hike up was pretty nice and it wasn’t too hot anymore. Ruth enjoyed seeing germans, because apparently every time you go on a hike there will be germans. She has some strange obsession with them for no reason, even though she barely speaks the language. Everyone enjoyed me tripping and falling on the way up because they’re all fake friends with no care as to if I was okay. Seeing the arch itself was pretty breathtaking. I would’ve loved if the amphitheater around it didn’t have as many people so the entire area would be more serene, but I suppose Jean Paul Sartre put it best: hell is other people (I’m just being dramatic, but i would have loved to be there at like 3 am with no one else around). Charles, Joseph, and I got some solid pictures of the men of the group looking fly as heck, but we were photobombed by Greta who couldn’t resist destroying out vibes (She’s evil, simple as that). Tian of course got her entire photoshoot with all of her signature poses as usual, actively kicking away any spokies who wanted to join her bc she gotta maintain her solo traveler reputation. After some cute full group photos we all headed back down and had a great conversation about REDACTED. Tian and Ruth have quite interesting opinions about the topic, then we took the convo to the van ride back to Moab.
Our final event of the day was hitting an upscale Italian restaurant. Now I LOVE Italian food, but the menu was my worst nightmare: too many options. Everything looked phenomenal, I didnt know what to order and started scrambling to organize a bunch of shared plates with other spokies so I could try everything. Bc the team is fake as heck no one wanted to go splitsies on 2-3 dishes so i had to make a choice. Once the waitress got to me I asked a wealth of questions about the dishes but was hit with the curveball of more dinner specials on the board behind me which i hadn’t seen. Naturally I asked her to come back to me after this revelation. Everyone else orders. Most notably Joseph gets the Josephina ravioli, very fitting I know. Once the zero hour finally arrived and I was forced to make a decision then and there, I did not take a chance on the ravioli, nor did I spring for the tortelloni. I, a man of class and high standards, ordered their mac and cheese. No toppings, no meat, no nothing. Just cheesed-up mac. As the other ordered started rolling in I started to get scared because they all looked absolutely scrumptious. All of the complex artisanal pastas made my dedication to my mac and cheese waver, I nearly even felt some regret. Then set before me was the finest plate of dairy coated pasta I have every witnessed. The consistency, the aroma, the perfectly browned layer of cheese on top. Taking my first forkful caused a single tear to trickle down my face. C’est tres bon. C’est magnifique. One could say it had a certain je ne sais quoi. But as they do whenever you find something truly sacred, the fiends began to swarm. Greta and Ruth started by simply asking for a taste, to which I agreed – I am a chill guy who likes to share food after all. But then, without warning, they began to descend on my cheese sauce with handfuls of garlic bread, dunking and swiping, leaving streaks of emptiness where rich cheese sauce once was. I continued to eat and revel in the meal, but the crows were flocking. In the end, my plate was decimated, not a spec of noodle or cheese sauce remaining. While I’m sure everyone enjoyed their own meals, everyone who tried mine surely had regrets about their ordering choices afterward.
After dinner we headed back to the Airbnb, another successful day for the spokies, very generously funded by mother and father Schmitt. All parties, tired, speedily headed to bed in preparation for an even longer and more arduous day tomorrow.
Denver, CO -> Black Hawk, CO
Ishaq on the blog, and we’re gonna keep this one short and sweet. Yesterday we had a great learning festival un Denver, but the real highlight gotta be what happened after. Yes the alum dinner that you can read all about in another blog, but even more epic, Joseph and I went on a spontaneous 10:30pm movie excursion to watch Superman. Absolute cinema 🙌. Lex Luthor truly taught me that I’m not hating to my full potential, but some of his actions were down right diabolical.
In other exciting news, we finally got a new car! Amy the white 2025 Chrysler Pacifica has now been replaced with Bertha, the grey 2025 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. And today will be Bertha’s first ride 😎
Getting up this morning was quite the endeavor after getting back at 1am. In the morning, I was groggy and complaining about the impeding ride. Our host said to me that it seemed like my heart wasn’t in this trip. I proceeded to think about that for the first 20 miles 😐. The main challenge of the day is out first climb into the rockies. But first we had a great stretch on bike trails around Denver, and thanks to our host’s recommendation, I was zooming with my slightly overinflated tires. Greta and I met a chill biker named Joel at the second rest stop. His son was actually in the 2024 Tour de France, riding for EF, but we didn’t get his name 🥲.
After quite the hefty rest, I set off on the climb alone. 18 miles, 4300 feet, somewhat reminiscent of Shenandoah on day 3. I, however, am a changed rider, making this a little baby climb. I locked in and and just pedaled bruv. I wont lie, the final stretch to the peak had me huffing and puffing, moving at 3.5 mph, but we made it alright. All the other spokies has similar experiences, and it really goes to show just how far we’ve all come.
Pulling into our host Amanda’s house near Black Hawk, I was hungry but energized and we all played games as we waited for greta in the van and all the other spokies to finish their climbs. The day ended with a top tier pasta dinner and some good games of horseshoe in the backyard.
TBH, theres def a lot of other stuff that happened today, but c’est bon. My heart definitely isn’t in this blog thing.
Ishaq here with a driver blog. Yesterday I went to visit my mom in Oklahoma City so I abandoned the spokes team and it was pretty 50/50 among the rest of the members is I would come back. After a nice day with my mom and afternoon in Wichita where I went to a nice coffee shop and random barber shop, I was really thinking about forgottign this whole biking thing. But how could I deprive the public of my blogs? So, I rejoined the team and brought a bunch of Nigerian snacks.
Now to the driving of it all. We are a notoriously terrible team in the morning, we’d set wake up times and leave times and regularly disregard them on the basis of low collective responsibility. Greta, however, was resolute on us get out the door on time at least once just to prove we could. So in support of this idea I woke up everyone 6:30, lightly kicking their sleeping bags when necessary. I was locked in on my driver duties and hurried everyone and we 6 of 7 bikers made it out by 8:10, just minutes after our 8 am departure goal. Joseph, sadly, lost something again. This time it was his glasses, so we spend 30 minutes looking for them until we ultimately gave up and collectively hoped that one of the spokies had “accidentally” taken them for some reason. I personally suspected Greta, she clearly was itching for revenge for the time Joseph stole her phone. She of course denied this accusation when I confronted her later on, but we all know the evil that lurks in her mind.
It was a short biking day to Dodge City, aka The Wickedest Little Town in the West, known for it’s history of cowboys and outlaws on the old frontier. Googling the place made be want to visit a saloon and hawk one up for the good ole’ spittoon, but back ti the driving. I got to the first rest stop just minutes before Greta. She was ZOOMING and didn’t stay long. Fueled by the PRs set yesterday by others while she was driving she wanted to go all out today and knew the key was to keep these rest stops short and sweet. The rest of the team rolled in and out of thew rest stop and last came Joseph, sunglassesless, in agony of the bright sun blinding him on highway 50. I would have said he could borrow mine, but they are prescription and I’m quite blind so I wouldn’t really work out. So, he hopped in the car, and my driver day once again became a dynamic duo.
The rest of the day was pretty standard biking. Joseph and I saw largest wind farms we’d both ever seen. Then I tried to get him on the show Legion, which I watched a long time ago and forgot, but he didnt seem all to into it. Greta was going mad fast so she ended up skipping the last rest stop and riding straight to the end. She put up quite the fast 100km PR, some would say nearly unbeatable by any of us other spokies… nearly. Everyone else was pretty fast today too so we ended up arriving around 2pm, definitely one of our earliest arrivals. Now we had the rare the occurrence of free time on a biking day, so we hit the local water park 😎. Well 5 of us did, Sarah, Joseph, and Charles stole out host’s car and did donuts in the parking lot of a coffee shop or something. The water park was quite fun, they had the works, a lazy river, water slides, and some little lanes where I could just swim laps. I’m pretty bad at swimming, but I find it super cool so I’m trying to learn some water skills. Greta tried to teach me how to tread, but I really was just drowning with extra steps. We all relaxed for the last hour until we had to head back for dinner.
We had some absolutely amazing lasagna and our host’s told us about the history of Dodge City. The lawlessness and cowboys were only the surface level, with tons of economic and military involvement with the history of city and surrounding area. It was quite educational, but I really wouldn’t do it justice with a brief recap here. After dinner, we all settled down and prepared for bed to try and once again get an early start tomorrow.
Lastly, here is Charles, moments before he and Ruth collectively break our host’s violin.
WAKE UP! ITS THE FIRST OF THE MONTH!
Hi, Ishaq here 👋. Happy first of July and have Tour de France eve eve eve eve. What a day today was. The pace was slow, the vibes immaculate, and the falls even more so. All in all a chill century ride with loads of fun time.
Our journey begins in Sedalia, Missouri where we hop back on the Katy trail, where we’ll stay for pretty much the rest of the day. But we had a nice rest stop at a cafe where I got a large pineapple limeade Italian soda. Delicious way to instantly hit my daily recommended added sugar intake. But continuing on we hop back on the trail and start playing Mr. White. Our favorite gaem for the day works by havign us all pass around Charles’ phone and getting a word. All civilians have the same word, 2 people, the under covers, have a different word, and Mr. White gets no word. No one is directly told their role except Mr White and we all have to go around giving clues in order to vote out Mr. White before they get the civilian word and vote out the under cover members. On the other hand, the goal of Mr. White and the under cover members are to survive as long as they can.
Now that you know the game, you can begin to understand just how I was repeatedly wronged over the course of this ride. Every time my turn rolled around I’d drop the most elite hints and no one would get them. I personally think its a skill issue. For example, I had Lord of the Rings as my word, so I, with a very sensible line of logic, said “Professor X” (Professor X -> Magneto -> Ian McKellan -> Gandalf). Little did I know, none of the other spokies know X-men! Actually criminal. So I made it FAR more simple for round 2 and dropped “Eagles” (Gandalf always calls the eagles to save the day in LOTR). Once again even the so called “LOTR readers” didn’t get it. I was ultimately voted out for my “suspicious answers” and we civilians lost the round ☹️. Even worse, Ruth’s insufficient knowledge of the intelligence of aquatic mammals threw me on the chopping block again (She claims whales aren’t smart).
In the middle of our grand group ride a few whoopsies happened. First off, I sadly slipped off the trail, took a ride in the bushes, and fell back on to the trail. Really tough, I though I was going to survive spokes unscathed, but I have now acquired scrapes on my right knee and elbow. The team, of course, laughed at me, however, my fall was topped by Charles just a couple of hours later. While setting up a new game of Mr. White, he clipped a metal post and was launched off his bike. He lied there, motionless, all of us thinking the worst. He says he hit his head and the worst was spinning but recovered as we ushered him to a nearby table. He actually re-scraped an old scab on his elbow so we hit it with the wettest stingiest alcohol swab which had him squealing in pain. Once we were sure he was okay we all had a good laugh about the sound of the fall and the scene we observed in the aftermath. Maybe we’re horrible people for finding joy in the misfortune of our friends. Maybe we are just a generation conditioned on epic fail complications 🤷🏾♂️. Either way, its funny because we were all okay in the end.
After tending to the wounds of the fallen, we stopped playing Mr. While and I was now incredibly tired of biking for the day. This is where I innovated. Using two bungee cords I secured my iPad to my handlebars to enable a peak watching experience on the bike. Granted I did not want to watch anything actually good that would require mental energy to enjoy so I put on the Netflix adaptation of the popular game series Devil May Cry. I was very disappointed because at no point in the 4 episodes I watched did a devil cry. But, I suppose thats what makes it interesting: maybe a devil will cry, maybe not 🤷🏾♂️. The other spokies were all haters, thinking that I would fall or my iPad would drop, but I literally have a degree in engineering from MIT so pretty confident in the setup. I followed Ruth and Ramona because the iPad partially covered my bike computer.
At the end of the day we rode into Kansas City and I hada great time zooming down the city roads at sunset. We got to our large Airbnb where Sarah made us all grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, then we spokies dispersed for our bedtime endeavors.
Yes, you can stop complaining, I, Ishaq, am indeed back on the blog. Today was out second full day in Bowling Green and the day of our learning festival.
Keeping it real with y’all, I dont really know what happened today, I was just along for the ride until someone said,”you know you’re blogging today right?” But anyways… it was a successful learning festival with dozens of young minds being molded by our quality teaching and engaging lessons. The setup in the morning was very smooth and the kids were wonderful as per usual. In out machine learning lesson, taught by Tian and I, we had our first ever class perform perfectly on our first activity and all the kids had fun making data to train our happiness detector. Also were able to try out some new extensions to our lesson to teach more about different kinds of machine learning problems. All in all, very successful festival.
Howdy hi y’all, Ishaq on the blog today and what a day it was. The team (well actually mostly me) was pushed to the brink mentally and physically, and once again reminded of the cruel reality of this world. But at the end of the day maybe of greatest enemy is the one thing we cant escape from… ourselves.
This day began like any other, despite my incredible Garmin sleep score of 90, we had a lazy morning, ate breakfast and packed our car, saying goodbye to our wonderful host Theresa and the quaint little town of Tazewell VA around noon. We expected a little rain, but nothing too bad so we hit the road with our rain coats. I was determined to make the day an easy one, so I employed the elite biking strategy that makes you 10-20% more efficient on the road: drafting Greta for 40 miles. Life in the draft is a nice one, you have the person in front pedaling away while I could just sit there taking in the sights and occasionally putting some wattage. Further, the climbs felt like easy mode. The draft helped less here, but Greta’s pacing simply couldn’t be beat. For the first time miles long climbs didn’t mean contemplating existence and cursing the earth for being bumpy, and not gonna lie I was feeling a little cocky so I decided to see how long I could go without shifting my front derailleur to the small ring (became a low cadence, high resistance warrior on all the climbs).
I finally was forced to shift when climbing the aptly named Big A Mountain (it was a big mountain after all), but sustained my riding bliss right up and through the summit. Now for the descent, but… tragedy strikes! When I go to shift up my chain fell off my cogs. So I go through the process of getting my hands a little dirty to get it back on and keep riding.
While descending we were hit by a massive rainstorm, each drop hella painful as we zoomed at 30 mph down the mountain roads. The next rest stop was right at the mountain base and we took shelter in the Honaker Community Center. Rain was coming down hard and Greta somewhat jokingly suggested that we should just stay there for the night. Lowkey it was a great idea, it was pouring rain, we had another 30 miles to go and the community center has bathrooms and a kitchen. The one down side is that the next day would be turned into a 115 mile ride to get to Hazard, Kentucky in time for our next learning festival. After an hour of deliberating, I was hopped up on endorphins and good vibes with a reckless abandon for the wellbeing and sanity of the team, making me a fierce supporter for a 115 mile ride. The team was split evenly: four for staying four for going.
Sanity was decreasing, then, in proper deus ex machina fashion, a staff member of the community center rolled up outside and told us we couldn’t stay the night inside and wed have to be in an outdoor shelter down the road. After seeing it, the team said heck nah and we geared up to bike the rest of the way to Breaks Interstate Park. Joseph and Charles leave. Ruth isn’t feeling well (ruth’s edit: this is a lie, I went to help with the tents) so she hops in the car with Tian. Ramona and Sarah then depart, however they start going the wrong way! Greta and I were about to take off, but tragedy strikes again! Greta can’t find her phone! I hop on my bike to go look for in the community center with her, then tragedy again again! My front shifter isn’t working!
I call up Ramona for some quick maintenance and we start trying to track Greta phone because it wasn’t in the community center. After some tinkering we determined my front derailleur had become horribly misaligned somehow and I was no longer able to shift to the small ring. And with some nifty find my iPhone tracking we saw Greta’s phone suspiciously traveling our route. After a quick phone call we determined that Joseph had stolen Greta’s phone and sabotaged my bike in an attempt to prevent the both of us front being first to the national park! Absolutely diabolical. Well, this is half true, he did accidentally take Greta’s phone (not even realizing he had it when we were clearly looking for it before he left), but my bike breaking is still a mystery.
Tian is driving, Ruth is in the car, with no room left, I have but one choice: Ride the last 30 miles using my broken bike. A challenge, yes, but one that I had the determination to complete. By this point everyone but Greta and I had left, we started cycling and instead of cheating in her draft for another 30 miles, I took the lead and I start dashing. Just a few miles in, Greta asked me, “Can you keep this pace for 20 more miles?” I simply shrugged and said “Let’s find out.” It was then, on a broken bike, that I hit my fastest 5 mile, 10K, 10 mile, 20K, 30K, and 40K pace (peep the Strava) averaging 20 mph for a long stretch through the rolling hills of western Virginia.
Our final challenge? Three large hills at the end of the ride to enter the park. I, of course, cannot shift down. By this point Greta and I have caught up to and passed every other biker on the team. I forced all of my weight and all of my strength into the pedals as an ungodly slow cadence, swerving side to side just to reduce the grade ever so slightly. It began pouring after the first hill. I was exhausted, legs aching, heart pounding, thinking I’m certainly not qualified to carry these boats, let alone the logs. I pulled out my phone to call it quits and get Tian to come pick me up. No service. As said in the critically acclaimed drama set in the Star Wars universe, Andor, “There is only one way out!” I hopped back on the saddle and continued to sluggishly grind my way up into the park. On nearing the end, right before the park entrance, the rain cleared and we were beholden to a beautiful view of the mountains and the setting sun on the horizon. As the rest of the team caught up we had one last group hype session to get ready for the last stretch of the climb. I gave a short speech. The content? I cant remember. The result, however, was six bikers devoted to finishing strong on what may have been the craziest day of our trip so far.
We rolled into our campsite, Ruth and Tian having already unpacked and pitched tents, I took a shower and retreated to my tent, for my crucible was now over and I yearned for nothing more that the sweet comfort of my dreams. But… A car rolls up to our campsite, its a park ranger and they tell us the worst news: we had set up on the wrong site! But it was fine because no one has booked it and I didn’t have to move my tent and simply went to bed.
Oh and we totally saw a bunch of cows earlier in the day that kept blocking the road, but it didn’t narratively fit so here’s some pictures for funzies.
Linden, VA to Big Meadows Campground, VA – 55.75 mi, 6,555ft
Howdy y’all, Ishaq here. Today we had quite the late start but we’re treated to a quality pre-ride meal by our wonderful hosts, Jen, Tim, and their adorable baby Wayne (his cuteness fed our spirits with the motivation to conquer the day’s challenge). It was raining in the morning so we gladly accepted a short ride down the steep gravel road to start our journey on the highway to Shenandoah National Park.
Everything started out alright with a tiny hill around 10 miles in and we all got some wicked speed on the way down. However, it was quite hot today so I drank all my water by the time I got to our first rest stop and gladly purchased an Irish cream coffee and a lemonade from a lovely cafe. I also got what was probably the worst baguette I’ve ever had but a biker gotta eat 🤷🏾♂️. Ruth was driving today, and while she was waiting for us she explored a cute little inn. Everything inside looked old and expensive–so certainly outside of our spokes budget.
All in all it was a successful and restful break! Ramona took an awesome candid group photo and we continued our bike.
All was good until i saw this come up on my bike computer:
Arguably worse than our climb yesterday, we had a 10 mile, 3000 foot, grade 5 climb into Shenandoah ahead of us. And being completely real I was not physically or mentally prepared for that challenge. Everyone went ahead of me and two of us, who had been having some cardiovascular issues the previous day, made the smart decision to ride up in the car part of the way. I, however, stopped at another cafe, got another lemonade and sat on a porch of an abandoned building contemplating this climb. Contemplation quickly became doom scrolling, along with my daily LinkedIn games (gotta do my Queens). I realized it had been a bit and I probably should get going so I put on a podcast reviewing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and got to riding. The first half of the climb took an hour. Physically, I was broken, mentally even more so. I did not help that the podcast was bad and they kept hating on the Star Wars prequels (which I am quite a fan of). I met up with Tian and Ruth for some lunch as everyone else had went ahead.
On this break at the half way point I went non verbal. Drank two full bottles of water, scarfed down the rest of my disgusting baguette, and laid down on a park bench. As I laid there staring at the tree above me and sky above that tree, I thought to myself, “dang I could really just hop in the car right now and get a ride to the top.” But then I thought of former Navy SEAL, endurance athlete, and motivational speaker, David Goggins. What would he say to me right now? WHOS GONNA CARRY THE BOATS!
I locked in, got up, biked out into another 5 miles of pure uphill. My willpower renewed, and reinforced now by the power of Jazz, Bollywood music, and the Sinners soundtrack. I pushed up that mountain and may have truly experienced endorphins for the first time. I took some stops at the view point and found joy in the climb. Just me, my bike and I, determined to make it to the top.
Hitting the peak was absolutely euphoric. I gladly zoomed at 30mph down the the other side until finally seeing other Spoksters at a lookout.
After that, I cant say the rest of the ride was chill, but it was certainly more manageable. We made it to Big Meadows campground as the sun was setting and I hurriedly got a bag of kettle corn and a sprite from the general store minutes before closing. I was now at peace… PSYCH! Where was Ruth? Where was Tian? Nobody knew, everybody worried. But it ultimately all panned out as Ruth found Tian and drove her on over. We unloaded the car and set up camp in the dark. We started cooking, but I conked out immediately, leaving the rest to the other Spokies.
MIT Spokes 2025 