Gun Creek Campground, IL to St Louis, MO
107 miles, 2180 ft elevation
While I’m usually the one trying to get the group to wake up as late as possible, this morning was different. This was the morning of the longest (and coincidentally hottest) ride of the summer so far. We woke up around 4:30 and most of us had left the campground by 5:45.
For the first half of the ride, Cleo, JD, and I worked on perfecting our drafting. Apparently riding very close to the rider in front of you (within 2 feet) can save up to 40% effort compared to biking alone. We took turns being at the front of the group every 5 miles and I think it really helped!
We met up for lunch near a small grocery in Oakdale, IL.
Over lunch we discussed a name for our loyal van - we felt that it deserved one given that it has now survived for 18 days, more than 4 times as long as any other Spokes van (there were 3 in case you forgot). We landed on Chrissy, in part because it sounds like Chrysler and also due to some spokesters’ obsession with this meme.
While the first half of the ride had been pretty chill, around mile 60 I started to feel tired and maybe a bit dehydrated. By this time there was a pretty brutal headwind and the temperature kept going up. As Sophia later put it, it felt like constantly being followed by a blow dryer. Since I was getting low on water, I decided to stop at a lonely house in the middle of the endless cornfields. I knocked on the door but no one answered. Defeated, I decided to go sit under a tree and rest until another rider came along.
I’m not really sure if 5 minutes passed or 20, but at some point I heard a dog barking behind me. I turned around to see someone walking towards me from the house.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah thank you I could just use some water, could you fill up these bottles?”
I think she thought I was dumb for biking 100+ miles in 100+ degree weather, and perhaps we are. With fresh, cold water, I was ready to hit the road again. I caught up with Cleo at a gas station just outside of St. Louis, and we later met up with Sophia just before completing the century! After briefly celebrating we braced for the final 7 miles as the temperature reached 102. Cleo and I stopped for water with about 4 miles left, as we were pretty sure we would have collapsed before getting that far.
After such a difficult day we were lucky to get a delicious dinner at a pizza place with Deepa, an MIT alum.
Afterwards we had a chill evening watching Baby Driver, inspired by some of the learning festival kids telling JD that he looked like him. To be honest it wasn't the greatest movie but overall a great ending to the most intense day of biking we've had so far!