Tuesday, August 13th, 2024
Placerville, CA -> Sacramento, CA
61.39 mi, 1778 ft elevation gain
Welcome back to Portugal! - Cleo's POV
Today, we started the three-day journey back to Paris. It feels weird crossing three countries in the same amount of time it took Spokes to get halfway through Kansas. After packing our car (much easier than packing Chrissy) and bidding farewell to Lagos, we start the drive north.
The highlight of the morning was when my sister did my makeup—our deal was that she'd get to do it if she read 100 pages of the novel she needed to finish for school.
For lunch, we stopped in a cute little town in the middle of nowhere that had amazing squid salad! In the afternoon, we made it to Evora, our stop for the day. We wandered around the town, checking out the churches and the adorable streets. It's a UNESCO Heritage site so it was bound to be pretty.
That evening had 2 funny moments. We got scammed by a drunk bartender, but my dad and brother managed to bargain with him to get our money back. We all left a one-star review of the bar. Then we found out my dad had accidentally booked the hotel dinner when he reserved the room, so we had to eat there. At first, we weren’t too thrilled, but the delicious Iberian ham they served made up for it. We ended the night playing Whist, one of our go-to family card games.
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Hello! Varsha here to share the bikers' POV! While Cleo rightfully and deservingly indulged in her European summer, we had set off on our journey towards Sacramento. After yesterday's hard ride, we were looking forward to today's more chill and flat ride; much of the route would be on a beautiful bike trail.
As Hank mentioned in the last blog, we've all been embracing the bum mentality as of late. And so this morning was no different. We dilly-dallied around the breakfast table in the church. At this point, I could barely stomach our classic Spokes breakfasts and had to force myself to eat some fruit and Gogo Squeez. The only thing keeping me going was the thought of getting ice cream in Sacramento.
Sacramento was a beacon of hope for the Spokes team. I had only been once before for a conference in middle school, and had not so great memories attached to the city because of that. But for some reason, Amulya and Hank were convinced that Sacramento was heaven on Earth. And I get it. After a few weeks of being in tiny towns, Sacramento would be a sprawling megacity in comparison. Even I was excited.
The sky was perfectly still and blue, not a cloud in the sky. The sun was already beating down on JD, Amulya, and me as we left the church parking lot. My intention for the day was to be as present as possible and enjoy the journey. There were only a few remaining rides of Spokes left.
And so enjoy the journey we did. There were a surprising number of stray cats on the bike trail, so naturally we stopped to admire them and take pictures.
We also took a leisurely break at a gas station to fill up on ice water. JD and Amulya went to Starbucks to grab a snack, and we met up with Jess. Earlier on Spokes, we would have been so concerned with making it to our destination as early as possible. But like I mentioned, I think all of us were just savoring as much of the ride as we could, both on and off the bike.
The rest of the ride on the bike trail was amazing. We biked right along the American River, accompanied by beautiful views of the flowing water and by many fellow bikers on the route itself. We even did our steepest grade of the summer: 18%!
Despite having biked the entire summer, I still felt like an amaueter and baby on the bike, watching the road bikers around me decked out in high-end bike gear from their socks to their high-tech bike computers. Nonetheless, it was still cool to people/bike watch with my new biking knowledge.
We met up with the rest of the team at a park in Sacramento that was lined with palm trees. Ah, California. I had a delicious french bread sandwich (I wish we had discovered this earlier in the summer) with refreshing iced tea and sweet cherries. I may be burnt out by Spokes breakfasts, but Spokes lunches always seem to hit. After chatting and relaxing with the team for a bit (and observing some aggressive squirrels, one of JD's biggest ops), we went to Salt and Straw for some much anticipated ice cream.
For those of you who are not familiar with Salt and Straw, it's a West Coast ice cream chain that specializes in really unique ice cream flavors. I've been talking about it endlessly with the team because I used to frequent it with my sister whenever I'd visit home. I got a scoop of honey lavender ice cream and olive oil ice cream.
Sophia and Rebecca left a bit earlier from Salt and Straw to see the Capitol Building and rose garden.
After our ice cream quest, the rest of us headed over to our host (Bob) for the night. Bob had participated in many bike tours and races throughout his lifetime, and we marvelled at his garage filled with all sorts of bike gadgets, gear, and tools. He shared that one of the best bike tours that he had ever done was in the UK (next bike trip @Spokes?). Bob was so kind and patiently answered many of our questions about all things bike-related and about his life. Afterwards, we split up into the tasks for the evening: showers, personal tasks, and figuring out dinner plans.
I retreated to the backyard for a bit, watching the late afternoon wind gently rustle the leaves of the lemon tree. I thought about my former home in SoCal and called my mom. My parents just recently moved to Dallas to be closer with family. No longer would I get to go back to our old home and eat the many fruits hanging of the trees in our backyard, pomegranates, guavas, rows of herbs and flowers that my parents so lovingly cultivated over the years. Or sit in the small swing that was shaded by our persimmon tree. I guess with the end of Spokes in just two days, I was feeling extra nostalgic as of late.
Soon it was time to head to dinner. Sophia had been adamant that we go to a buffet at least once before the end of Spokes. And today was the day. We went to a Chinese buffet. We were so confident that we would crush the buffet; we were 7 hungry bikers after all. I think we all blacked out a little bit as soon as we entered the buffet, and we began piling our plats with sushi, noodles, stir-fries, and all sorts of goodies. As a game, we all kept track of our plate count throughout the dinner to see who would have the most at the end.
However, we were a little too ambitious because soon after, we all began to plummet and quickly lose steam. Suddenly, we were battling our inner demons. Rebecca also made us take some heinous sped-up videos of us eating during the buffet. For your sake, I will spare you from watching these videos. They are truly horrendous. But here are some pictures instead.
We eventually rolled out of the buffet, unable to think or talk because of the sheer volume of food in our stomachs. Every bump and jostle in the car made us groan with pain.
Did we regret it? Slightly. But at least it made for another memorable story.
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