Tag: cycling-day

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. 

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. 

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.

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). 

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.

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. 

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.

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

London, KY to Liberty, KY – 64.8 mi, 4060 ft

Last night was probably the worst sleep we’ve gotten during this trip. In an attempt to create “summer vibes”, Drew, Carmen, Nunu, Aarushi, and I all decided to sleep in hammocks in the backyard, as opposed to sleeping on the floor inside or in tents like normal people. Drew slept in the hammock already set up outside on a stand in the backyard. The remaining four of us used two hammocks provided by our (amazing) hosts, Lucy and Steve, as well as two hammocks that we brought on the trip. We promptly realized that the hammocks we brought were both missing enough parts to make them non-functional, and we were only able to make them work by frankensteining parts from the hammocks Lucy and Steve provided us. We strung these four hammocks haphazardly across the pavilion in the backyard, criss-crossing two of the hammocks in order to do the aforementioned frankensteining of hammocks. 

For some reason I ended up taking the bottom, criss-crossed hammock (the pink one). I was the first one to sleep last night so in hindsight I don’t know why I did this but after such a long and stressful day of fighting off dogs along an 80 mile ride, I probably just slept in the first thing I saw. This ended up being a critically bad decision because Nunu, who later went to sleep in the top criss-crossed hammock (the red one), spent the entire night LYING ON MY KNEES. I think I tried adjusting a few times during the night to no success and in the end I was too tired to move. I also suspect this knee sitting situation is a precursor to some incoming knee concerns. 

In addition to that, all five of us hammock sleepers were all super cold despite (most of us) being in sleeping bags and it only dropping down to 50 degrees that night. Since all of our hammocks were connected by the same ropes (frankenstein is the gift that keeps on giving), anytime one person got up to grab a sleeping bag or a blanket, everyone else experienced intense hammock turbulence. Drew’s hammock was separated but when he woke up in the early morning to grab a blanket, he realized it was wet because of early morning dew. He still slept with it because he was too tired to look for a dry blanket. 

Meanwhile, Tatiana and Caroline presumably slept well inside on the two available beds. Of course, they are dealing with other issues currently (we think Tatiana sprained her ankle last night and Caroline’s bite mark is glistening in different shades of purple, red, blue, and yellow bruising) so it’s fair to say I’m not envious of their position.

We woke up at 6am after ~5 hours of sleep. I should point out that our hosts, Lucy and Steve, are amazing and that it was entirely our own hubris of trying to make this hammock situation work that we slept so badly. They had a huge spread of food ready for us for breakfast including donuts, eclairs, pigs in blankets, fruit, juice, eggs, etc. 

Around now everyone was deciding whether they wanted to bike or not today given the prevalence of aggressive dogs on the route the previous day. Drew, Tatiana, and I, who had biked yesterday, tried to make clear that while we had figured out a strategy to make the situation generally manageable (a combination of yelling and mace), it was by no means a safe environment because of how aggressive the dogs could be. Besides that, biking in these conditions was very mentally taxing from the constant anticipation of a dog sprinting towards you.

Drew was set on still biking and ended up giving up his driver day to Nunu so that he could bike. Tatiana couldn’t walk so she was out for today. Aarushi decided that she wanted to bike since she hadn’t biked in nearly a week at this point. Carmen said, “I don’t think I’m gonna bike today, I’m not gonna be stupid for no reason”, in reference to not wanting to put herself in the dangerous situation of biking near aggressive dogs. She also biked today. 

I had to return the small SUV we rented for extra SAG space and for following our riders to help deal with dogs, and exchange it for a larger pickup truck that was actually big enough to provide the extra SAG space we wanted. Our team has two MIT corporate cards that we can use for renting cars, I have one and Caroline has the other one. Caroline doesn’t have a driver’s license. As a result, I had to go drive the car to go exchange it and would miss the first part of the ride. 

I drove 50 minutes to exchange the car for a huge GMC Sierra, then 30 minutes to meet the team at the first rest stop. Meanwhile, the team finished packing and started the first 20 miles to the first rest stop, which ended up being very uneventful with nearly no dog encounters. 

The only dog encounter occurred at the first rest stop when some dogs came running down the street from the opposite direction, while I was waiting in the parking lot, just when our bikers pulled into the rest stop. I don’t think they were chasing after our riders though. It seemed like they were just running down the street independently and then decided that antagonizing our riders would be a fun time.

At the rest stop, I changed into my bike gear and joined the ride for the remaining ~45 miles of the ride. Truthfully, I wasn’t really planning on joining in on the ride at all since I was feeling very mentally drained from the previous days’ events + physically drained from getting some awful sleep. Unfortunately, Tatiana egged me into joining the ride by claiming we didn’t need me to drive the pickup truck since only her left foot was injured and not her right foot (the one you need to drive) so she could drive the pickup truck. So, without really planning to, I ended up biking today. Meanwhile, Tatiana and Caroline drove themselves to the nearest hospital in order to identify the state of Tatiana’s foot + get Caroline her 2nd dose of rabies vaccine. 

Biking the middle 20 miles ended up being very uneventful, and borderline boring without the “entertainment” of scanning houses for any dogs sprinting at us. 

At the second rest stop, we ate the usual sandwiches for lunch and then ended up passing out on the grass for an hour. Unsurprisingly, the five of us who passed out at lunch (Drew, Carmen, Aarushi, Nunu, and myself) were also the five who had slept in the hammocks the night before. 

^{Napping all over the parking lot and lawn. I don’t know why everyone ended up napping in like 3+ different locations.}

As we slowly started waking up, Nunu introduced Aarushi and I to this game called Rummikub in which she quickly won and then proceeded to essentially play for us afterwards. I’m sure she had a fun time playing. Then, Drew, Nunu, and I played an awful game of HORSE in which we decided we should avoid basketball and stick to biking.

After a total of 3.5 hours at the second rest stop, we finally left and continued our biking journey. Around this time, Tatiana had found that her ankle was sprained (after going to three different hospitals because the first one she went to didn’t have an x-ray machine in the entire town). 

The last leg of the ride ended up being much more eventful, and Carmen and Aarushi got their first taste of dealing with the aggressive dogs Kentucky is known for. I think in total we had ~6-8 dogs chase us, with the most “exciting” breeds being a Rottweiler, two Pyrenees mixes, a Retriever, and a Great Pyrenees that ran between houses across two streets in order to chase us. After we yelled that Great Pyrenees off (probably a co-conspirator with Max, the dog that bit Caroline), a watching neighbor yelled (in a nearly unintelligible Southern accent), “Watch out for that dog, it’ll bit ya”. 

I also noticed some slight knee discomfort during the last leg of this ride, which I found very surprising since I run a lot and that tends to have a much higher impact on your knees than biking. Having seen the rest of the team getting their rides ended by knee issues, the discovery that my knees may not be invincible was quite jarring. Having written this in the future, however, the discomfort has since subsided, and so I have decided to place the blame on Nunu sleeping on my knees. 

After arriving in Liberty at the church we would be staying at for the night, we were welcomed warmly by Brother Rodger at the Liberty Assembly of God with delicious fried chicken and tons of groceries and food that we were told was all for us. 

At the same time, Nunu ran our clothes to the local laundromat before it closed so that Drew’s singular pair of bike shorts could be washed before the ride the next day. 

After dinner, Caroline’s dad and two siblings stopped by to visit. They were originally planning to meet us at Mammoth Cave in a couple of days (on a much shorter bike day) but got the dates wrong. In any case, it was great meeting them. We heard about her dad’s 1000 mile, 10 day bike trip that he did using a single speed bike. Also, when we first met he said, “Ah you’re Nate, you’re the best blogger!”. Forest, if you’re reading this, you’re more than welcome to stop by anytime 🙂

With people tired and ready to head to bed, we spent a bit of time trying to figure out who would bike the next day. Both Drew and I were physically, but probably more so mentally, drained after the stressful past two days and were both interested in resting the next day. My driver day was tomorrow so I was quite excited to miss the 90 mile ride coming up.

Carmen, Aarushi, and Nunu were interested in biking, but they hadn’t had much experience with the dogs and wanted one of either Drew or I to join them. Between Drew and I, he was dealing with some chaffing that could use a rest and I had biked a bit less today. In the end, I ended up giving up my driver day to him so that the rest of the team would bike and we could avoid MIT Spokes 2026 from becoming MIT Rims 2026 (everyone driving the route). 

Side note but since Drew wasn’t biking tomorrow, there was no need for Nunu to miss eating dinner with us to go do laundry. Sorry Nunu 😦 

For those who have been following along, you may recall that our team has bad luck on my blog days when it comes to SAG outs. Caroline put it best this morning, “Are you blogging today, Nate? Oh no…”. Luckily, it seems to be the case that today breaks the “half the team SAGing out” streak that has come with my blogging days. Maybe just to extend the streak we can count me missing the first 20 miles as a SAG, but that’s kind of a stretch. Alternatively, Tatiana’s driver days have been on the same days as my blog days except for today, so maybe the real bad luck is there? I guess we’ll see in a couple of days.

– Nate

Blacksburg, VA to Tazewell, VA – 83.38 mi, 4744 ft

One day I’d like to have an uneventful blog day but today is not that day.

We woke up today at 6am for what would be our second longest ride so far: 83 miles to make up for our short 40 mile ride yesterday. I spent a lot of the morning rummaging through my stuff looking for my wallet. Because of his track record with misplacing stuff, Drew’s stuff also fell victim to some rummaging. This is not very important, especially in comparison to the events of this blog, but this was very eventful for me because I never lose stuff. Anyways, turns out it fell out of my backpack in the car yesterday while I was driving. 

After getting ready, we ate some oatmeal and eggs graciously made by our amazing host Ann who is a super cool cyclist who did a tour across Illinois at 14. In total, we spent 1 hour and 45 minutes getting out the door, which might be a record for the team (😢). 

As we left, our main concern was Nunu’s bike. The chain had fallen off twice in the last 20 miles of yesterday’s ride. Drew and I diagnosed the bike with “misaligned derailleur” and did our best to fix it the night before but I still need to watch a YouTube video on how derailleurs work so I had very little trust in our handy work. 

Caroline (who can’t drive) was taking her unofficial driver day today (smart) with Tatiana’s driver day, so it was just Drew, Carmen, Nunu, Aarushi, and myself on the road. We biked out of Blacksburg through the Virginia Tech campus (which is super pretty, lots of white stone + gothic vibes similar to Yale/Princeton/West Point). Yesterday, while Nunu was fixing her chain on the side of the road, someone pulled up to her and asked her if she was okay. When she said she was fine, they drove off and yelled “Go Hokies¹, beat MIT”. I’ve been thinking about that line all day because I can’t think of any sport or activity in which MIT and Virginia Tech compete against each other. 

We took the first couple of miles pretty slow since the rest of the squad was tired from yesterday’s ride (which I was driving for). Fun fact: yesterday was the first day I wasn’t the first one to finish the ride since I was driving, sad stuff. While everyone else was trying to take it easy, I was physically itching to go faster and had to let Drew move ahead of me to set the pace so I could fight the urge to speed up.

We continued our ride for 20 miles passing through some lovely greenery, along rivers and rapids (+ a swing for jumping into the river that we had to drag Nunu away from), and up some not so fun climbs. 

At some point during these 20 miles, Aarushi and Carmen had fallen behind Nunu, Drew, and I. While taking in the lovely river views, Carmen reappeared without Aarushi. We continued waiting but she never appeared, and with no cell service to see where she was at we decided to continue onwards assuming she was taking a break. 

It wasn’t until we had nearly reached the rest stop that we ran into Tatiana going in the other direction. She let us know that Aarushi had hit a pothole, biked off the road, and ran into a tree, and that she was going to go SAG² Aarushi out.

As Tatiana sped away, we continued to the rest stop where Caroline reassured us that Aarushi was okay, but was banged up and (understandably) not going to continue the ride. After refueling and waiting for ~25 minutes for Tatiana and Aarushi to return, Nunu, Carmen, Drew, and I decided to continue biking since we had a long bike ahead of us.

It was a good thing that we didn’t wait because meanwhile in Tatiana/Aarushi-land, Tatiana found Aarushi on the side of the road scraped up with a dent in her helmet and the handlebars of her bike bent. They decided to take the bike back to Blacksburg (the starting town) since there was a Trek Bicycle Shop (the company we bought our bikes from) in that town and no bike shop in Tazewell (the destination town). 

At this shop, they were able to make use of the 1 year warranty on our helmets to get a fresh helmet and also get the handlebars repaired. Unfortunately, they were also told that the derailleur barrel adjuster on Aarushi’s bike was broken and that the Trek shop wouldn’t have the parts to repair it for a week. The Trek shop mentioned briefly they could try another shop in town called Hokie Spokes, but Tatiana and Aarushi weren’t immediately planning to go there. 

The state of the Spokes universe at this point of the day is as follows: Nate, Drew, Carmen, and Nunu are biking 20 miles to the second rest stop where lunch is planned; Aarushi and Tatiana have partially repaired Aarushi’s bike and are now going to a coffee shop; Caroline is waiting at rest stop 1 with the cooler, water, and food since the minivan can only fit two people/bikes at a time. 

Around mile 30 (halfway between rest stop 1 and 2), the biking group came across a Dairy Queen and found it necessary to get some ice cream. This was also convenient since it would give the drivers more time to figure out how to get food/water/lunch to the second rest stop. 

It was around this time that we bikers decided to check the weather and noticed that some thunderstorms had crept up on us and would be hitting us in ~30 minutes. We decided to push to the next town along the route (approx. 4 miles away) and try to wait out the rain there. 

We made it to the next town and found a church with a small roof above its front door to take cover under. We took cover just in time because within a minute of us getting under the roof it began thundering and pouring rain. 

We had taken cover around noon and saw on the forecast that it would be raining until 2pm, so we decided to hunker down. 

During this time, Aarushi and Tatiana were still grabbing their coffee in Blacksburg. As they walked up to the coffee shop, they looked at the shop next door and lo and behold it was the Hokie Spokes bike shop. They ended up bringing Aarushi’s bike in and got it fully repaired. In the process, they also received two generous donations after two passersby overheard the Spokes story: $41 from Bruce and $20 from Wendy.

After finishing up in Blacksburg, the two of them started heading towards the first rest stop to pick up Caroline who had been waiting this entire time in the rain. 

Meanwhile, at 1:45pm, the four bikers woke up. The four of us had all fallen asleep on the cold, hard concrete outside of this church while waiting out the rain. Luckily, we woke up to clear blue skies. After a bit of stretching, we continued towards the second rest stop 8 miles away where lunch would be happening. 

By some miracle, all 7 members of the team converged on the second rest stop at mile 44 at 2:30pm. This was largely made possible after Caroline, Aarushi, and Tatiana worked some magic reorganizing the minivan and bike rack so that it could hold 3 people and 3 bikes. At the rest stop, we all enjoyed our usual sandwich-based lunch. 

At 3:30pm, we were back on the road, but not before the second member of the team fell victim to a SAG. This one was much less concerning, Carmen just really needed to use the restroom and the nearest spot was a gas station 13 miles away along the route. Tatiana ended up driving Carmen + her bike to the gas station while Nunu, Drew, and I biked over and met her there.

From there (mile 57), the four of us reunited to bike the remaining 6 miles to the last rest stop at mile 63. 

Throughout the day, Nunu had been dealing with some knee pain and, after some climbs leading up the last rest stop, it got to the point that she was feeling sharp pain with every pedal stroke. 

Tatiana had dealt with some knee pain leading up to the summer that ended up taking focused strength training and physical therapy in order to resolve. Additionally, she had been told by the PT who did our bike fittings (Brendan at Cycle Life PT) that sharp, repetitive pain should be grounds to immediately stop biking. As a result, Tatiana strongly recommended to Nunu that she should call the ride there. 

After doing some stretching, however, Nunu felt like her knee wasn’t hurting anymore. We decided that she could keep riding but that if at any moment she felt the knee pain return, she would be SAG’d out. Nunu ended up biking two more miles to mile 65 before being SAG’d out due to the sharp knee pain returning. 

I have a lot of respect for her decision to SAG out. While it may seem like an obvious decision from afar, a SAG out is a dreaded ending to a ride for anyone on the team. Getting SAG’d out feels like the accomplishment of “biking across the country” being chipped away, making all the hard work less worthwhile. Obviously, this isn’t actually the case but in the heat of the ride it’s hard not to feel this way. It’s worth pointing out that the decision to let Nunu keep riding was only reached after a long discussion that included a few tears. 

By the end of the day there were only three bikers on the road. Carmen, Drew, and I biked the last 20 miles relatively uneventfully, albeit slowly. Meanwhile, Tatiana shuttled Caroline, Aarushi, and Nunu to the end point.

When we arrived at Tazewell, we were warmly greeted by Teresa who works at the Tazewell United Methodist Church – the church that was graciously hosting us in their house-turned-office, and would also be where we would run our learning festival the next day. We were welcomed with warm pizza, fresh fruit, juice, sodas, and a fridge stocked full of food for breakfast and dinner the following day. I don’t think I can effectively convey how kind Teresa was to us, nor how admirable her work with members of the community facing hardships is.

We wrapped up dinner and unpacked our sleeping bags and sleeping pads to get ready for bed. After a long, chaotic day, the best part of the day might’ve been getting 9 hours of sleep before tomorrow’s learning festival. 

– Nate

¹ Hokies are the mascot of Virginia Tech. Unless they’re talking about a Hokie Pokie, I don’t know what a Hokie is. 

² Def SAG (verb): a.k.a SAG out. To get picked up by the (Support And Gear) car during a ride, usually to be driven to the end point.