MIT Spokes 2026

Tag: cycling-day

  • Day 34: the semiquincentennial

    Day 34: the semiquincentennial

    Newton, KS to Macksville, KS — 92.6 mi, 1120 ft

    250 years ago to the day, half of Britain’s colonies seceded from King George III’s grasp and the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, creating a permanent separation between the American and British people. 

    We have reinforced this separation, through the creation of rather distinct cultures. There are some things that are uniquely American; the Brits would agree, and so would everyone else on this tiny globe.

    To celebrate, here is my own version of the most American things we’ve seen and done on this semiquincentennial.

    The day started as early as we now normally do, at 5 am, afraid of the humid 95 degree weather we’d have to face at noon. After saying goodbye to our hosts Janet and Orvin, we set off on our first leg of the day.

    Today, only four of us were biking: Nate, Drew, Aarushi, and I. Tatiana was driving, Caroline was taking her rest day, and Nunu was going to urgent care to address the ever present issue of chafing. 

    This first 18 mile stretch went by quite quickly. We drafted the entire time (beautiful), held a 17-20 mph pace (amazing), and just tried to go fast, since that’s the only entertainment this ride along highway 50 can provide.

    1. Hundreds of miles of a long, empty, flat road with a shoulder as wide as the driving lanes

    Until about halfway through we had an ugly headwind, which then turned into a tailwind, and then into a diagonal ish crosswind. I could barely draft the last mile as I had to keep bobbing left and right to try and oppose it…

    Our first rest stop was at a gas station. We were lucky we got there when we did, since it looked like a horrendous storm was brewing, only a mile or so in front of us. Drew is the one who normally calls the rest of us lame when we chicken out of biking in a thunderstorm. But when he saw this one in the distance, he even suggested we wait it out. All of us were so concerned we considered sagging out the rest of the ride, all 74 miles.

    1. Terrifyingly windy storms that last as quick as they arrived
    1. The audacity to bike on a hunk of metal through a thunderstorm with the belief that everything will be fine

    Drew decided now was the perfect opportunity to go and play basketball with a local team for a July 4 event, even though he was the one who said it looked like tornado weather. The rest of us began to prepare for the worst. Tatiana started the hour drive to the church to drop off our luggage and free up sag spots. This time it was Nunu who got left at urgent care, and Caroline gallantly stayed at the church to ensure enough seats were open in the car. 

    Nate attempting to hold onto his hair in the wind

    While waiting for either the storm to pass or for our car to return, the four of us camped out in the corner of the gas station. 

    We bought every Peelerz flavor there was under the sun and tried them all together, while Nunu made a tik tok.

    1. Overconsumption, the incessant need for variety, and the availability of infinite options to choose from, even at a small gas station in the middle of nowhere in Burrton, KS
    1. Making a tik tok about overconsumption, the incessant need for variety, while choosing from an infinite number of options provided by a small gas station in the middle of nowhere in Burrton, KS

    Miraculously, the weather cleared up after about two hours and then we were on our way. Not sagging out of this 90+ mile day after all. 

    Drafting means you feel less hot with the wind cooling you down, you go at a faster pace with less effort, and hours of biking shorten. But also you’re bored out of your mind, staring at the back wheel in front of you, your concentration narrowed down to the 6 inch gap you’re trying to maintain with your life because falling back means falling out of line permanently and biking alone for the rest of the 20 miles until the next rest stop. This may be an exaggeration, but illogically, sometimes, it feels this way. To tamp down this boredom we all, at last, decided to give in and join a Spotify jam. We listen to the entirety of Hamilton.

    With this raw musical genius and patriotism rushing through my veins, I was propelled to the second rest stop, one of those small cafes that Nate and Drew love so dearly.

    1. Listening to Hamilton for hours on end, voluntarily filling our heads with red-blooded American pride 

    On our way in, the four of us were having that exact discussion: the merits of coffee houses. We were walking through the doorway, two baristas standing behind the counter staring us down, when Nate said something along the lines of “We’re just not going to get the same satisfaction as you when we stop at random coffee shops.” We stared at him, eyes raised. He turned around to face the barista with the neon green buzz and said, “but not this one” and laughed awkwardly. 

    1. Having zero subtly

    Drew and Nate then start ogling everything on the menu, saying “ooh that looks so good”, probably trying to save face. It was hilarious. I had to stop myself from laughing otherwise it would take away the sincerity they were trying to convey.

    They ended up ordering 12 quesadillas each.

    On our way to the third rest stop, we began to cross more and more cow territory. After Kentucky I’ve developed a fondness for cows, since they don’t try to bite our ankles. When biking by, we all noticed that if we MOO at them, every single cow will turn their head to look towards us. Hundreds of big black eyes stare at probably the most interesting thing they’ve seen all day.

    Kansas may be flat but in a charming way

    At this point we’ve also created our own unique moos. The rest of us moo like normal people would, but Drew has decided to moo in a high pitched moan that manages to startle me more than the cows. 

    During this stretch, Drew also decides to show off his aerodynamic pose that he learned from a Tour de France champion. Incredibly skillful.

    1. Being less graceful than the French

    At the end of the third stretch we finished all of Hamilton. As I was listening to his dying thoughts, the rest of us were also contemplating our deaths as we had to trudge through this horrible sand pit for several miles. 

    The next rest stop was at the Oasis gas station, where we met the new owners who had recently renovated the place. When we first walked in, the lady behind the counter immediately started making conversation with us, asking why we looked so coordinated. Two things first stood out to me: 1) that she was so curious and outgoing, and 2) that she had an accent I couldn’t place. We later learned that she and her husband (the owners) had moved from South Africa to start a life here in Kansas. They had a farm and had also taken on this business within the past few months. 

    1. The American dream might actually be real. These two people uprooted their whole lives to move to a different country and now live on their own terms

    By the time we were about to leave, our car finally showed up. They surprised us with bomb pops that we eagerly devoured in this sweltering heat.

    On the second to last stretch we listened to the Mamma Mia soundtrack (we’re really into this jam thing now), while I hopelessly attempted to explain the plot to Aarushi, and usually just called in Nate to show off his extensive musical knowledge. 

    As we arrived at the last rest stop, we were surprised with a patriotic FEAST! Red, white, and blue everything: gatorade (limited edition Uncle Sam flavor I guess), those delicious plastic cookies, all the fruit we could eat.

    What was even more beautiful than our lunch was the public bathrooms. Pristine. After being scarred from all sorts of smells emanating from dank holes in the ground, this clean, wintergreen scented restroom instantly made the next twenty ish miles bearable and me that much happier. I noticed this was unique to Kansas. Top tier bathrooms alongside roads in the middle of nowhere. Always a 7-8/10

    1. Roadside janitors

    The last leg was uneventful but Tatiana made sure we’d remember our arrival to the church. She surprised us with her very best twerk while shaking even more red, white, and blue flavored drinks.

    We were staying in the small town of Macksville; they’re so small they don’t host July 4th celebrations. Our contact for the church, Katrina, told us there was one in the next town over. So to not waste any time (relatively) we all decide to skip showering, change, and hop in the car, our stink masked by a build up of deodorant.

    It had a wonderful vibe. It made me realize how important community is, especially in a small town like Lewis. Kids were playing at the playground, parents lounging on the field, families in the surrounding neighborhood chaotically setting off their own fireworks. Genuinely everyone and their cousin were lighting fireworks in the middle of their front yards. The sound and the smoke was intense, but really added to the MURICA of it all.

    1. Setting off fireworks from the trunk of your car

    We got these utterly delicious barbacoa tacos and ate them on the grass while trying to avoid being eaten alive by bugs. And then, the next course of action was obviously to play a game of ultimate where we “randomly” divide up teams based on who has and has not played frisbee for MIT. I wonder who won.

    Aarushi took some very cinematic photos of us, with the fireworks bursting in the background.

    Finally the real fireworks show (put on by the fire department, not Gary from down the street) was about to start. As we sat down to watch, we got mauled by biting flies and mosquitoes. Throughout the show we (well at least I was) were just slapping ourselves. It got so bad that we had to ask the man behind us for his bug spray, and then proceeded to use up the whole can. Our generosity knows no bounds. Tatiana did try to pay for it but the kind man refused her offer.

    1. Gary’s fireworks getting mogged by the professionals 
    1. Kind people willing to donate what they have without expectation of anything in return

    The fireworks were beautiful, and from this photo it looks like they moved us to tears. Maybe we all were about to sneeze at the same time, I’m not sure.

    At the end of the show, we decided we’d had enough of the bugs and escaped into the car. While driving back, we saw hundreds of kids on the side of the road throwing gunpowder popper bomb things at the ground, twirling sparklers in the air. In the small town of Lewis, Kansas it seems like July 4th is one of the major holidays they go all out for. 

    1. Kids being trusted to not burn their fingers off

    The next morning as we biked out of Macksville, the road looked like a battlefield with red, white, and blue shrapnel everywhere. In the daylight it was slightly dystopian. It’s interesting how that’s simply evidence of a lively community.

    1. Rural communities bound together in their local group through traditions and town-wide celebrations 

    This list is my realistically absurd representation of the American spirit. I hope it’s at least somewhat coherent.

    O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,

    Carmen

  • Day 33: life is a highway (50)

    Day 33: life is a highway (50)

    Emporia, KS to Newton, KS — 75.4 mi, 1737 ft

    Snoozing an alarm is such an interesting concept. 

    On all of the alarms we set, we have this option to delay whatever is so important that necessitates its own reminder, merely for another 9 minutes (the default on an iphone). Yet those 9 minutes can feel like an eternity — or nothing — before the alarm goes off again and you are faced with the decision of delaying life just a bit longer again. I had never used the snooze button until coming to MIT. Whether that means I’m just more tired most days or don’t look forward to class is something I have yet to unpack.

    Today was a snoozing day. We always agree on a time to wake up the night before, and we agreed on 7 am since it wasn’t forecasted to be as hot as the previous days that necessitated much earlier wakeups. That 7 am slowly became 7:40 am as each individual alarm went off, got snoozed, went off again, rinse and repeat. Finally, after 40 minutes of this symphony of alarms, I pulled myself out of my warm sleeping bag and hurried downstairs to get ready. Drew also took the chance to put his corn onto his helmet, since he didn’t get to meet Helmet Flair yesterday but took the uni-corn decoration for the road. After a long debate over the placement, he settled on a slightly askew orientation that suits him perfectly, in my humble opinion. It’s been the subject of many jokes ever since, as you might imagine.

    We left the church at around 9:40 am, and soon joined US Highway 50, a road we would soon become very familiar with. Apparently it is a major east-west route that spans the US, and it seems that we will rejoin it in Nevada for the stretch that is “the loneliest road in America!” But to not get ahead of ourselves, the 50 will be our friend for a bit longer before we leave it, or at least for the majority of today. While I’m not a fan of large highways, this one has at least a massive shoulder (most of the time), which provides some protection from the semis that roar by and gives me some wiggle room when I inevitably swerve from the gusts of wind they produce. Additionally, most drivers are pretty respectful — many like to switch entirely into the oncoming lane, which is slightly comical but I appreciate the commitment to not hitting us. However, there is always a car who gets a bit too close for comfort, to which I inch a little more to the right and keep pedaling as fast as I can.

    Capturing the 50 experience

    With how exposed we are on the highway and in tandem with the naturally flat and sparse landscape, wind is our biggest friend and foe. I learned this a couple of days ago with our rough ride into Kansas City, and discovered that the most important thing was to truly bike at my own pace. I think I challenged myself last time a bit too much early on, which led to a miserable experience in the second half. I went ahead of the group initially, pushing against a headwind + crosswind that seemed to follow us across Kansas. Carmen, Drew, and Nunu joined, and we biked as a group to our first rest stop. It was a pretty straightforward stretch, except for the brief scare when Drew decided to bike hands-free — on the shoulder, on a downhill, with a strong crosswind. I looked up to see him nearly swerve into the traffic after losing control, which prompted a slightly guilty look back and a “maybe let’s not do that here?” 

    For our first rest stop, we had the choice of a coffee shop or a park. So naturally, we chose the coffee shop. Many of you have probably read Drew’s laments over our coffee drinking tendencies in his blog, but objectively the coffee shop was a better rest stop in this case… not only are there other options besides coffee 99% of the time, it provides a break from the natural elements (mosquitos, heat, etc.), and we get to interact with locals. While I agree all things should be in moderation, I digress.

    Right as we started biking to the coffee shop, Nate (today’s driver) pulled up behind us on the same road. As I’m biking, I look to my left and see the minivan pass me, but with Drew biking behind it with maybe an inch to spare. He yelled, “THIS IS THE BEST DRAFT EVER,” so of course I tried to catch up with Carmen in tow. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience the draft for long as I remember “ooh I’m blogging!” (a universal blogger experience) and slow down to take a photo. Please appreciate this super gorgeous amazing photo because I missed out on the best draft ever for this 😞

    Outside of the 30 mph draft, Nunu and I biked the actual route to the shop, taking a pretty sidewalk through a park and across a cool water feature. The downtown of the town, Cottonwood Falls, is also super cute and has a beautiful courthouse! 

    We went inside the coffee shop, called HeBrews CoffeeHouse. It was both a place of worship and a café, which was pretty unique! I ordered a delicious smoothie and breakfast burrito to make up for our haphazard breakfast, and everyone else followed suit with their food/drinks of choice. While sitting there and relaxing, we were asked by another customer named Lola about our trip and our biking experience. As we were sharing our story as usual, Tatiana and Aarushi asked Lola about her experience with sports as a rising junior in high school. After briefly mentioning running, she casually dropped the fact that she does RODEO competitively.

    Inside the shop

    For anyone unfamiliar (I sure was), rodeo involves several different equestrian events that are rooted in the practices of cattle herding in the US and tests abilities associated with ranching. Lola showed us a couple videos of her riding one of her horses and roping a calf, where the competitor is evaluated based on the time it takes for them to successfully rope the calf. Her average is apparently 2 – 3 seconds?? Unsurprisingly, these times are winning times. She had won $4,000 the night before and was traveling that night for another competition. Lola also showed us a video of her older brother competing in an even larger rodeo, to which we all crowded around her phone and got to watch him in the tie-down roping event. Our jaws were dropped. 

    As we spoke some more, we learned more about ranching, which is her family’s business. I learned about all of the different steps and businesses involved in raising cattle, as many are transported between many facilities at different stages of their life. We also learned that Vonda, our barista, and Lola are best friends! She was just stopping by before we had our conversation, and she soon had to leave. While we prepared to leave as well, Vonda generously donated a box of yummy pastries for us on the road. 

    Thank you so much for your kindness, Vonda!

    On the way out of the town, we wanted to try drafting Nate + the minivan again to experience it. Even on his driving day, he’s still the one breaking wind for us… However, we quickly noticed a loud sound coming from the floor of the minivan, stopping to find that a part of the oil pan (?) had come loose and was dragging on the road. A kind lady from the house we stopped by came out and directed us to a nearby auto shop, which was thankfully just where we came from wasn’t even a mile away. Shoutout Dieker Oil for fixing it up for free!

    The next leg involved the only bit that was close to climbing along our extremely flat route. We went up a hill that felt like the highest part of Kansas, as I saw endless green fields stretching from all around once at the top. Kansas is honestly the state that has surprised me the most in terms of its flora and fauna, as I have definitely seen some crazy insects and plants that I wouldn’t have initially attributed to it. I coasted down the crazy downhill, and hit some gravel before joining back onto our friend, the 50. 

    Exhibit A of Kansas’s bugs

    At this point, I was not feeling super well and slowed down a bit as I fought back some nausea. I took an advil from Aarushi, which helped a lot. We biked as a group to the next rest stop. I learned about Tatiana’s grandparents, Brenda and Tom, who are visiting us soon in Colorado! This stop was an old mill and abandoned town with many “property for sale” signs littered around. We had lunch for the first time in like 5 days under a large tree, slightly crammed onto our picnic blanket and enjoying the routine of making our sandwiches. After eating, several of us took a much needed power nap. I think naps are the cure to everything. Everytime I’ve felt slightly off, a nap has freed me of all ailments — any doctor reading, look into this. 👀

    The next leg is… you guessed it, more Highway 50! But before that, I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack with Tatiana and Drew, achieved by all pressing play at the same time. Except we can’t all press play at the same time, so we were off by maybe 2 seconds between the 3 of us. This made singing together a bit more challenging but 10x funnier with the offset. 

    We all biked together along the shoulder, risking at most going 2-wide to talk to each other occasionally. As our last rest stop, Dollar General, loomed closer, Aarushi suddenly pulled over to stop. She said she had heard a pop, and following our trials and tribulations with tires yesterday, we were prepared for maybe some sputtering sealant or a slash to repair. What we weren’t prepared for though, was a GIANT nail puncturing her tire all the way through the rim. It was quite impressive. As Drew said, “you didn’t see the Washington Monument in front of you?” This is just the first of many tire issues for Aarushi, sadly…

    Nail outlined for reference

    Once at Dollar General, a grand discussion commenced. As a non bike-savvy person, I let the experts debate how to handle the potential repair and what to do for the last 20 miles. We wandered the aisles in the meantime, buying all sorts of junk and justifying it by the cheap prices. I snagged a Snapple Mango Madness, a Starbucks frappuccino, and a Naked smoothie, please don’t ask me about my sugar consumption.

    The council in the “as seen on TV” aisle

    We settled on switching Nate’s tire with Aarushi’s for now, and let Nate use his extra time waiting for us at our host’s home to use gorilla tape and a tube (our tires are originally tubeless) to work some magic. 

    Now, the final stretch of Highway 50 — for today, at least. In a rare event, we got everyone in the same jam to listen to the Book of Mormon soundtrack. Everyone on the team had been exposed to some extent thanks to Tatiana and Drew, but now we finally sat down and got everyone to listen to the whole thing. Drew downloaded Spotify just for this, so you know it was serious. Carmen and I then sped to the end, enjoying the sun as it lowered in the horizon and spared us from its harshest rays. At one point, to my right, a great blue heron flew out of nowhere and glided along me for quite a while, which was magical. As someone who is relatively interested in birds, every interaction or sighting of birds besides the common ones (red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, etc.) are something special to remember. It was there for so long that I decided to pull out my phone and get a picture, but I’m still working on my on-bike photography skills. 

    • Please enjoy these attempts
    • Not bad…
    • Right up in the corner
    • Missed completely

    We pulled off the highway with a couple of miles to go and enjoyed some gravel to round out the ride with the side of another dog running out on the road. I got to practice my dog-shout since I missed most of Kentucky. Slightly worried about the dog, Carmen and I waited for the rest of the group, then arrived at our WS hosts for the night, Janet and Orvin!

    Their dog, Enzo, longingly looking for a snack. And Phoebe, their adorable + cuddly cat.

    For dinner, we finally had corn on the cob, something we’ve been craving after passing through a bajillion corn fields every day. We also had Janet’s AMAZING mulberry + rhubarb pie, which was the perfect balance of sweet and tart for me. For the cherry on top, all of the ingredients for this meal were sourced locally, as Janet explained where she got each fruit/vegetable used. It made me think fondly of home, where most of the vegetables in our meals are from our garden. 

    As the night wound down, I watched some pre 4th of July fireworks in the neighborhood with Janet, Orvin, and Aarushi. I’ve heard so many fireworks go off before the actual 4th that I’m excited for what the actual holiday has in store. For now, I’m grateful to have a full stomach, a mattress, and excitement for the days ahead, even if it is Highway 50 as far as the eye can see. 

    See you soon,

    Caroline

  • Day 32: the flattest thing in kansas is our tires

    Day 32: the flattest thing in kansas is our tires

    Overbrook, KS to Emporia, KS — 62.6 mi, 1608 ft

    The answers to my lying blog last week (did you spot them all?)

    1. Drew doesn’t snore
    2. Nate had exiled himself from the sleeping bag room from the start because he states he needs his alone time or something  
    3. They both have healthy relationships and don’t feel the need to stay on call with their girlfriends overnight
    4. Never a joyful mood in the mornings
    5. Drew did not enjoy his carrots (he doesn’t eat vegetables) and Nunu hardly drank her coffee in fear of needing to poop on the ride and nobody supports my idea of splitting all our coffees round-robin style.
    6. Tatiana didn’t stick her mouth on the snow cone machine (although this was the most believable lie, even she forgot if she had actually done this or not)
    7. No tarantula on Drew’s face and nobody petted it and he definitely didn’t want to adopt it
    8. Neither did Carmen try stealing a butterfly 
    9. We sliced the sausage with knives like normal people and put it in our sandwiches
    10. We spread guac and hummus on our sandwiches with cheese slices; no fingers were put in the communal spread. But this doesn’t really matter because people’s hands have rummaged in our communal ice bag at least twenty times a day. But this doesn’t really matter because we smash the ice bag against the dirty ground as hard as we can multiple times each rest stop in order to break the ice chunks, and then we put the dirty ice bag into our cooler with all of our food. 
    11. Nate could not care less if we rode the carousel, especially if we were riding it together
    12. Caroline did not cross the Missouri swimming, nor did she get saved by a beaver (hopefully the lies were obvious by now)
    13. Nunu and Tatiana didn’t start running away at the sound of the thunderstorm
    14. Nunu didn’t fall through the floorboards of an abandoned hostel building and definitely didn’t pee in it
    15. Drew didn’t sneak away to find a cheeseburger in an abandoned ghost town

    Note that everything insane I wrote about the 1904 Olympics and World Fair is actually true! I would also like to add an addendum that perhaps my reflection that I’ve started to enjoy biking was an unintentional lie as well because the next few days of biking have been pretty brutal, as you will come to read…

    Now to today’s blog. Playing with the format again to keep things interesting. Notice anything special with this one?

    As we woke up this morning, I had but one thing on my mind:

    BREAKFAST!!! Today we were in for a special treat as our host Scott took us to the retirement community he owns in Overbrook to eat breakfast with the retirees.

    Carmen and Caroline, Nate and Nunu, and Tatiana, Drew, and I all dispersed upon arrival to three tables where we got to converse with some of the retirees who were in the cafeteria for breakfast, and got to munch on the best waffles I’ve eaten in a long time, complete with every topping we could ask for (except for our resident plainmaxxer Drew, who only got syrup).

    Devouring the waffles, the team all chatted with people about where they were from, who their families were, what their professions were, what’s going on in their lives, etc.etc. Often times I find that we are the ones talking endlessly about ourselves to the people that we meet, launching into our spiel about biking across America and how many days it takes and where we are going next and all the standard questions about our strange logistics, so it was refreshing to hear about the rich and full lives of the people at our breakfast tables. I’m still thinking about how Linda, one of the retirees at our table, said that people forget that they are all not just old people left in here, forget that each and every one of them have lived long and interesting lives in their own right.

    Every conversation I’ve had on this trip has felt like I’m diving into a different world that I’m trying to learn as much of as I can, because the world of the people I’m talking to has felt so different than my own. It has made me think a lot about this concept of sonder that has always fascinated me, defined as the realization and understanding that all other people have lives as complex as one’s own. Throughout college, especially because of my close friends like Tatiana, I’ve really grown out of my shell and come to love and appreciate striking conversations with strangers around me. It’s just fun and unserious and a way to spread some love.

    Finally we said our goodbyes and headed out on the road just past 10:30 AM, biking along with our awesome host Scott.

    Going out the door, we all felt a little sad leaving, as I think a lot of us were thinking about our own parents getting old and how they would want to live. We didn’t have enough time to feel too sad, however, because as soon as we headed out, we heard a

    HISSSSSSSSSSSSS……

    Various shots of the six engineers at work figuring out our flat tire

    It was Caroline’s supposedly-repaired tire, puffing out semi-dried sealant. Our third flat in the last 24 hours. Our GOAT host Scott went back to the car with Caroline to switch out her tire with Drew’s (today’s GOAT driver), a feat that took them mere minutes when Drew did it, but had taken Tatiana, Carmen, Nunu, and I half an hour and a lot of painful heel smashing in an attempt to unscrew the axle yesterday.

    Just a couple minutes after we headed out again, though, we heard another HISSSSSSS. It was Carmen’s!!! Our fourth flat tire… this could not be real.

    Kentucky had its dogs, Missouri had its storms, Virginia had its hills, and I guess Kansas’s new curveball for Spokes 2026 was… flat tires?

    Lucky for us, bikes come with not one but TWO tires so Drew’s had another we could switch out, which left his bike looking uncomfortably naked on the bike rack (see below). At this point we had to hug goodbye to Scott, since with our chatty breakfast and two flats, we had probably taken a good hour and a half longer than he had probably expected to be out riding with us. As we waited on the side of the road for the Carmen-Drew handoff to complete, I look down to see MY tire suspiciously bubbling with sealant… no way we were getting a fifth flat.

    Drew’s joker-looking tireless bike after Carmen and Caroline stole both

    My solution was to start pedaling furiously to the next rest stop, channeling advice from the all-knowing ever-wise sage Drew that tires need to keep spinning for the sealant to spread from the edges of the tires enough to cover the puncture. My rare lead ahead of the team didn’t last long, however, as I stopped to chat with some bikers heading the opposite direction along the Flint Hills Trail.

    Never missing an opportunity to lollygag means never missing out on FREE STUFF!!! It turned out that one of the bikers, Shaun, is the founder of a company called Helmet Flair that specializes in things like horns and cat ear decorations for bicycle helmets, and it turned out that he carries some extras on him to give out to bikers he passes by! 

    Of course, we had to get blinged up. Here are some selfies of our new #FIERCE #SLAY #BEASTMODE #UNAPOLOGETIC #STYLEINSPO #GLAMSQUAD team. We kept chatting with Shaun and Jake about the ceramics learning curve and sailboating around the world until we heard a…

    POP!!!

    Quite unfortunate that we were now at FLAT TIRE NUMBER SIX!! But this time it was Shaun’s!! We were bringing the flat luck wherever we went so we decided to pedal on before we somehow popped Jake’s tire too. The flat luck stuck with us however, because pretty soon after, Carmen’s second tire popped.

    Really.

    SEVEN flats.

    The universe had thus given us a sign to stop in Osage City and sidequest while Drew came back to SAG Carmen to a bike shop at the end of the route, having no more tires to give. Finding that everything downtown was closed, we congregated in a grocery store where we spent an hour roaming joblessly up and down every aisle, looking longingly at all the fruit that seemed too expensive to buy (Nate said something about the dollar-to-calorie ratio), asking each other hypothetical questions on which new snacks we could introduce that the majority of the team would still support (Drew said he doesn’t understand this constant chase for novelty), and knocking over peaches and KIND bars and everything else we touched (Nunu claims the display case itself is unstable). We ended up supporting a long-awaited splurge on fruits, and we had the absolute most delicious feast of oranges, grapes, watermelon, grapefruit cups, and Naked smoothies!!!! It was a glorious break from the Cheez-its and fig bars at gummy worms that we had been stuffing our faces with. We would all highly encourage checking out our donation page if you’re interested in a healthier diet for our team.

    Nunu knocked down an entire case of KIND bars and four engineers hard at work to put it back together organized (peanut butter on one side, chocolate on the other)
    Most delicious haul ever devoured

    Unfortunately, now it was time to start getting serious: somehow we still had 60% of our ride to finish, and it was 4 PM. Now I have nothing more to really say about the next few hours. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, none of us blog about the actual biking portion of our days, because genuinely nothing interesting happens. I tried starting the Heroes of Olympus audiobooks because the original Percy Jackson series was getting boring (they just fight monsters all the time, and it is too clearly written for ten year olds). I adjusted my seat position every 15 seconds because my butt was aching so bad. I called my dad to distract me from the mild hills but instead had to listen to him like a podcast because he couldn’t hear anything I was saying over the crazy strong headwind. 

    I was not having the very best time, but it was gorgeous.

    Very slowly, the hours passed and we reached the 12th Avenue Baptist Church of Emporia. I want to give a HUGE shoutout to Vickie at the Didde Catholic Campus Center who helped us find housing, Pastor Brett for hosting us at the 12th Ave, and Diane and Elaine from Didde who awaited us with a warm and very very delicious meal as we came in!!

    We ate, we showered, we blogged, we slept.

    eXhausted once again,

    Yours truly,

    Zarushi

  • Day 31: Don’t Overlook Overbrook

    Day 31: Don’t Overlook Overbrook

    Kansas City, MO to Overbrook, KS — 75.5 mi, 3771 ft

    GUESS WHAT, BABY??? NEW STATE UNLOCCKKEDDD 🔥🔥🔥

    Personally, I was most excited to feel like Dorothy entering Kansas, especially since I have never been to the state before and have a wonderful place in my heart for the Wizard of Oz. 

    Our morning glory of waking up at the hotel was only slightly dampened by the 4 am wakeup time enforced by the extraordinarily hot temperatures displayed by the weather forecast, but otherwise Aarushi and I basked in our final moments in the queen bed before grudgingly getting out of bed and getting dressed. 

    With a little bit of extra speediness, Aarushi and I finished our morning routine earlier than expected and decided to take on an extra task: repacking the cooler for lunch. Fatal mistake. One of our condiments had spilled throughout the cooler, and it smelled absolutely TERRIBLE. Imagine dirty feet and rotten eggs all at once. I gagged.

    We began “Operation Clean Cooler”, which involved me rinsing all of the condiments and Aarushi scrubbing down the cooler in the shower with the hotel’s body wash and a bar of soap. Multiple “we need a new cooler” phrases were exchanged, but alas, the same cooler is still sticking with our group.

    At some point, we left the cooler in the shower to soak in soapy water, ate our breakfast bars, and headed downstairs to join the rest of the group. After a few minutes of applying sunblock and pumping up the tires, our group was off!

    A few minutes into the ride, we passed the slightly underwhelming “Kansas City, KS” street sign marking our transition into Kansas, and the team was only a little sad that we were now missing photos with both the Missouri and Kansas signs. The morning ride was beautiful, especially as we rode through a slightly sleepy western Kansas City and wondered as a group if the trend of western sides of cities being more affluent than eastern sides of cities was accurate or just our extrapolation.

    I think that this morning segment has been one of my favorite biking segments thus far on the trip, as we rarely get to bike through developed cities, especially in combination with the sunrise. It felt serene and like I was seeing a different, secret side of urban life. The ride itself to the first rest stop was also quite speedy, especially since Aarushi and I yapped on the ride and got to discuss impressive people in the computational biology space and the significance of being published in Nature magazine.

    The day only got better as we pulled into the parking lot of our first rest stop, met by the beautifully tantalizing sight of Dutch Bros (sorry, Drew). The entire team decided to get drinks, with everyone being normal except for Drew and Nate, who got an Electric Berry Rebel and a Strawberry Colada Rebel, respectively. The Electric Berry Rebel is their “vibrant, fruity energy drink combining blue raspberry and lime syrups,” and the Strawberry Colada Rebel is “their signature Rebel energy base with coconut, pineapple, and sweet cream, finished with fresh strawberry fruit on top.” You tell me if you think their drinks were yummy or not…

    Afterwards, I used the bathroom in an extremely luxurious “Body Lab” and saw the most Pilates reformers I have ever seen in my life, and then we were off again to the races. 

    On this next stretch of the ride, we saw some of the coolest clouds I have ever seen in the sky. Caroline accurately described them as “fish scale clouds,” and I seriously loved biking with my face to the sky rather than down to the Earth. 

    Almost immediately after identifying the beautiful sky, the team came across a section of the road that was closed. At this point, we capitalized on a very important feature of Kansas geography. All of the roads are perfect squares, with mandated “1 mile by 1 mile” plots of land as described by the Public Land Survey System. For context, this system was established by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to have a systematic way to partition, sell, and settle the land acquired by the US through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. This system was also particularly helpful in providing funds for the US to pay off its Revolutionary War debts. It is also very helpful in navigating a road closure: bike one more mile and take the next turn!

    After our detour, I biked with Drew through more back-country gravel roads, fittingly called Edgerton Rd (thank you Edgerton Center for sponsoring us!), and a mailbox with a metal plane on it pulled us into an intricate conversation about the international history of fighter jets. Drew is an Aerospace major and knows everything about planes, literally, so it was awesome to get the insider scoop. We both wonder if the Kansas resident knows that he is, in fact, displaying a Russian fighter jet on his lawn…

    As we approached our rest stop, our Garmin sneakily tried to route us back to the pre-detour route, but Drew and I used our amazing math skills to realize that we would have to go back a mile east on the square grid only to do another mile west again later (not efficient!). Instead, we kept riding straight down the road and quickly hit our rest stop. 

    The team was met with our usual spread of snacks and an excited Nunu, who had already visited a delicious pastry shop and amazingly shared her glorious haul of a yummy breakfast sandwich and delicious pastry. This rest stop, like almost all others, involved a lot of sitting around and stuffing our faces with food (calories… we need more calories…).

    When we hit the road again, this time I biked with Carmen and Aarushi. My side questing dreams were quickly fulfilled when I saw a plant nursery on the side of the road and begged the girls to stop with me. It turns out that Vinland Valley Nursery is far more than a plant nursery. It is a family-owned business that combines a pick-your-own flower lot, a ceramics shop, hundreds of species of plants for sale, in the springtime, a coffee shop, and year-round activities and workshops that the community can participate in. We daydreamed about starting flower shops of our own, drank generously provided iced beverages, yapped with the family that owned the nursery, and meandered around the property soaking in the pretty plants. 

    We also got to experience a personal favorite part of the nursery, the fun chicken! See the video below for what a fun chicken is and how much joy it brought the three of us.

    At this point, we were naively hopeful that we were near the last rest stop until I heard a terrifyingly horrible sound beneath me. My tire popped on the gravel. A call to Nunu also let us know that Caroline’s tire suffered a similar fate further on in the route, only seconds after mine. Thankfully, this problem was alleviated by some elbow grease from Aarushi and Carmen, as well as by stealing Nunu’s tire off of her bike. Caroline’s bike apparently sealed itself! Still not fully clear on how this sealant stuff works in the tires, but hey, I’m not one to complain!

    Nunu told us that before coming to rescue us, she had gone to visit an extremely cute town called Lawrence, where she found postcards and also saw a Trek bike shop that could fix my tires. With this in mind, we decided to skip the last rest stop and sent Nunu to the end of the route, where she unloaded our things and undertook a mission to Lawrence with Nate, my tire, and Caroline’s seemingly stable tire.

    Meanwhile, you may have noticed that our team hadn’t actually eaten lunch. We thought that the 4 am wakeup would let us arrive at our destination by 1 pm, meaning we could eat lunch afterwards, but of course, the universe had other plans, including an irresistible side quest and two popped tires. This meant that on the last few miles of our trip, I bonked, AKA experiencing a severe drop in energy when the body runs out of stored carbohydrates. Not fun. Thank you, Carmen, for distracting me with a great conversation about our personal opinions on what aspects of Spokes we enjoyed most and for offering your emergency bars as fuel.

    What IS fun, though, is the rest of our evening with the team. Upon arrival, our lovely host Scott told us that after showers, he would take us to the local tavern for BURGERRRSSS!!!! And not just any burgers, these were insanely delicious burgers that the tavern was apparently famous for (success, Drew). Nunu and Nate, who were still in Lawrence taking care of the bikes, also loved this idea and met us at the tavern. Paired with a World Cup match playing in the corner and a deep conversation (my favorite thing ever) about marriage, politics, wealth, and our personal experiences as team members from different parts of the United States, dinner made my heart and stomach extremely happy.

    The only thing that could and did make this day EVEN better was Scott’s offer to play pickleball and his reminder that we needed to be even more fun than last year’s team. Of course, we couldn’t resist, and our entire team headed to the courts. Sitting in Scott’s truck, we saw a water tower that very fittingly proclaimed, “Don’t Overlook Overbrook!” and honestly, we tend to agree. Awesome town.

    Spokes Pickleball was seriously the most fun thing ever. We have some crazy sleeper agents on the team, with Caroline having an absolutely overpowered serve and Aarushi awakening her deep pickleball skills later in the night. The tension accumulated when Drew and I played Caroline and Nate. We played the first game with my team facing into the wind and lost BADLY to Caroline’s demolishing serve. Drew began to claim that we only lost because of the wind (which, for the record and as a past tennis player, I think Caroline was just good, but who am I to break my teammate’s momentum), and he quickly earned us a rematch on the other side of the court. Maybe Drew was in fact onto something, because despite the rest of the team going crazy to support Caroline and Nate, Drew and I swept with a wonderful score of 11-1. See the video below of the turn of the tide with us winning the second game. In the interest of keeping peace on the team, no tiebreaker was played, and the real winner was our friendship. On the down low, Nate and Caroline, I’m ready for that tiebreaker whenever; just let me know. 

    I also took the cutest photo of Nate rocking Nunu’s sunglasses. Please enjoy.

    After our awesome game, the team rode back to the house in Scott’s huge truck, briefly considered going in the jacuzzi, and finally decided that we had already experienced more than enough fun and joy for the day (it was 11 pm). We turned in with happy stomachs, happy hearts, and happy minds.

    I also want to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. This day was seriously awesome, and also at times sucked. The beauty is that we are doing a crazy hard thing and get to experience the range of emotions and experiences that come with it. I still can’t believe that we are actually BIKING ACROSS THE COUNTRY!! Good thing there are 44 more days of it 🙂

    As part of this blog, I also wanted to add something fun for our loyal readers 🙂 I’m a huge puzzle fan, so I made a crossword for you to solve! Hopefully it is not too difficult, but I will happily Venmo a $5 prize to the first person who emails us at spokes-2026@mit.edu with the correct answers. There are no spaces or punctuation marks in the puzzle. Enjoy 🙂

    Sending my love across the country,

    Tatiana ❤

  • Day 28: Sunrise to Sunset

    Day 28: Sunrise to Sunset

    Marshall, MO to Kansas City, MO — 86.2 mi, 4953 ft

    There’s many things I never thought or cared about before this summer that now, literally makes or breaks my days. This includes how hot it is and at what times of the day, and how windy it is and in what direction that wind comes from.

    We’ve been trying to take this summer day by day so last night we looked at the weather forecast and saw that it is going to be the hottest it has ever been thus far and close to the windiest it’s ever been thus far as well as somehow super hilly again? This surprised most of us because we’d been under the impression that we were done with the Appalachians and were going to be on flat roads until Colorado. Unfortunately, as Carmen and Aarushi drafted up the route as they usually do the night before, our GPS app showed us a very spiky, very hairy up and down graph that no one likes to see.

    Ride with GPS graph, the x-axis is our mileage and the y axis is our elevation. Our route was showing a 5,000 ft elevation gain which we hadn’t seen since Virginia and Kentucky.

    So, this morning I woke up feeling unrested. This is because we slept at 11 PM and woke up at 4 AM in the hopes that we could finish our ride early enough to avoid the peak “feels like 107 degrees” and peak “30 mph crosswind” conditions. Stressed, rushed, tired, and in pitch black, I used my phone flashlight to pack the car with all our luggage. We ate a quick breakfast provided by our wonderful and kind hosts, Shandra and Dave. Then we said our goodbyes which included a very sad goodbye to their puppy, Percy who the whole team agrees is the cutest most lovable dog we’ve met so far.

    And with that, we started our ride at 5:30 AM—despite being 30 minutes late of our goal, it was still a record early departure time for the team. And at first, the ride was feeling great… for the first five minutes. The sun was rising over the landscape and the sky’s horizon was just slightly pink.

    We defaulted into biking in a draft line because, even so early in the morning, we were already feeling some wind. Over the course of the summer, our team has slowly caught onto this cycling technique called drafting. This is when a cyclist rides very closely behind another cyclist to avoid wind resistance and supposedly saves the cyclist that is behind, up to 50% of their energy while maintaining the exact same speed of the person in front. You can expand this into a line as the first person breaks wind, the second person drafts the first person, the third person drafts the second person, and so on (see exhibit A). Usually, when we group ride, it’s either Nate or Drew breaking wind for everyone else because they are bigger and faster so their wind pocket is larger. Today, it was both of them leading the pack as we tried to bike in a double line draft for the first time (see exhibit C). So, it was Nate, Tatiana, then myself in one line and in parallel, it was Drew, Aarushi, then Caroline.

    The thing about drafting is that in order to actually reap the benefits, you have to bike in a very precise and perfect way. Firstly, you have to bike so closely to the person in front of you that you’re afraid of crashing into them and you also have to bike so consistently and in a straight line that the person behind you can easily match pace and follow you. Unsurprisingly, most of us are not perfect cyclists yet. So being third in line, Caroline and I struggled to follow Tatiana and Aarushi as they unconsciously and totally understandably swayed side to side. At our first rest stop at mile 21 we had a brief check-in and decided we should try to switch up the order. I would draft Nate since I had learned to be more consistent after having drafted Nate many times already and Tatiana would draft me. Caroline decided she wanted to stay third in line because she didn’t feel confident to be consistent enough for someone to draft her. At this point, it was getting hotter, hills were getting steeper, and morale was getting lower as the incoming extreme heat and winds were luring closer and closer. Midway through the second 20 mile leg, Tatiana switched places with Aarushi because she felt it was hard to draft me and keep our fast pace. Despite being consistent and straight with my biking, my wind pocket was too small. At this point, our double draft line operation was breaking down along with our mental fortitude. Aarushi and Tatiana rode side by side in an attempt to both catch Drew’s wind pocket? The hills were also becoming more frequent and steep that on each climb, the draft line would break because people climbed at different paces and we would take breaks after each major climb to drink water and wait for everyone to group up again. Before we knew it, our early wakeup time advantage was slipping away from us and everyone was feeling the heat and wind exhaustion.

    We eventually all make it to the second rest stop. Everyone is sad and Tatiana is the saddest. She cries and says that while she wants to bike in the draft line so that she can be faster and make it to our destination early enough, she is really struggling to keep pace. It’s not just her, most of the group is struggling because the pace is faster than usual and tougher than usual. It’s also a lot of mental stress because we are biking in a line that moves so fast we can’t even talk and enjoy each others’ company, so we’re just trying to keep biking fast enough to escape the hotter and hotter weather.

    Everyone takes turns peeing behind this tree. Some of us pulled out our cooling towels which we had yet to try out. Spoiler: they don’t work. And Drew kindly volunteers to go at a slower pace with Tatiana so she can keep drafting him. Nate and I head out first.

    During this third leg, we turn onto a road called Pink Hill Rd. The name was far too literal for my taste. It was literally an asphalt road that was bright red and pink that went on for miles, of just up and down, up and down. I remember Nate telling me a couple weeks ago when we were in Virginia, climbing another up and down up and down, that I just had to look forward to flat flat Missouri. I brought this up to him and called out his lies.

    As we kept biking it felt as if we were biking in and out of pockets of hot hot air. On climbs, it felt especially hot because, as we slowed down going uphill, we no longer had the very slight breeze to cool us down and it felt like literally being enveloped in a huge fuzzy blanket which normally I would love but not in this scenario. Nate and I were not having a good time. As we entered into Kansas City, we’d been so beat down that a train horn going by scared us so badly we jumped out of our bike seats.

    Finally, around 2 PM just a few miles from our destination, a hotel in the middle of the city, we decided to stop at Wendy’s (Nate’s favorite restaurant). Since we were still waiting on the details of checking into the hotel, we decided to get out of the heat and kill some time. It was exactly what we needed.

    Around 3 PM, we got the call from Carmen (our driver for the day) that we could come check into the hotel. We stepped outside Wendy’s and it somehow felt 10 degrees hotter. We met up with Carmen at the hotel and as we walked into the lobby, I’m blasted by the most glorious AC I’ve ever felt. I also felt incredibly out of place as our sweaty stinky selves wheeled our three bikes through this fancy lobby, up the elevator and into our rooms. We then brought up everyone else’s luggage, making a huge ruckus as usual with our seven duffels, seven backpacks, and other miscellaneous items stuffed onto a luggage cart and wheeled up the elevators.

    Once everything was in order, I took the most amazing shower and contemplated never getting out. By now it was around 4 PM and Nate and I decided to watch some TV while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Turns out, they had also just stopped at the same Wendy’s we’d been at just a few hours before.

    By around 6 PM, everyone had arrived and settled into our four different rooms. At around 8 PM Carmen messaged that our dinner had just been delivered to our hotel lobby and we shuffled downstairs to eat. It’s BBQ! We stuffed our faces and I felt so happy and full.

    I also found out that Carmen and Caroline had doordashed boba without telling me and demanded that we go back so Nate and I could also get boba. We decided to drive there instead because it would be more fun but didn’t realize we’d be crossing into the Kansas side before we biked across the border which felt a little sad but Nate closed his eyes so it didn’t count. On our way out we saw a beautiful sunset and decided to drive around the city a bit listening to music—my favorite pastime.

    After a long and very tough biking day, I felt like a normal person again. Not worried about heat maps or wind direction, just thinking about our next two days of rest and how we should spend our free time. Amusement park? Escape room? Shopping mall? World cup? Kansas City was our oyster and we were going to make the most of it. Despite the physical and mental lows of the day, it’s making the highs that much higher and I am so so so excited for the next couple of days to loiter and eat food and hangout.

    Love,

    Nunu

  • Day 27: somewhere in between

    Day 27: somewhere in between

    Day 27: somewhere in between

    Columbia, MO to Marshall, MO — 67 mi, 2,432 ft

    Politics can be interesting simply because they are messy. Even Spokes politics.

    People hold conflicting, complicated beliefs that cannot be pruned into a single, clean solution. I find they naturally intersect and overlap and diverge in a tangled mess. And then people grow emotionally attached to the mess, to the point where it hurts to prune.

    — — — —

    We have created a spectrum which is probably more divisive than it is useful. It attempts to describe our methods of biking, how we like to spend our rides. It goes from speed demon on the far left, to extreme sidequester on the far right. I feel we have presented this as binary, either you choose to push yourself, go fast, don’t even take the time to look up at your surroundings, and make it to the hosts house before 6pm. Or you take your time, stop at whatever draws your attention, go at a comfortable pace for your head to always be on a swivel, and arrive late in the evening having had your adventure throughout the day.

    There is a reason why a spectrum has an infinite amount of points to land. Everything is variable. I think our initial intention with creating this spectrum has been overshadowed by the implications of the binary. That’s what I want to rectify through this blog. Just format my thoughts. Show that there’s somewhere in between.

    — — — —

    This morning we woke up to Vince’s amazing breakfast of biscuits, gravy, and watermelon. As soon as Tatiana opened the door to my room, the smell wafted in and encouraged me to finally open my eyes. 

    Vince was such a great host. He was so patient with us when we took ages giving our bikes a deep clean in his front yard. They were covered in mud from yesterday, which we had been too tired to wash off. I was afraid I had damaged my derailleur and brake discs, since us three riders all experienced horrible squeaking, creaking, and scratching from bits of rocks and sand lodged in too many places to count.

    Our ride started back on the Katy trail, which had thankfully dried overnight. Here are some pics of us during the first few miles looking awesome and coordinated.

    Soon after, Caroline and I passed by a cute cafe for bikers with the same millennial vibe I’ve gotten from most coffee shops in the midwest.

    It is here where I make my first decision of the day: to sidequest or not to sidequest.

    My initial thought was to keep biking, because we were less than 10 miles into the 66 we have to finish. But after I physically stopped in the middle of the road, and with a small push from Caroline, we chose to make a detour. The sign for fresh peaches up the road did indeed help me make up my mind.

    Aarushia and Tatiana stopped as well, and then a plan was made. Coffee, then peaches. Amazing.

    Turns out the coffee was mid. We noted that this was yet again similar to a “government operation”, so many people standing around getting nothing done. The same worker was getting our orders and making our coffees one by one, while the four others just stood behind the counter looking forlorn. But the peaches were heavenly. I had to drink the juice to keep it from running down my chin. We noticed an art gallery across from the fruit stand, and so we looked around at some local pieces.

    I felt like a professional dilly dallier, having spent at least 90 minutes off the bike wandering around this cute little neighborhood. After several more minutes of conversations and bathroom breaks thrown in, we were finally ready to finish the ride to the first rest stop.

    When we arrived, I learned that Nate and Nunu had left a few minutes ago but had a long break. To make up for lost time, we decided to make our rest shorter in comparison.

    To me, this is a trade off, and a good one at that. Instead of spending an extra thirty minutes at the rest stop, we just traded it for time wandering about on our own terms. But eventually, there does come a point where the scales will always be unbalanced, where we dilly dally too much and cannot make an even trade. Where we’ll have to sacrifice dilly dally time later in the day to biking. 

    I’d prefer to always have the opportunity to sidequest, not have one part of the day be too sidequest heavy. This, I think, is achieved by being conscious of the time we spend. Efficient dilly dallying. This awareness shouldn’t be suffocating, but just add a level of respect to our drivers and to our hosts.

    We continued along the trail, until I spotted this wooden bridge sticking out of a small pond. To me, it was less about walking on the bridge and more about seeing if I could find a way to get to the end. I did, although possibly without the approval of the Mennonites. 

    First solo sidequest. The rest of the group had gone ahead, and so I, rather ridiculously, pushed 18 mph in order to catch up. I found Tatiana and Aarushi stopped on the side of the road, where Tatiana called out to me to ask if I wanted to go to the casino we just biked by. It was a goal of hers to visit one before the end of the trip, and this was the first one she’s seen on our route.

    Potential third sidequest of the day? All before we were halfway into the ride? I don’t know. I could see this meant a lot to her, and I didn’t want to prevent her from enjoying herself, but I knew that if I went, I’d be itching to get back on the bike. We still had 40 more miles to go. 

    Aarushi ended up going with her instead. While I continued they were busy gambling.

    Tatiana won an impressive 19 cents out of her initial $5, but I’m sure the memories made were priceless. 

    Afterwards, they told me they went to this festival Boonville holds once a year. It was apparently very lit as they got to chat with the locals and learn a little bit about their lives. They got to see a quilting circle, where older folks switch quilts between them and add unique designs every rotation, preserving the memory of each other in their art. They also stopped by a vintage car show and got to sit in the back seat of one.

    Some decisions must be made without all the facts, as they might only become apparent after. Had I known how much of a cultural insight this festival was, I would have taken the time to explore. But that’s not how life works. If I had the same choice between biking or stopping to play some slot machines, I’d choose to bike. And I don’t think this means I’m averse to fun or whimsy, just in the moment, with 40 more miles, the threat of a storm brewing, and the desire to enjoy such a moment outside of my sweaty chamois (allowing that a 19 yr old can gamble), biking through the trees with a cool breeze on my face as I listen to Fleetwood 

    Mac sounded more appealing.

    I eventually finished our ride’s portion on the Katy trail, and then caught up to Caroline, where we attempted to ride like two sardines squished next to each other until an RV decided to nearly ride us off the road with a foot margin between us. We made it to the next rest stop, where Drew was waiting for us with lunch. Caroline and I made our delicious sandwiches with sundried tomatoes, pesto, pickled onions, and some fancy seed bread. 

    We then visited an ice cream shop and, of course in Spokes fashion, split two flavors three ways. I have never shared my food (and saliva) more than on this trip, and realized that for the past nineteen years I’ve been missing out on something. Passing around a drink and sharing that same straw amongst seven people brings you much closer than I thought was possible. 

    Nunu also found some cool glasses in the shop and wanted to show them off.

    Caroline, Nunu, Nate, and I left to bike the last segment of our ride, aiming to beat this oncoming thunderstorm. It was ominously brewing in the sky as we biked through backcountry roads.

    For this half of the ride, I decided to push myself a little. After doing so for a good amount of our  past rides, I was finally feeling more comfortable at a faster pace. But Caroline and I still kept up a good engaging conversation, I was still able to keep my head on a swivel (learning to watch for dogs in Kentucky has truly made this second nature) and take pictures when I felt called to. None of these are mutually exclusive. I find they all add to the experience.

    Nunu and Nate had split off, but three miles to the end Caroline and I caught up with them. I thought maybe they were waiting for us but actually they had just crashed into each other. Nunu hadn’t seen a turn and Nate ran into her, almost payback for the century day when Nunu ran into Nate after he slowed down abruptly to check his Strava. His garmin watch and phone bore most of the damage, both screen protectors shattered. “Now we’re even,” Nunu had said to us, “but he didn’t find that very funny.” I definitely did. Sorry Nate.

    When we made it to our wonderful host’s house, we were met with iced tea provided by Dave and Shandra, and a beautiful doggo named Percy. He really loved Nate.

    While we waited for our remaining team members to arrive, we talked with Dave and Shandra about our journey. To our surprise, Dave had read all of our blogs and even remembered the minute fact that Nunu’s chain had fallen off on the climb into Blacksburg. I’m immediately super impressed. It just goes to show how much of an amazing, invested host he was. 

    We had a great dinner, and they even graciously agreed to provide us breakfast at the ridiculous hour of five in the morning, around when we planned to leave to beat the 95 degree heat…

    — — — —

    Here’s my take: balance is key. Though what that means may change day by day, depending on mileage and elevation gain. Maybe you’d want to go faster to avoid some weather, or go slower throughout a city, or even push yourself while appreciating your surroundings. Maybe you’d want to delay a sidequest so lunch doesn’t get warm, or maybe you’d want to do so because it’s your only chance to. There are multiple solutions that all vary with each situation and with importance to each person.

    Maybe it boils down to consideration. For whom is the question. For myself? For our host? For the driver? For my teammates?

    How do I judge the importance of these factors relative to each other? How should I?

    — — — —

    If any thorns were plucked, I hope it wasn’t too painful.

    Thank you for your time and consideration,

    Carmen

  • 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