Tag: cycling-day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Nate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Nate

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

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

Washington D.C. to Linden, VA – 88.6 mi, 4947 ft (5833 ft if you make the wrong turn)

Def SAG (noun): Support And Gear. The minivan holding all the teams’ gear, food, etc.

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

Before explaining today, I’d like to provide some context on the current state of the team. Two nights ago, the most sleep anyone on the team got was 4 hours. Last night, the team got 2 hours of sleep and then taught at the juvenile detention center for 7 hours. After driving an hour back, cleaning bikes, eating dinner, packing the van, buying groceries, doing laundry, and getting ready for bed, it was 11pm. 

With this in mind, we decided to prioritize recovering our sleep before today’s ~90 mile ride by waking up at 7am instead of the 5am wakeup we had decided to do after finishing teaching. The plan was to leave the house by 8am to drive to DC, arrive at 8:30am, take pictures, and then start biking by 9am. That did not happen. 

At 8am, half the team was still upstairs getting ready and all bags weren’t in the van until 8:30am. We ended up leaving at 8:40am and, because we were now driving into downtown D.C. at peak rush hour, we didn’t get to the Lincoln Memorial until 10am. 

After taking a few pictures, Spokes 2026 was off from D.C. for their first ride of the summer!

The fanfare of departing from the Lincoln Memorial was short lived unfortunately as we immediately ran into a slew of technical difficulties (e.g. red lights for ages, falling walkie talkies, twisting ramps causing the first fall of the summer, making incorrect turns getting out of the city, etc.). After getting out of D.C., we biked together for no more than 2 miles before splitting up into faster and slower groups (despite planning to all bike together for 20 miles). 

Drew, Carmen, and I biked together for a bit before Drew fell behind a little. Carmen and I continued on to the first rest stop at mile 20 where we checked off the first bathroom break a la fresca and then regrouped with Drew. 

Prior to the first rest stop Tatiana and Nunu both called me to let us know that Drew’s drivers license was found in the laundry machine back at the house, and so Tatiana would be driving back to get it and, as a result, wouldn’t be able to meet us at the rest stop. We decided to mess with Drew a little by asking him to show us his ID to make sure “he had the right one in case we get stopped by the police”. I’ve never seen someone so confidently claim they had their ID while already holding all cards in their wallet. (Note from the future: we are currently keeping a count of things Drew has left behind, we’re currently at 4 things in 3 days). 

We then continued biking towards the second rest stop where Tatiana would meet us for lunch. We decided to have Drew and Carmen draft so that we could all stick together (Carmen said she was winded from getting to the first rest stop). This turned out to work very well. We were able to hold a solid 15-17mph pace all the way to the lunch stop and get Drew a new speed PR. 

So far, and up to around mile 40, we rode along the Washington & Old Dominion bike trail, which was super nice: separated from the road, very green, and had occasional tree coverage.

We eventually reached the second rest stop around mile 35 where we waited 5-10 minutes for Tatiana to arrive with Drew’s ID, set up sandwiches for lunch, and started eating. After ~15-20 minutes, the second group (Aarushi, Nunu, Caroline) arrived and joined us for lunch. 

After everyone finished eating, we let the second group go ahead while Drew, Carmen, Tatiana, and I packed up lunch. We then set off towards the second half of the ride.

Eventually we reached the 3rd rest stop around mile 55. Nothing very notable happened yet but at this point we did realize that in 2 days we had eaten two 1kg bags of dried mangos.

The story of a hero starts now. 

It was currently around 5:30pm with 35 miles to go. Our Warmshowers¹ host Jen wanted us at the house before quiet hours at 9pm when she puts her 2 year old baby to bed. As a result, I decided to bike ahead alone (since Drew and Carmen wanted more recovery time) so I could start showering and unpacking (+ because Jen and her husband Jim had very kindly offered to help drive any straggling members to her house to ensure we got there in time – I had 0 intention of letting this happen to me since I wanted to fully finish the ride). 

So I then left the park we had been using as our third rest stop and turned right out of the parking lot back onto the road we had been biking along. Meanwhile, the rest of the team would spend 20-30 minutes more resting before turning left out of the parking lot to retrace our steps and continue along the road actually part of our route. 

Unbeknownst to me, my bike computer had quickly rerouted when I made this right turn. Our bike computers have graphs of the upcoming elevation along the route and show stretches of steep elevation gain in colors ranging from green (flat) to yellow to red (steep). When I looked down at my bike computer, I saw shades of red that I had never seen before on that bike computer. 

I chugged up a 1 mile, 500 ft elevation gain hill, before coming up upon a 4-lane highway with cars going 60mph that my GPS was telling me to cross and continue biking on. The highway had a generous shoulder so I waited for a break in the cars to cross and start biking uphill along the highway with cars and 18-wheelers zooming by. My elevation graph was showing deep red and purple(I didn’t even know that was an option), so I decided that I should warn the rest of the team that things were about to get pretty tough. 

Luckily, the stretch along the highway only lasted ~5 minutes before I had to cross back over to the other side straight into a 1000ft climb. This would become my new highest climb (beating the 500ft one I had just finished), but after around 30 minutes of chugging up the hill at 5mph I reached the “flatter” section at the top and continued along the rest of the road. 

After riding along the road for a bit, I got a call from Drew that no one wants to hear: that I was off route. My first reaction was that HE was the one off route, but after pulling off the road and checking the original route I confirmed that I was on a parallel road heading slightly more north. Turns out the whole team was confused when the horrible climbs and highways I had prophesied would arrive, since the route they were on was very reasonable. 

At this point I considered my options: retracing to get back on route, which would be ~8 miles back and require me doing 43 miles in 2 hours i.e. not feasible; continuing on the current route which, after checking Google Maps street view, I found required biking on a four lane highway with no shoulder for bikes i.e. incredibly unsafe; or the tragic third choice of being the first person to SAG and get moved back onto the route. 

With little other choice, I called Tatiana to ask her to come pick me up where the road I was on met the highway and have her transport me ~6 miles along the highway to get back on route. 

Luckily the distance I biked along the road was around the same distance as the other road but with an additional 1000 feet of elevation gain so I still had grounds to stand on that I finished the ride. But at this point Drew and Carmen were ~5 miles ahead and I needed to complete the last 20 miles in the next hour to avoid getting actually SAG’d out. It’s worth noting that one of the reasons Jen and Jim offered to help SAG us was because they didn’t want us going up and down the exact mountain I did  

Anyways, as soon as I got dropped off the route and my bike was off the car bike rack I booked it along the route (making sure I was headed the right direction this time) at ~170-180 bpm, huffing and puffing with my legs burning the whole way. 

After 11 miles I passed Carmen and, shortly after, I passed Drew (😜). 

Around this time, Aarushi, Nunu, and Caroline had all been SAG’d out at 76 miles, by Jen’s husband Jim since they were too far behind to make it to the house in time. Side tangent but to be SAG’d out they were told to look for Jim’s red pickup truck. At some point they saw one parked near the meetup point and approached it, only to see a sign reading “No trespassers. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” They quickly left the area and were safely picked up by Jim later. 

After passing Carmen and Drew, I pushed the last 9 miles with my legs burning, painfully climbed the gravel mountain to Jen & Jim’s house, and rolled up to the house as a champion. 

But did we really win? In the end Carmen and Drew also made it without being SAG’d out since the time it would take to SAG them out would’ve been longer than just letting them finish the ride. Additionally, the route for the next day was a 60 mile 8000 ft elevation ride notorious among the Spokes teams every year. Finally, because we arrived so late Jen and Jim ended up putting their baby down to bed an hour late. 

After arriving, we quickly ran a shower line, ate the ground beef tacos Jen had kindly cooked for us, unpacked, ran laundry, had a team meeting to plan the next morning, and did some blog writing. It was over dinner that Jen warned us about our ride the next day being a dangerous route due to its sharp, low visibility turns. After this rough day 1 ride no one was eager to do the dangerous + painfully steep ride, so in the end we swapped our route to a 30 mile 2000 ft elevation ride that got us to a different camp ground and got the job done. Jen also told us we had done the longest day 1 Spokes ride she had ever seen 😁.

I guess I won after all?

– Nate

¹ Warmshowers is a platform where touring bicyclists can open up their homes to other touring bicyclists to stay with them while out on multi-day bike rides. MIT Spokes has utilized Warmshowers heavily throughout the past 12 years to get housing across the US. Many hosts have hosted multiple generations of Spokes teams – for example, Jen has hosted the MIT Spokes teams four times (and the team is very grateful!).