Tag: rest-day

Day 52: candyland?? canyonlands!
“Greta, do you fear being 3 blogs behind?” Tian asked me this the last time I was two, almost three, blogs behind.

Yes. Yes I am.

Unfortunately, today officially marks my descent into “three blogs behind” territory. BUT I am determined it will also be my last day on the dark playground of blog procrastination. I have to start somewhere, so I’m starting with today. Day 44 and…uh…Day 36…. will be coming shortly. My deepest apologies to all our devoted readers.

I woke up early this morning to finish up the last of my interviews for MITEC Hack Director positions. My first alarm went off at 6:30, at which point I was still planning to sleep for another 15-20 minutes. Ishaq, however, HATES hearing alarms. So, instead of letting me enjoy my morning snooze in peace, he engaged in a terror campaign to force me out of bed before my next alarm went off.

My wakeups are very important to me, and this nearly set my day off on the completely wrong course. To reset the karmic balance, I pulled on my lucky socks and took a long swig of water. Water solves everything.

Properly hydrated, I hopped on my computer and got to it. It’s my first time being on the other side of an interview process, and I’ve found it very eye-opening. Luckily, everyone I have talked to has been amazing! Starting to coordinate a major event while on the road has been stressful, but I can’t wait to get back to campus and get the planning into full swing.

I was considering going for a run after my calls, but I got hit by an overwhelming wave of hunger, so I decided to eat breakfast instead. I spent the first six weeks of this trip curating a perfectly linear running graph on my Strava progress tab, but I finally gave up this week. Turns out running 20 miles in a week on top of biking through the desert isn’t the most appealing activity. I’ve run 5. Oops.

On the upside, I ate a lovely breakfast (my go-to: greek yogurt, fresh fruit, and granola with a lavishly buttered cinnamon raisin bagel on the side) and appreciated a rare moment of solitude on the condo balcony. After enjoying such a peaceful morning, I took it upon myself to destroy everyone else’s peace. “Rise and shine!” I tried my best to offer my sleeping Spokie friends a warm welcome to the waking world, but I fear it was not particularly well received. Alas.

Eventually, the rest of the team rubbed their groggy eyes and pulled their aching limbs out of bed. Sarah’s mom, Jennifer, has been cooking us incredible food all weekend. This morning, she prepared a lox bagel bar, complete with capers, red onions, and smoked salmon. While eating, we started a jam on Spotify which I curated impeccably until Ishaq joined and decided to completely destroy the vibes. Notable additions to the queue include Funkytown and Bad Day by Alvin and the Chipmunks. I absolutely did not sing along…
lox bar!
teddy bear ishaq
ruth-in-a-box
Luckily, Ishaq’s terrible music choices succeeded in propelling us all out the door and onto our excursion for the day: a hike in Canyonlands! Before Spokes, I considered myself a pretty bad driver. I probably still am one, but I’ve found I actually really like driving the minivan to and from our rest day excursions. Ruth, Charles, and Ishaq joined me in the van and we spent the hour and a half ride scheming for Charles’ next blog: a “Which Spokie are You?” quiz. We generated lots of question and answer ideas, many that will (and some that will not), be included in the quiz. Keep an eye out. 👀

We arrived to the trailhead right at noon, which everyone knows is the perfect time to start a hike. Especially in July. Especially in Utah. Before leaving the house, Joseph, our most experienced hike, implored us all to bring LOTS of water. Don’t tell him I said this, but we were all grateful we listened to his advice. It was HOT out there.

We all like to think we’ve gotten in pretty good shape biking across the country, but our hikes the past two days have given us some serious doubts. How is “just walking” possibly so exhausting?! Besides getting slightly humbled physically, the hike was incredible. The hike was a six mile out-and-back weaving in and out of towering rock structures to get to a viewpoint of “The Needles”. At the viewpoint we could see not only “The Needles”, a set of towering sandstone spires, but also hazy blue mountains and dark red plateaus–all from just one spot. I only wish I knew anything at all about Utah’s geology. Unfortunately, our collective knowledge amounts to “some sort of erosion probably caused this”.
star of the show
okkkk model
awww
hydrate or diedrate
#pickydrinker
The other nice thing about hikes is that we get lots of time to talk! (You know we’re normally pretty short on that…) Actually, we’re getting to the point where it seems like we should be running out of things to talk about, but we never quite get there. Today, we spent a good amount of time discussing each other’s Hogwarts houses: (Joseph/Ravenclaw, Tian/Slytherin, Charles/Hufflepuff, Ramona/Ravenclaw, Ishaq/Slytherin, Ruth/Hufflepuff, Sarah/Hufflepuff, Greta/Gryffindor) We accused many team members of being “funny weird” rather than “funny haha”. And we (rather unsuccesfully) played Guess The Tune. I was also (somewhat succesfully) gaslit into believing octopi aren’t born with all eight legs. Tough.

I knew I’d probably fall asleep when I got back in the car after hiking, so I asked Charles to take over driving for a bit. Sure enough, I curled up in the back and took an epic car nap. I woke up feeling quite refreshed (and Charles was looking… not quite alert) so I switched back to the driver’s seat and gave Charles a chance to rest as well. He later reassured me that “we were never in any real danger…”
sleepy time
more sleepy time
hi cricket!
yummy leftovers
Back at the condo, we dispersed to work on our respective tasks. I blogged, Charles and Tian took a quick trip to the grocery store, Ishaq bonded with Sarah’s dad, Mike, over music. Jennifer cooked us another mouthwatering dinner of mango orzo salad and flank steak with chimmichuri sauce. We were all quiet around the table for at least five minutes, the surest sign of a good meal. Thank you so much Jennifer!!

Since we hadn’t gotten enough heat during the day, after dinner, we all went across the street to hit the jacuzzi. Little did we know, the pool also had our favorite game–cornhole! For some reason, Charles wanted to play against Ruth and I again after his complete and utter humiliation at Vail. Joseph had already left, so Ruth and I teed up against Charles and Ishaq. Let’s just say… Charles can’t claim Joseph is the weak link. Final score: 21-3.
Charles and Ishaq nursed their wounded pride over smores and we all finally headed back up to the condo just before 11. I think I heard somewhere “late to bed, late to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. What a nice quote.

Clock ticking towards 12, we showered off and started our preparations for the next morning. Slowly, like usual, with plenty of time for giggling.

“I’m just high on friendship,” I heard Ishaq say from across the room. “Awww that’s so sweet,” I said. “Shut up, dude,” he closed the bathroom door.

Shutting up (for now),

Greta
July 26, 2025
Day 51: We Gettin Schmittyyyyyy

Moab, UT -> Moab, UT

One Schmitt, two Schmitt, red Schmitt, blue Schmitt. Today I was struck with the cruel reality that I cant just call Sarah by her awesome nickname Schmitty because we have two more Schmitties with the gang today. Sarah’s lovely parents, Jennifer and Mike (dubbed mother and father Schmitt) got the team an Airbnb for two days and treated us to quite possibly some of the most fun and adventurous rest days of the trip. Sadly twin sister Schmitt could not join us 🥲.

We had potential plans today for an early morning hike, however, the group collectively decided in the morning that we were not built for that so we all enjoyed some delicious cinnamon rolls made by mother Schmitt then Ramona and I hit the pool for a morning swim. Later, a few of us hit the town to go to a bike shop and book store. We all did our business and Tian introduced me to some game on her phone that she really loves. I, looking at bike tires the first round, was not locked in so Tian easily defeated me. But of course that round was just the training so I proceeded to destroy her the next two games. We hurried back to the Airbnb to set off for our group white water rafting trip on the Colorado river.

Our rafting guide, Jonah, got to know us all and gave us the run through on raft and kayak safety. I really wanted to flip a kayak, but they ened up being pretty much unflippable. The ride down the river was pretty relaxing. We saw 3 bald eagles, an otter den, and even a stunning otter impression from Ruth flailing in the water. I started out in the raft and really wanted to take a turn at the paddles. So I got into the captain chairs and started rowing. Now some would say I was just bad a rowing, but the raft was initially in quite the difficult position near the river bank in almost still water making it pretty difficult to navigate back to the flow in the middle. Charles stepped in to assist, each of us with one paddle and we eventually found the bubble line and started zooming. Others tried, Ramona getting the most praise from Jonah for her steady pace and good navigation. Personally, I believe she received the oars when the raft was already in steady currents due to the labors of all who came before her, but I could never hate on Ramo so I sat there while she was praised, only making a small off-handed political comment about inheriting a good economy to Charles. During this process of us spokies learning how to row a boat, mother and father Schmitt wisely chose to flee to a kayak, avoiding a series of terrible raft maneuvers with one of us spokies in the captains seat. When it was finally my turn in a kayak, Ruth and I locked in. Utilizing her years of rowing experience and my raw power, we successfully paddled around in circles and were far slower than Charles and Tian in the other kayak 😐. But we did have a good time navigating through a few of the rapids and swimming around in calmer areas. All in all, rafting was a great experience for the team, after packing up all the boats at the end we started heading back to moab and hit our spokes signature move: napping in the van.

After our return, we set out on yet another adventure: Arches National Park. We went on a short sunset hike to the delicate arch and I gotta say, it don’t look all that delicate to me. Liiiiiiiike a bunch of birds were pulling up and perching on it and nothing happened 🤷🏾‍♂️. The hike up was pretty nice and it wasn’t too hot anymore. Ruth enjoyed seeing germans, because apparently every time you go on a hike there will be germans. She has some strange obsession with them for no reason, even though she barely speaks the language. Everyone enjoyed me tripping and falling on the way up because they’re all fake friends with no care as to if I was okay. Seeing the arch itself was pretty breathtaking. I would’ve loved if the amphitheater around it didn’t have as many people so the entire area would be more serene, but I suppose Jean Paul Sartre put it best: hell is other people (I’m just being dramatic, but i would have loved to be there at like 3 am with no one else around). Charles, Joseph, and I got some solid pictures of the men of the group looking fly as heck, but we were photobombed by Greta who couldn’t resist destroying out vibes (She’s evil, simple as that). Tian of course got her entire photoshoot with all of her signature poses as usual, actively kicking away any spokies who wanted to join her bc she gotta maintain her solo traveler reputation. After some cute full group photos we all headed back down and had a great conversation about REDACTED. Tian and Ruth have quite interesting opinions about the topic, then we took the convo to the van ride back to Moab.

🙂

Me exiting tian’s photo shoot

Tian being a poser

Getting Schmittyyyyyy

Men looking fine as heck

Greta’s evil photobombing

us posing like we love each other

What are they staring at???

Not so delicate arch

The setting sun

Our final event of the day was hitting an upscale Italian restaurant. Now I LOVE Italian food, but the menu was my worst nightmare: too many options. Everything looked phenomenal, I didnt know what to order and started scrambling to organize a bunch of shared plates with other spokies so I could try everything. Bc the team is fake as heck no one wanted to go splitsies on 2-3 dishes so i had to make a choice. Once the waitress got to me I asked a wealth of questions about the dishes but was hit with the curveball of more dinner specials on the board behind me which i hadn’t seen. Naturally I asked her to come back to me after this revelation. Everyone else orders. Most notably Joseph gets the Josephina ravioli, very fitting I know. Once the zero hour finally arrived and I was forced to make a decision then and there, I did not take a chance on the ravioli, nor did I spring for the tortelloni. I, a man of class and high standards, ordered their mac and cheese. No toppings, no meat, no nothing. Just cheesed-up mac. As the other ordered started rolling in I started to get scared because they all looked absolutely scrumptious. All of the complex artisanal pastas made my dedication to my mac and cheese waver, I nearly even felt some regret. Then set before me was the finest plate of dairy coated pasta I have every witnessed. The consistency, the aroma, the perfectly browned layer of cheese on top. Taking my first forkful caused a single tear to trickle down my face. C’est tres bon. C’est magnifique. One could say it had a certain je ne sais quoi. But as they do whenever you find something truly sacred, the fiends began to swarm. Greta and Ruth started by simply asking for a taste, to which I agreed – I am a chill guy who likes to share food after all. But then, without warning, they began to descend on my cheese sauce with handfuls of garlic bread, dunking and swiping, leaving streaks of emptiness where rich cheese sauce once was. I continued to eat and revel in the meal, but the crows were flocking. In the end, my plate was decimated, not a spec of noodle or cheese sauce remaining. While I’m sure everyone enjoyed their own meals, everyone who tried mine surely had regrets about their ordering choices afterward.

My reaction to receiving my mac and cheese

Spokies at the Spoke on Center

After dinner we headed back to the Airbnb, another successful day for the spokies, very generously funded by mother and father Schmitt. All parties, tired, speedily headed to bed in preparation for an even longer and more arduous day tomorrow.

July 25, 2025
Day 40: Summertime in the Springs
Rest day in Colorado Springs, CO

What’s up everyone, Charles here, back at it again with another b-logggg!

I woke up for the second time today at 8:30am and checked my phone. I had a new Whatsapp notification. The message informed me that Cathie, Greta’s grandma and our host, tripped over a duffel in the morning and hurt her shoulder and went to the hospital. This helped explain my first wake up of the day, which was prompted by a loud THUD from the floor above.

The Spokie responsible for this poorly placed duffel is named and shamed over breakfast. They feel really terrible about it, so we agree to omit the identity of this murderous culprit from the blog. Okay, it was Sarah’s duffel. But in all seriousness, hope you are resting up and healing well, Cathie.

Ishaq and Ramona serve up breakfast in the kitchen. Ishaq’s strawberry banana smoothie hits the spot, Ramona’s bacon is on point, and the pancakes are wonderful. We self serve bagels, yogurt and granola, and milk and cereal. I stream the day’s Tour de France stage (which we all loosely follow now, in part due to Ishaq’s incessant glazing of Tadej Pogačar) to the TV and we try to piece together what’s going on.

Morning view from the balcony. Colorado is really something else

We get good news from the hospital — nothing is broken for Cathie and she is coming back after an ibuprofen shot. In the meantime, Ramona and I strategize about my screw-in-tire situation. She calls a few bike shops and finds one that has our tire size in stock. I’m slated to get a slightly different tire than the other fifteen we have (first (and hopefully last) tire replacement of Spokes 2025!). It’s pretty comparable to the tires we have, maybe slightly better, with one crucial difference that sends Ishaq into fits. I’m getting a Specialized tire. This means nothing to us performance-wise, but the Specialized brand literally slaps a SPECIALIZED logo on your gear. As we all know by now, style points are strongly correlated with speed, so my dripped out rear tire replacement is going to be responsible for at least a 1 mph boost. I defend myself against plots to steal my new tire in the middle of the night. Ishaq contemplates purposefully running over a screw to get a new tire as well.

Although re-mounting the tire will be pretty cheap ($25 service), Ramona and I (mostly Ramona) decide we want to give it a go ourselves. The year is 2025 and everything we need to know for the repair is in a 10 minute YouTube video anyways. Ramona watches the video, nods along, and mumbles “it’s not that hard” at regular intervals.

When Cathie comes back, we make plans to sightsee the Garden of the Gods, a free local park with great mountain scenery and spectacular rock formations. Half of us go in David’s (Greta’s grandpa) car and the rest ride with Cathie.

The park is packed. On the ride over, we admire the scenery and comment on the various bikers we see on the trails. Coming into Colorado, I knew the state’s reputation for being very outdoors-y, but even still, I was surprised at how many people were out biking, running, and hiking. We found parking at the lot beneath the Balanced Rock and took some fun pictures:
Get it… cause the rock is balanced
Our pose so fire everyone behind in line copied us
Tian hittin that
Ramona getting jiggy
Joseph knows something we don’t
??
Boo
🥵
We then drove to the main lot at Garden of the Gods and walked on the trails that lead you to some of the other rock formations. We also climbed on the rocks, posed for some more pictures, and discussed our roles in a hypothetical Spokes horror movie. Also, an intense piggyback ride showdown took place.
Chalanting it up
We’re chill like that
Garden of the Gods was gorgeous
One of the rock formations
More views
Postcard worthy
Landscape view
Ishaq + Sarah | 1 – 0 | Ramona + Ruth

After returning to Greta’s grandparents’ home, we made tacos from last night’s leftovers for lunch and split up for afternoon activities. Ishaq, Ruth, and Tian finished watching Squid Games season 3. Greta went out for a run. Joseph and Sarah napped. Ramona and I went to the bike shop. We got my new tire, asked a lot of questions, and picked up chamois butter, more tire sealant, and new bike lube.

We also wanted to buy a pair of pliers, which Spokes has been sorely missing, so we stopped at Home Depot on the way back. The pliers at Home Depot are way more heavy-duty than we need ($15), so after some nifty Googling (I google “pliers”), we find that Ace Hardware sells pliers for far cheaper ($3.50) and go there instead. With our spirits buoyed by our cost-saving successes, Ramona and I head back, ready to fix my tire.

The repair goes smoothly. The part we were worried about — seating the new tire onto the wheel rim — works on the third try as we hone in on the pressure to pump our tire canister to (150 psi!). Ramona busts out her trusty method for spreading new sealant in my tire.

Backup career option for Ramona is pizza spinner

Dinner is at PF Chang’s courtesy of David and Cathie. After the meal, we ate fortune cookies. Joseph and Ramona pulled two *very* topical fortunes.

And people think the government doesn’t spy on us

Since Ruth has an appointment to get her hair done tomorrow, we help unbraid her hair. I work on one singular braid for what feels like forever, then promptly quit. The others are more successful.

Ruth’s mom screenshots this still on a FaceTime call. I am struggling mightily

We eat Cathie’s delicious apple crisp with vanilla ice cream afterwards. I solve a crossword in the papers with help from Ruth and Greta. Periodic shrieks emanating from the basement pierce my blissful crossword+dessert combo. I find out later that this is owing to the other Spokies playing, as Joseph said could only be described as, “Jenga, but the bricks were our bodies.”

We might be a little *too* bonded

We all go to sleep, some sweatier than others. Apologies for the late blog, and until next time!
July 16, 2025
Day 29: Grand Theft Auto
Rest Day in Kansas City, MO

Yo yo yo! It’s Joseph, back at it again from Kansas City (the one in Missouri). I’m finally out of the trenches, and all my deep thoughts and introspection go to a complete halt unless I’m in complete misery and questioning my life. That’s why this time I’m doing a bit more of a silly blog. I’m sure as you will have heard from Greta (when she eventually publishes yesterday’s blog), we had a great learning festival followed by an awesome dinner out with some of the sponsors of the program we taught at. Meeting influential members of the Latino community anywhere is always a treat and our VIP level treatment has elevated Kansas City to my favorite stop on the trip so far. Kansas City continued to be a surreal trip even after last night, though.

We awoke with plans to go to The Children’s Place, a specialized trauma treatment center for very young children. The visit was set up by the aSteam Village sponsor. We were given a tour of the facility and then split up into groups of two or three to play with the children for an hour, followed by a little fireworks show. We weren’t allowed to take any photos and aren’t at liberty to talk about many details, but I can personally say that the kids were great and everyone had a blast. The adults there are doing some very important work and have my full respect.

We got back to our Airbnb and had a couple of hours to spare before our dinner plans with the learning festival sponsor, supposedly some amazing barbeque (Kansas City is known for it). Charles wanted to run some errands, so me and Ruth joined him. There were a few errands to run, but one was more important than the others. Enterprise said that we had to renew our car contract every thirty days and wow would you look at that we started Spokes a month ago! So, we drove to the nearest Enterprise thinking this would be a 15-minute errand. Then everything went wrong. For the past thirty-something days, our car rental process had gone too smoothly. No car breakdown or troubles with authorized drivers. Of course, all good things must come to an end. See, our 2024 Chrysler Pacifica had very recently been recalled due to a side airbag malfunction, along with 250,000 other Pacifica’s in Enterprise’s nationwide fleet. Enterprise told us we could keep the van until the end of our trip, but when it came time to renew our contract, the local branch said they could not renew a contract on a recalled vehicle. The only option here would be to get a replacement minivan and renew the contract with that, but it just so happens that those 250,000 Pacifica’s are most of Enterprise’s minivan fleet, so there were no available minivans or any seven-seater SUVs in the entire Kansas City area. We drove across state lines to two more Kansas City locations including the airport in an attempt to find an available vehicle, but no dice. At this point, our only option was to forego the Cambridge Enterprise’s pleas to get our car switched and continue on with the recalled Chrysler Pacifica with an overdue contract until we can eventually get it replaced, maybe in Denver… The legality of this decision is dubious. One might even say that we’ve committed Grand Theft Auto™.
Cool Bridge
Driving to Enterprise
After our quick errand turned wild goose chase, we came back to the AirBnB with nothing to show for our efforts. Our barbeque dinner with the sponsor was cancelled for unrelated reasons, but he instead generously doordashed us food from the barbeque place. It was quite delicious. The team all gathered together for our fourth iteration of the Spokes Movie Night, where we watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I had been wanting to watch the movie for quite some time now and I was not disappointed. The main female lead’s name in the movie was Ramona, so it became a running joke that our Ramona had seven evil exes and all that. The best thing to come out of it was probably the song in the movie called Ramona. I had the bright idea of making a three minute long edit with the song. Please enjoy the fruit of my labor.

The Ramona Edit
July 3, 2025
Day 24: every day i’m huSTLin
Rest day in St. Louis, MO

What’s up everyone, it’s Charles, here to recap our rest day in STL! After our first century ride yesterday, we all seized the opportunity to sleep in this morning. Everyone fixed themselves a breakfast as we mapped out our plans for the day, eager to explore our first major city since DC.

Nora, our host, had recommended we check out the farmers market in Tower Grove Park the night before, so we all set out for that around 10:30. Even though we’re a biking team, I’ve found a strange reluctance to tour the places we visit on my own bike. Part of me is trying not to spend any more time than I have to on the bike. But the other part of me likes to separate the biking aspect of Spokes from my rest day adventures because of the other hassles — pedaling on clip-ins without biking shoes on, having to find a spot to lock my bike, wearing a helmet. We all opted to walk the 1.5 miles to the farmers market, so I think the other Spokies were also happy to spend some time walking for once.

The farmers market was lively. A jazz band was playing music. There were a lot of booths selling all sorts of things. Sweets, BBQ, pet food, plants, art, woodworked pieces, earrings, and on and on. I bought baklava at a Mediterranean treats booth and the seller threw in an extra Oreo finger for me. Ishaq “got clocked as Nigerian by a Ghanian couple” and bought their algae lemonade. (Review: “it was ass”). Ruth, Ramona, and Joseph cooled down in the fountain water and probably doubled the average age of the population frolicking there.
Biking mural!
A few booths where we entered the farmers market
Live music 🎷
The fountain and more booths
I keep taking pictures of my food after I’ve devoured half of it
After walking back and sweating profusely in the deadly Missouri heat/humidity combo, the Spokies ate a few bites and split up for afternoon adventures. Tian crashed out and started swinging a pillow around violently. Greta went out for a run (yes, she is not right in the head). Joseph, Sarah, and Ramona went to a coffee shop to get some work done, then biked to the park and did some more work. Ruth biked to the art museum and got tacos. Ishaq, Tian, and I went to the zoo.

We didn’t really feel like biking to the zoo, so we were going to walk, until we realized we literally have a minivan. Instantly buoyed by this revelation, we made it to the zoo in high spirits with cool body temperatures. Since I was the most excited about the zoo, I guided us. We only got lost a few times. (I’m directionally challenged). The zoo was great quality bonding; we yapped so much at times we hardly even realized we were trying to see all the sights in the zoo. We had a great couple of hours; and best of all, the zoo was free! Shoutout St. Louis.
Tian crashout Tian crashout
View from Forest Park
The art museum
This weird warthog thingy (forgot already)
Tortoise!
Bro might be the thinker
He just like me fr
He just like me fr
He just like me fr
He just like me fr
He just like me fr
The giraffes
Greta made her famous Thai quinoa salad and lime ginger chicken+tofu for dinner and we chatted with Nora and her husband Alex. Two of the buffest dudes I’ve ever seen — friends of our hosts — came over and said hi. Ramona, Sarah, Joseph, and I worked on the bikes for a bit and then we all wound down for the night. If only we could stay another night, but alas…
June 28, 2025
day 18: rolling in (bowling) green 💸
Rest Day in Bowling Green, KY

greetings from the lovely town of bowling green, kentucky! 🌳 i’ve given you a biking blog, i’ve given you a learning festival blog, time to round it out with a rest day 😴 (i just checked and sadly there will be no driving blog from me, but i can give you everything else :))

after the previous night’s fun and games of seeing our AMAZING airbnb for the first time; having a BOMB mac and cheese, watermelon, and salad dinner made by some of the team with ishaq as head chef 🧀🍉 (vegan brownies were eventually brought out for dessert); watching 21 jump street and playing the card game “we’re not really strangers” until the wee early hours of the morning, i got out of my cozy cubby bed bright and early at 10:30am (it probably would have been MUCH later had i not set an alarm…) 💤

thinking i was one of the later ones, i made a quick bagel with cream cheese, poured myself a glass of milk, and headed outside to catch up my parents on the events of the last few days via text and pictures (if you’re reading this, hello! 💗) eventually, joseph and ramona come back from the grocery store, and i am enlisted (willingly) to carry groceries back inside and start helping with breakfast. i am delegated the incredibly important task of DJ-ing for our lovely chefs, and spend a few minutes personally queuing up the best tunes off my various, distinctly named spotify playlists 🎶

soon, we have eggs, bacon, and pancakes as various spokies start wandering into the kitchen. at some point, ishaq disappears and returns with insomnia cookies from down the street (THANK YOUUU), and i decide i must have both a 2nd breakfast and a snickerdoodle (or two)–carb loading, of course! 🥞🍪
eggs and bacon 🍳🥓
various forms of carbs
insomnia cookies!!!
a glimpse at my music taste 🎸
i hung out for a while at our STUNNING airbnb provided to us by our learning festival partners in bowling green, procrastinating the various odd tasks i had to do, before deciding i should probably be at least slightly productive with the 2nd half of the day. i threw on a pair of sweat pants and my favorite MIT track and field hoodie, grabbed my laptop, and made the 10 minute trek in the humid, 85-90 degree kentucky heat to spencer’s coffee—recommended to us by the owners of the airbnb ☕️ if there is one thing i think i have the leg up on compared to my fellow spokies, it’s being slightly heat tolerant: blazing heat to me is like a warm, nostalgic blanket. what can i say—i like feeling like a lizard baking in the sun 🦎☀️

i got my usual iced chai latte and a strawberries and cream muffin, and got to work 🍓 before answering emails and other things, though, i first decided that i wanted to make a ranking list of all the iced chai lattes i’ve had on spokes. after reviewing my debit card history (yikes…) and recalling my previous drinks and experiences to the best of my ability, i compiled my list (with locations, days of purchase, notes, and scores, of course). eventually, greta, ruth, and joseph arrive to also do some work with me! we grind for a bit, i step out for a sec to call and chat with my mom, and greta gets a bloody nose :(( but as the evening draws closer (and because the cafe closes at 6pm), we pack up our stuff and start making our way back to our place.
spencer’s coffee!
my current spokes 2025 chai ranking
some guy outside with a parrot lol 🦜
now with friends!
an email from one of our learning festival partners 🥹
back at spokes headquarters, it’s burrito night! there’s rice and meat, beans, chips and guac, and other various side dishes on the way 🌯 gloria, a friend of greta’s from MIT who happens to live in/near bowling green, has also joined us, and brought scallion pancakes! i think i ate half of the container while working on (and maybe slightly stressing over) my sorority recruitment application. some are consuming the otter pops charles bought a few grocery runs ago and has been dying to freeze and consume (i call them otter pops, but i hear they have other names) 🧊 i break and walk around the house to take a few pics of our place for the blog. after a day of catching up on various things, everyone is chatting, relaxing, and getting ready to eat. life is good! 😌

once food is ready, we make our way out to the chairs in the mini backyard to eat, continue chatting, and enjoy a little bit of the milder summer heat. eventually, gloria makes her way home, we tag team dishes, and the team starts making their way to bed to prepare for our 4th learning festival. this would be our biggest one yet—we would have the usual 4 groups, but each would have around 15-20 kids!!! spoiler alert: we ate it UPPP 🚨‼️
ramona + greta’s room
blog writing and route planning table
tian’s room
joseph and i’s room!
view from my cubby!!!
ishaq + charles’ room
the most amazing shower experience ever.
kitchen! 🥑
snack table
laundry couch
living room
mini backyard
wowww
front porch!
chatting outside
i went to sleep in my lovely cubby bed (an idea that i WILL be stealing one day), dreaming of the lush kentucky greens we would soon be leaving behind for a quick detour in illinois, then a leg in missouri. after our learning festival tomorrow, we have a pretty decent stretch before our next non-biking day, long enough to the point where i’ll be driving the first and last days of said stretch! by the time we set off, i will have had 3 whole days of rest. nice 😎

as i am finishing up this blog, i am parked at one of the rest stops on our way to madisonville, ky—our last stop in kentucky! being 20 days, over 800 miles, almost 2 states, and 4 learning festivals in (or, about ¼ of the way through), i can confidently say spokes is something that has, is, and will change me forever—something that i will smile back on for the rest of my life. even the 15% grade hills of 4-5 days ago are already forgotten in favor of beautiful views, delicious food, smiling kids, and the bestest of friends (the feeling of accomplishment after a long ride or steep climb is pretty great, too, though). getting to explore more of the country i’ve lived in all of my 19 years up close has been incredibly eye-opening. it’s been an honor giving back to my community and sharing the same joy and excitement of STEM i’ve felt many times throughout my own life. the good—no, GREAT—food and deep conversations with hosts, friends old and new, and teammates…i could go on and on, but i’ll end my ranting now ❤️❤️

doing hard things feels both totally AWFUL, and freaking AMAZING.

until next time, which will be a 90-miler to jefferson city, missouri!

with love,

“schmitty” 💗

edit: apologies to ruth for not getting a pic of her room :((
June 24, 2025
Day 5: Can we take five?

Rest day in Afton, VA

The first four days of this trip have been nothing but hectic. Day 1 had me running a bottle rocket workshop seven times followed by a terrifying time being the driver in DC (how is it worse than Manhattan??). Day 2 had me cycling on gravel roads through a severe thunderstorm all the while Charles was lost to the world. Day 3’s ascent into Shenandoah National Park felt like an insurmountable obstacle with my tired body (I was one of the cheaters :p). Day 4 (my driving day) involved some scary driving through windy roads in the midst of one of the worst downpours I’ve seen in my life. But finally, we made it to a rest day…
Pam’s off-the-grid house was an absolutely magical place to spend our first rest day. Greta said enough about the awesome person that is Pam Mendosa, but her place was just so awesome that I couldn’t write this blog without mentioning it.

Pam’s magical off-the-grid home

One of Pam’s cats, Garlic, roaming around outside

A neighboring cabin where three of us slept for two nights

So, what exactly does a “rest day” entail? Normally on this trip, we crash at someone’s place or a campsite, eat, sleep, then pack our things up the following morning for another day of biking. On a rest day, we instead stay put in one place, both to take a break and also to get pending tasks done. For today there were many items on the agenda.

For one, all of our camping equipment was soaked from the overnight downpour at Big Meadows and needed to be dried. The team did a great job using Pam’s entire property as a place to dry our stuff.

Our tents and sleeping pads being dried outside the cabin

Ramona and I spent some time in the morning perfecting our bike cleaning technique and left everyone’s bikes looking squeaky clean.

Ramona hosing down a dirty bike

There were three more tasks that required venturing from Pam’s isolated intentional community to Charlottesville, the location of the University of Virginia and also where Ishaq grew up! Four of us (Me, Ramona, Sarah, and Charles) drove to this lovely town and I dropped Sarah and Charles off at a laundromat (Pam didn’t have a dryer).

Me photobombing the laundromat shot

Ramona being thirsty

Sarah bringing our laundry back

Ramona and I went to a bike shop called Blue Wheel Bicycles to fix my broken spokes (just like me fr). After we dropped off my bike, we went to Whole Foods to return some unused fenders (the team decided they were actually fine getting wet from their tires). I called Sarah and seeing that laundry was going to take a while, went to Great Outdoor Provision co. to get myself some packing cubes (my disorganized duffel bag was driving me crazy). We may have also had some fun looking at all of the gear.

Waiting at a light in Charlottesville

Having some fun at the gear shop

My repaired spokes after over a month of a weird noise yayyy

Once laundry work finished up we all decided to hit up Shenandoah Joe Coffee Roasters for a work sesh on our laptops (Pam’s house unfortunately had no wifi or cell service). Ishaq spent the night at his own house and joined up with us at the cafe. After a few hours of semi-productive time and a very good fruit smoothie, we headed on back to Pam’s place and enjoyed another relaxing evening arguing over our route for the following day…

Side tangent, the route for the following day was looking to be short, but very difficult, with an over 3000ft climb and some of the steepest grades that we would see for the entire trip. We argued over a couple of potential routes for hours… I’ve been the main route planner for this trip and spending my valuable evening hours making these routes every day is going to drive me crazyyy

June 9, 2025
Day 0: RAHHHH!! SPOKES!! DC!!

Hi everyone!! Charles here. It’s been a hectic few days but Spokes is finally under way. Ramona is writing the blog post for today (Day 1), so I’ll fill in the details for how we all reconvened in DC.

Most of the team arrived in DC yesterday with the exception of Greta and Ishaq, who live in the area. Ruth and I drove the minivan rental down from Boston.

Day -1

Ruth and I picked up our car for the summer at noon. It’s a 2024 white Chrysler Pacifica we’ve named Amy. After picking up various Spokes orders and materials from stores, dorms, and storage rooms; assembling the roof storage and bike rack (went surprisingly smoothly, MechE grads 🔛🔝); and putting everything into boxes we finished loading the car. Ruth took the minivan home for the night (she lives in Boston).

Ruth and I posing in front of the packed van.

Day 0

Ruth came to pick me up at the dorm at a bright and early 6 AM. After some dilly-dallying (aka I still needed to pack a few things), we headed down to Philly, hoping to catch a Spokes 2017 alum for a lunch. Our lunch plans appeared doomed given the drive time, until we realized we had avoid tolls checked on Google Maps 😅. We were both rather sleep-deprived from a long night of packing, lesson planning, and 3D printer debugging, but I won the game of no-sleep chicken and Ruth took the first driving shift. At our gas stop, I offered to drive for a bit, but Ruth insisted she was doing fine¹.

We had lunch with Caity, who treated us to Philly cheesesteaks. I can now personally vouch for a correlation between Philly cheesesteak tastiness and proximity to Philly. Caity gave us great advice and encouragement and told us some fun stories, shoutout Caity!!

Philly cheesesteaks with Caity

One ice cream treat later, I drove us the remainder of the way to DC. Spirits were high as we pulled into the AirBnB driveway singing along to songs off Doo-Wops & Hooligans.

I opted for Dippin Dots 😋

Everyone else flew in during the afternoon and we ran some errands before a kickoff team dinner at the Lawler’s. Watermelon, chicken and vegan enchiladas, salad, chips and guac, and popsicles to top it all off — we ate like kings and queens.

After dinner, we recapped responses from a Spokes superlatives form Greta had sent out. Highlights included some people possibly taking the “most likely to get into an encounter with the police” question *too literally*, a mandatory multi-select “most likely to get together” question, and Joseph taking down the only clean sweep of the night for “biggest yapper.”

Enchilada chefs and enchilada devourers

D1 yapper

We had to get up early today for our Learning Festival, so everyone split off for a few more errands and then we wound down for the night. I dreamt of friends, bikes, and friends on bikes.

2025 Spokes

Guess who suggested this pose

¹ She later admitted to dozing off multiple times at the wheel only to be awoken by lane assist playing guardian angel 😬.

June 3, 2025