MIT Spokes 2026

Tag: rest-day

  • Day 29: Grand Theft Auto

    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
  • Day 24: every day i’m huSTLin

    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…

  • day 18: rolling in (bowling) green 💸

    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 :((

  • Day 5: Can we take five?

    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
    Pam’s magical off-the-grid home
    One of Pam's cats, Garlic, roaming around outside
    One of Pam’s cats, Garlic, roaming around outside
    A neighboring cabin where three of us slept for two nights
    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
    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
    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
    Me photobombing the laundromat shot
    Ramona being thirsty
    Ramona being thirsty
    Sarah bringing our laundry back
    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
    Waiting at a light in Charlottesville
    Having some fun at the gear shop
    Having some fun at the gear shop
    My repaired spokes after over a month of a weird noise yayyy
    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

  • Day 0: RAHHHH!! SPOKES!! DC!!

    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 😬.