Denver, CO -> Black Hawk, CO
Ishaq on the blog, and we’re gonna keep this one short and sweet. Yesterday we had a great learning festival un Denver, but the real highlight gotta be what happened after. Yes the alum dinner that you can read all about in another blog, but even more epic, Joseph and I went on a spontaneous 10:30pm movie excursion to watch Superman. Absolute cinema 🙌. Lex Luthor truly taught me that I’m not hating to my full potential, but some of his actions were down right diabolical.
In other exciting news, we finally got a new car! Amy the white 2025 Chrysler Pacifica has now been replaced with Bertha, the grey 2025 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. And today will be Bertha’s first ride 😎
Getting up this morning was quite the endeavor after getting back at 1am. In the morning, I was groggy and complaining about the impeding ride. Our host said to me that it seemed like my heart wasn’t in this trip. I proceeded to think about that for the first 20 miles 😐. The main challenge of the day is out first climb into the rockies. But first we had a great stretch on bike trails around Denver, and thanks to our host’s recommendation, I was zooming with my slightly overinflated tires. Greta and I met a chill biker named Joel at the second rest stop. His son was actually in the 2024 Tour de France, riding for EF, but we didn’t get his name 🥲.
After quite the hefty rest, I set off on the climb alone. 18 miles, 4300 feet, somewhat reminiscent of Shenandoah on day 3. I, however, am a changed rider, making this a little baby climb. I locked in and and just pedaled bruv. I wont lie, the final stretch to the peak had me huffing and puffing, moving at 3.5 mph, but we made it alright. All the other spokies has similar experiences, and it really goes to show just how far we’ve all come.
Pulling into our host Amanda’s house near Black Hawk, I was hungry but energized and we all played games as we waited for greta in the van and all the other spokies to finish their climbs. The day ended with a top tier pasta dinner and some good games of horseshoe in the backyard.
TBH, theres def a lot of other stuff that happened today, but c’est bon. My heart definitely isn’t in this blog thing.
MIT Spokes 2025 