It’s the third day of our travels, and I’m starting to notice the little ways that this trip is affecting me. For example, waking up in one place every morning and going to bed somewhere ~30 miles away has been seriously distorting my sense of time. I can’t believe it’s only been four days, since each day feels twice as long as the days felt on campus. Our trajectory today exemplifies this phenomenon: we woke up in San Anselmo, CA, and after a hectic three hours, biked thirty miles to Crockett, CA, where I’m writing this blog post. One day, two homes, a thirty-mile stretch of scenes, and, in the moments off the bikes, an endless stream of things to do and decisions to make.
If you haven’t read Aja’s blog post from yesterday, I’ll give you a quick recap. Last night, Vincent wasn’t feeling well and decided to take a rapid test. He ended up testing positive for COVID. The rest of us all got tested that night. Thankfully, all of our tests came back negative.
That brings me to this morning. I woke up at 8am in our hosts’ cabin. Thankfully, they had a king-sized mattress in the cabin which Parth and I shared, so I slept like a rock (or a cat, or some other well-rested animal).
the view from the cabin: green hills stretching far into the distance. On the left, you can see the edge of the fence that encloses our hosts’ horses
While walking from the cabin back to the car to collect my things, I saw Vincent sitting on our hosts’ trampoline, surrounded by his things. He slept there last night. Our hosts agreed to let him move into their cabin once we leave.
vincent in his quarantined state
So this morning, we had to do the usual things: pack our stuff, cook breakfast, wash the breakfast dishes, get dressed, and inflate our tires. But we also had important decisions to make: What was going to happen to Vincent? How would he catch up to us after he finished quarantining? After some lengthy deliberations, we made a plan, but by the time we set off today, I think we all felt some residual stress. It’s hard leaving a teammate behind, even when it’s the right thing to do. And of course, Vincent’s charisma, brightness, and unpredictability were sorely missed.
The biking itself was pleasant, but hard. Lots of uphill climbing today. The hardest segment of the day was the San Rafael-Richmond bridge. The bridge overlooked the San Pablo bay, but the steepness of the uphill and the constant screech of cars speeding by made it a stressful ride.
I bike up the San Rafael-Richmond bridge. Photo courtesy of Sophia.
For every uphill climb, I kept telling myself, “If this is bad, wait until you reach the Sierras!” So I tried to push myself as hard as I could through every hill in hopes that the strain would serve as conditioning later down the line. Will it be enough to prepare for the mountains? We’ll have to see.
We arrived in Crockett at roughly 4pm. Our host, Geoff, let us in after we all sat down outside and took our COVID tests (we’re getting good at doing this) (still all negative). His place is cool. It reminds me of an abandoned theater, but in a cool-old-things-laying-around way, as opposed to the there’s-probably-asbestos-in-these-walls way. While we rested and recuperated, I sent some emails and worked on my lesson plan, and Parth gave me some excellent pointers. Maybe I’ll share more info about my workshop in my next blog post.
Katherine cooked up a delightful chili using some of the celery from Geoff’s garden (thanks Geoff!). While we waited for dinner, Aja and I went for a walk around the block and found a plum tree with tiny yellow plums on it.
katherine’s chili du jour. photo courtesy joel
After some dishwashing and a very official, formal Spokes meeting, I sat down and types this up. Which brings me to right now. It’s late! And we need to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow…
Till next time,
Timothy