Last night, Joel and I shared a bed. When I woke up, he was sleeping on the floor in his sleeping bag. He said it wasn’t because of me, but I’m not so sure…
Today was our second-to-last day of biking. I was feeling sentimental and hungry, so I decided to go to the kitchen and make some pancakes for a nice Spokes breakfast. Katherine came into the kitchen while I was pouring the mix and water into the bowl and insisted on stirring them together. Then she took over the griddle, and my pancake operation was wrested from my hands as quickly as it was conceived in the first place. But the pancakes came out better than they would have if I made them, so I can’t complain.
we stopped at a coffee and tea shop on one of our breaks. the owner took this photo. katherine was probably inside doing something.
After breakfast Parth joined me outside to take a look at my bike. Over the last two months, Parth’s bike troubles have turned them into our group mechanic. I’m amazed by how much they’ve taught themselves in such a short time. They tried tightening and loosening a few important screws on my deraileur. When that didn’t work, they tried doing something weird with pliers. Unfortunately, nothing was successful. For a moment, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to bike the final two days. I didn’t realize how important it was to me to bike into DC until I noticed how upset this thought made me.
the civil war monument
I joined Katherine in the car for the first leg and headed to a bike shop. Thankfully, what I thought was a catastrophic issue ended up being a relatively simple fix, so simple that the guy at the bike shop didn’t even let me pay. (Shout out to Mercury Endurance Cycles!) We met up with the rest of the Spokes in the small town of Boonsboro, Maryland outside of a coffee shop. The rest of the day was beautiful riding. We followed byways that took us over rolling hills and through quaint, one-road towns. We stopped at a monument to Civil War press correspondents which was at the site of a civil war battle. (The placards surrounding the monument were weirdly pro-Confederate – lots of admiration for Robert E. Lee.) The climbs were just challenging enough to feel rewarding, and the descents were exhilarating dives down shaded, windy roads. Maybe it’s just my sentimentality creeping up on me, but today’s ride seemed to be the perfect Spokes ride.
how do I explain this? what you’re seeing here is sophia’s bike with an open jar of jelly in one of the water bottle cages. for a long time, joel and sophia have been talking about trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while biking. today they accomplished their goal.
we stopped at a cul de sac. in sophia’s bottle cage was the jelly. in joel’s was the peanut butter. each carried a slice of bread in one hand. they circled around the cul de sac as they spread their respective spreads. once they had finished, they reached their hands out to each other and, in a sort of high five motion, pressed the two slices together, completing the sandwich.
all the while, parth ran around them in circles, filming. i think a video of this might be up on our instagram.
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What will you listen to tomorrow as you bike up to the Washington Monument?
Aja: San Luis by Gregory Allen Isakov because it makes me cry.
Joel: Nothing.
Sophia: Nothing.
Parth: Probably This American Life. Also possibly I Want to Break Free by Queen. I haven’t worked it out yet.
Katherine: There’s a 70% chance it will be nothing. I want to focus on the scenery.
What’s one thing, big or small, that you’ll miss about Spokes?
Aja: I’m going to miss how it feels when we’re all settled in to our home for the night and we get to share the kitchen, listen to music together, play games, and laugh until our stomachs hurt.
Joel: I’m going to miss waking up each day and having the singular purpose of biking and teaching. That’s something that doesn’t really exist in my everyday life.
Sophia: I’m going to miss seeing Timothy interacting with hosts and asking them awkward questions.
Parth: Making dinner together and listening to good music while we cook.
Katherine: I’ll miss the sense of purpose. The goal of the trip isn’t very broad, but it’s lead me to a lot of revelations that I didn’t expect.
What’s one thing, big or small, that you’ll take away from these last two months?
Aja: Some gnarly tan lines. And my Shark Tank idea of a butt cleat. [This is hard to explain. The metal things we have on the bottoms of our bike shoes are our cleats. These cleats clip into our pedals, keeping our shoes attached to them. It has been a recurring joke that Aja wants to invent a butt cleat – some sort of device that allows you to clip your butt into your bike seat. No idea how this would work.]
Sophia: Pretty photos of bikes and sunsets. The realization that I’m still able to appreciate six people who I didn’t really know before this and who I lived with in very close proximity for two months.
Parth: A wad of exactly $232 dollars in cash that I’ve slowly taken from my teammates. A newfound sense of zen and the art of bicycle maintenance.
Katherine: That I’m more adaptable that I give myself credit for. If I had just done an internship or stayed at home the summer before I went abroad to Australia, I would have had a lot more fear. Things in the future that may have seemed more daunting before just seem exciting now.
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It was only in these last few weeks that I realized I was taking this trip for granted, that the sound of Spokes – the muted, 16-hour-per-day hum of conversation, laughter and muffled music – was, in fact something rare and something to be treasured. In retrospect, even the dull, everyday moments seem gilded: the points when we loafed aimlessly in gas station parking lots, waiting for the car to arrive, or the hours we sat around on hosts’ couches, not saying much, maybe even mildly annoyed with each other, but still sitting together. That togetherness was something special, even if it was at times exhausting or claustrophobic. It is a lucky, lucky thing to be surrounded by people you love, all day, every day, to hear their laughter carry through the walls and their voices cut through the wind. Even when I am only dimly aware of these sounds, they remind me of this luck. When I’m back home, the quiet of my bedroom will feel strangely empty.
-Timothy