We all woke up this morning at varying times, which is a luxury of rest days: no synchronized awakenings. Aja, true to form, is the first awake. By the time I roll out of bed (though admittedly, I am the last one up), I see a text on my phone from Aja to the group: “Negative for covid, heading to a coffee shop.”
This text pretty accurately summarizes our last couple of days. Rapid test boxes can be found in random spots around the house. We test every morning. We all (figuratively) hold our breaths for 15-minute intervals, waiting to see if someone’s test draws a second line. Thankfully, we are all negative, but we are still being quite careful and will be testing for a little bit still.
Coffee shops have become an integral part of our time here in St. Louis. Our host doesn’t have wifi, and happens to be in a part of the city that a lot of us don’t have cell signal in. So, if we need wifi, we head to a coffee shop. And since we’re rerouting the rest of our trip, we need wifi a lot.
Once I finish my newest favorite breakfast, Cheerios with walnuts and protein milk (milk with protein powder mixed in), we join Aja at the coffee shop. Today’s coffee shop was on a lovely corner near Wash U. We ordered, and then sat down and got to work. I’ve previously described the feeling of all-hands-on-deck with this team, but the last couple of days have been a completely different level.
Parth and Timothy sat outside, making calls to find teaching opportunities. Aja sat at a booth, finding new hosts, confirming with said hosts, and then informing our previous hosts that we are rerouting. Sophia and I sat next to Aja, working on route planning, making sure each day of our new route is plausible to do, and planning the specific route for the next few days of biking. This felt like a flow-state of five people together; the organism of the team was collectively in a flow state.
I’m personally still a bit in shock that we’re changing the route. Don’t get me wrong; I’m completely on board with the reroute. However, before we switched the route, everything felt settled, and very by-the-books. We were following the route 2019 Spokes used, stopping with hosts who have hosted Spokes for many years in a row. Now, we’re changing it.
Of course, this shock is a bit illogical. With this new route, we’re (approximately) following routes laid out by Adventure Cycling, and have been used by many cycle tourers (or is it tourists? we’re not quite sure which one it is). We now have hosts for a vast majority of our nights, thanks to Aja’s tireless work. However, amidst the chaos of our transitory lifestyle, our route spreadsheet felt like a constant. Now, we also changed that—how awesome and terrifying! Okay, maybe terrifying is a strong word…
All of this said, it is quite sad to have to cancel on hosts and teaching sites who were expecting us. One of our hosts even had a hand-made sign ready to welcome us. No matter how logical and sensible our decision to reroute is, having to tell a host or teaching site that has known generations of Spokes that we won’t be coming is really hard.
Perhaps this is a good example of the duality of this trip that I mentioned in my last post. I’m excited about the possibilities of this new route, but simultaneously am sad to not be doing the previous route.
After we wrapped up our work in the coffee shop, we headed to a local sandwich shop, while Sophia went to explore the art museum for a bit of Sophia Solo Exploration Time (SSET). We all met up again at the St. Louis City Museum, which was highly recommended by multiple hosts.
The City Museum is a bit difficult to explain. Imagine being about 8 years old, maybe 3-4 feet tall. Imagine what your ideal playground/museum/maze would look like. That’s the City Museum. Now, unleash five 20-ish year-olds on this playground. We had a lot of fun exploring, climbing the huge structures, finding small nooks and crannies tucked in the corners. Though, we had to contort our bodies in odd ways to fit in spaces that were not quite designed for us.
The City Museum!
We returned to the car, and decided to go to a coffee shop since there was more work to do regarding our re-route, and we all wanted to spend some more time in the city before returning back to the house. I ended up catching up on some work for a club that I had been forgetting to do for a few weeks now.
Now, I’m writing this blog at the kitchen table of our hosts, listening to Parth and Timothy prepare nachos and curry for dinner as they talk with our host. Sophia has a Latin poetry book open as she takes a personality test I’m making her take. (Sophia wants it to be known that she is not pretentious and only just bought this book. I’m still amazed that Latin poetry is something she can understand… I struggle enough with English poetry). Aja is chilling downstairs for some Aja Sort of Nap Time (ASNT). Katherine Is Off In Indianapolis, Quarantining In The Upper Floor Of Her Brother’s Girlfriend’s Family’s House (aka KIOIIQITUFOHBGFH… not actually though, just like with the rest of the acronyms in this post). We’ll probably call Katherine later tonight as we eat dinner. Vincent is in Philly, med schooling away. We’ve heard that he likes his roommates, and that things are going well.
Onward,
Joel
P.S. A small addendum I wanted to add, before too much time passes: a few days ago, Parth and I were finishing up the last leg of a day on the Katy Trail. We were having a great time, until Parth’s front tire popped. We were just getting ready to repair the tire, when two people clad in bike helmets approached, saying they heard Parth’s tire pop. They asked if we needed help, which we began to politely decline. We explained that their front tire had a small gash that we needed to fix the next day, and so we’d just patch it up, and get to our hosts. These two strangers simply replied, “Oh, we have a tire you could use up at our house. We live just up the hill, let us drive you.”
So Parth and I piled into their pickup. We came to know that these two strangers are Doug and Theresa, and that they were about to start their evening bike ride. They filled our water bottles, generously gave Parth a new tire, and drove us back down to the trail. I was blown away by this act of kindness. I love to emphasize to the team just how nice people in the Midwest are, but Doug and Theresa truly went above and beyond any measure. So thank you to Doug and Theresa, and to all of the strangers who continue to help us along the way.