Day 4: Sweet as Honey

We woke up in Geoff’s @pretzhouse amongst a piano, a trumpet (which he played to declare our arrival to the town), a few bikes, and an accolade of items all older than me. After another hectic morning of packing, oatmealing, coffeeing, repacking, and stuffing more stuff into Ody, we finally set off on our first 80 mile day!

The various items and vibes of @prytzhouse, photo courtesy of Joel

All the falls today. My phone first flew out from its mount in the middle of the road, which cut short my morning podcast listening immediately. The five of us biking all had our various close-calls with gravel and cement, though Aja definitely wins best fall of the day – suffering more than four bruises from collapsing suddenly at a standstill. Timothy’s front wheel popped an inner tube on our afternoon segment of the ride, and we sat down on the side of the road to change our first flat! While Joel and Parth discussed (argued over) whether the springs should be on the inside or outside of the bike frame, Aja and I went to inspect a lone blooming sunflower across the road that was hosting more than fifteen bees.

Aja, the sunflower, and bees

Bees also found Timothy and me particularly interesting today, and I ran away more than once from our buzzing fans.

Our injured guardian angel Katherine bought us applesauce and dried fruit for our rest stop. While she supported the team on her shoulders and one malfunctioning knee (we love you Katherine), the rest of us napped and feasted under the shade of an almond orchard. Parth, as usual, went straight for the beans. The rest of us rummaged through our snack box (which is already a quarter through), and made some interesting sandwiches (mine was bread, lettuce and cheese) and snack choices (pickles from the jar including a lovely puddle of pickle juice on the ground).

Nap time under the almond trees, photo courtesy of Katherine

Joel navigated in the morning (which guzzled the phone battery) so when his phone died, he decided that I would be the second best source of entertainment for his afternoon. Although ruining my determination to restart my podcast after my phone’s dramatic descent this morning, we had some lovely conversations that fluctuated in logic, humor, and volume depending on the steepness and speed of our ride.

Joel demanded a photo halfway through our conversation so here it is

After many deceiving hills, gravel stretches (my worst nemesis), construction sites, and blocked off wooden bridges, we finally made it to our hosts’ home in Sacramento. They made us the most delicious dinner of salmon, pesto pasta, rice with peaches from their garden, cauliflower, and It’s-It ice cream sandwiches, and offered us a 7:00AM breakfast of eggs and oatmeal (which I am very much looking forward to already).

The construction zone we walked through today because we refused to make an hour long detour, photo courtesy of Timothy

Vincent updated us from his campout in Scott and Carla’s abode (we miss you Vincent): He is now much friendlier with the horses and already feels well enough for a hike tomorrow!

It was a day of the sweetest hosts, sweetest Katherine, and the swe(a)test cyclists.

See you soon,
Sophia

Day 3: Chili, Chilling, and Hilling

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

a day 2 retrospective: "it can only get better from here"

if there’s one lesson that Spokes has taught me in the past 72 hours, it’s that you can do all of the logistical planning in the world and the unexpected will still turn those plans entirely upside down. sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. day 2 was a case study in said duality.

context: roughly three days before our team’s departure from Stanford’s campus, we received word from a previously-confirmed Warm Showers host in Oakland, CA who said that they would no longer be able to host us. this time crunch presented quite a challenge, as many other hosts were understandably unable to accommodate our large group on such short notice. consequently, the morning of our second day was largely overtaken by a housing scramble.

day 2 began with an array of emotions - ongoing day 1 challenges, emerging knee pain for one of our teammates, and the stress of not knowing where we were sleeping loomed over an otherwise optimistic routine of packing up camping supplies from our San Francisco host’s backyard, slathering on chamois cream, planning our stops for the day’s route, and fueling up with oatmeal, coffee, etc.

energized by a solid night of sleep and lively conversation with our host and his two other cycle-touring guests, Mary and Emma, we felt ready to tackle the day… with the one small caveat of not yet knowing our end point. Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond; campgrounds, churches, hotels - the options were plenty, but time, not so much. myself, Parth, Timothy, and Joel divvied up outreach responsibility with our gracious host’s locational recommendations in mind. after hitting many frustrating dead ends, I decided to check my Warm Showers messages one final time, at which point I saw a 14-hour old confirmation message from a host in San Anselmo. fast forward a few phone calls and we had arranged a stay in a cabin on his 24-acre plot of land up in the mountains between Marin and Point Reyes.

housing crisis narrowly circumvented, we loaded up Ody, Joel’s family’s trusty Honda Odyssey, and, after dropping off our new friend Mary at a doctor’s appointment, said farewell to SF and hit the road. our first stop was Baker Beach to check off the crucial bucket list item of dipping our back wheels in the Pacific Ocean. photo evidence present :)

after this brief stop, we were off. San Anselmo’s location meant that we biked over the Golden Gate Bridge, which was absolutely beautiful and honestly surreal. water roaring below, we powered out of San Francisco, weaving through some tourists on the bridge’s narrow lanes. we are just beginning this journey, but the feeling of reaching massive landmarks like this via bike, experiencing them in a fully immersive way rather than speeding by in a car or train, is truly indescribable. we climbed a couple of gnarly hills continuing north past the bridge, followed by exhilarating descents through redwood trees and lush greenery for about 15 miles total.

i don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but i do think that our housing challenges today were meant to be. both because today’s bike ride ended up being breathtaking (in a visual sense, although also respiratory, i suppose) and because… well… read on and find out.

as if the universe recognized our team’s disappointment about yesterday’s seal-less journey, today’s trip was delightfully animal-intensive. Timothy and Sophia encountered a deer, our team met a friendly dog while resting at Dunphy Park in Sausalito, and the host’s home was complete with three horses, two cats, a (presumably tame) python, twenty (locally award-winning?) chickens, and two incredibly sweet dogs: Winston and Cookie. the horses were also super sweet (one of them, pictured, was very fittingly nicknamed Lover Boy), despite their tendency to accidentally (and mildly terrifyingly) stand barricading us outside of the gate to our living quarters.

animals aside, the house was beautiful. nestled on top of a very steep and windy hill, (which he thankfully offered to shuttle us up in his car), the views of the Bay were like no other, miles of forest expanded below, and, once the sun set, a bright full moon and millions of stars were visible up above.

it was during dinner with the host's family that Vincent decided to take a COVID rapid test after feeling a bit under the weather, which, much to everyone's dismay, came back positive. night two for the remaining six of us concluded huddled around rapid tests on the garage floor, which thankfully all came back negative! we will continue to test in the coming days and hope for the best. Vincent is doing well so far and our last minute hosts could not have been more kind or accommodating despite the circumstances. at the time that i'm writing this post, plans are still very much uncertain, but the house’s massive plot of land means that there is ample space for Vincent to pitch a tent for the time being and move into the cabin to quarantine once we leave in the morning. today was… an emotional rollercoaster to say the least, but the health and safety of the team are of course the most important things and, with the help of generous strangers, we are going to make it work.

in case you needed a cliffhanger-esque ending to encourage you to follow along tomorrow, here it is for ya! much more to come from the spokes on day three. knock on wood, it can only get better from here.

till next time,

aja

back wheels in the Pacific :D

Winston!!!

Scott’s mountain selfie action

Lover Boy and Sophia

Winston perusing the property

rapid test central

day 1: disasters, delights, and a disappointing lack of seals

day 0 deserves a paragraph, at least, to describe the chaos and anxiety that I was feeling. that was monday, june 13. i “graduated” the day before and spent almost all of monday with loved ones — and i moved out of my dorm and my home for the past year: schiff house.

other spokes members had flights into the bay area (aja woke up at 3am!) but we all slowly converged on an airbnb in east palo alto that we had booked for the night. when i got there, stress levels were high, but we all laughed about our anxiety and our relatively scant experience biking. the seven of us filled the room with our things, quickly got used to being in such close proximity to one another, and went to sleep in a mostly random arrangement of seven kids in three beds. (well, katherine slept on the floor after inflating her sleeping bag, causing a bizarre cpr-esque noise at 2am)

day 1 was when things started to go off the rails a bit. for one, i barely got any sleep because i’m such a light sleeper and i couldn’t sleep with the noise of snoring and roosters cawing well before sunrise (apparently they use their internal clocks to tell the time, not the sun??). i’m going to tell you the story of this day as a series of disasters, each of which has a delightful conclusion.

disaster 1: the bike rack. almost as soon as joel woke up, he walked outside to find that the bike rack on the car had been incorrectly installed. there was an issue with the way that the bolts had been installed, causing the bolts to become cross-threaded. as he tightened it, it would slip and become loose again. as a friend pointed out, this was a huge safety issue for any car driving behind us, so the first several hours of light in the day were occupied by finding anyone and everyone to give us advice or lend/sell us a bike rack. people from all over weighed in: joel’s dad, folks back at Stanford—even some friends on vacation in the Azores. joel volunteered to drive today and, as his first task, he went to replace the bike rack (and ended up buying a new one from REI). the old one was donated :)

in the meantime, we were all practicing with our bikes. i installed spd cleats on my bike and learned how to clip and unclip in the backyard, on some mulch—and I had my obligatory fall. we’d heard that everyone falls at least once, but that seems to be very false. in fact, several members of our team fell multiple times throughout the day.

disaster 2: navigation. joel had assembled a strava route that vincent loaded on his phone and led us along. but, we quickly ran into hiccups—there were detours, closed roads, roads we were uncomfortable biking on, and more. a lot of this happened in foster city, near civilization, so we flagged down locals and they helped us get back on track. everyone we interacted with today was tremendously helpful and kind—we wouldn’t have gotten here nearly as easily without them.

disaster 3: the seals. okay, hear me out: the first place that we stopped today was called “seal point park” so you’d imagine that it would have… seals, right?? wrong:

a disturbing lack of seals in seal point park

and, despite joal’s kind offer to “go look around for seals,” there were none to be found.

disaster 4: pedal problems. aja and i both had problems with our pedals. i had just installed cleats on my shoes so that i could clip into my bike, but i had overlooked two problems: first, i didn’t screw the cleats on hard enough, so they kept getting looser and looser as i rode; and second, the clips on my bike were wayyy too tight. so, on the second leg of our journey, my cleat came off of my right shoe and got stuck in the bike pedal. the other shoe was also dangerously loose, and those cleats almost also got lost. both cleats lost screws, too. but aja had the biggest pedal pains. their pedals were cross-threaded—the same issue as the bike rack—and they came fully off at one point.

we pulled over outside of sfo airport, at a ground transportation station; the operators of the station noticed we were in trouble and came out to help. they offered their pliers and duct tape and some advice about fixing things from their combined 60 years of experience in the air force. i was able to loosen my clips and pry the cleats out of them using the pliers—and sophia had a spare set of cleats, so i was able to stay clipped in for the rest of the ride.

aja was not as lucky. their pedal defied the humble power of duct tape. we called joel who picked her up and the two of them drove to a bike shop, which provided a replacement part (for super cheap!).

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overall, today was a challenging but lovely day. we saw some beautiful sights in a mostly flat ride (though there were some hilly streets towards the end). finally, we met our very gracious host in his home in san francisco, ordered pizza, and met some other bikers who were visiting the US from ireland. for me, today was a small reminder of how important everyday people are to a journey like ours—to help us find our way and to help us when we fall.

41.77mi, 4:39:19 moving time

—parth