Day 13 and 14: The Liminal State

Sorry for the hiatus yesterday. We had arrived at Ely (where we are resting for a day and teaching the next) and had finally begun to process the gravity of the overturning of Roe v. Wade and how, why, and what we are doing on this trip. It is hard to feel useful and purposeful in these times.

June 29, 2022:

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has sat heavy and suffocating. It is hard to justify what I am doing right now – voluntarily biking across the U.S. and crossing freely into and out of states that have revoked basic human rights.

It is extreme privilege that allows me to do so. Privilege that I have been born into, that I have not earned, so I cannot play the victim.

I chose to come to the U.S., I go to school in California, I am materially well-off, and I have many many opportunities to remove myself from being immediately impacted by such a decision. But I am also a woman, Chinese, and in the midst of losing the city I once called home, so my heart is shattered, and I cannot claim to feel strong or whole. I have cried many times across the past few days. Tears for those who have been robbed of autonomy, and also for myself.

I feel lost. The luxury of removing myself from the greater state of things to hop on a bike festers guilt. I cannot say I feel purposeful, even though this trip began with purpose. I cannot say I feel worthy, even though this trip began with a worthy cause. I feel guilty and heavy and broken and angry and I do not have a satisfying solution.

For now I will keep biking, because biking allows me to think, to breathe, to find the little pockets of meditation that removes me from the hurt. I will also try to lean into the pain and rage, whether in my workshops or in a town that doesn’t want to see people like me, and channel it into some manner of love and strength that can perhaps bring one child to smile or soothe one corner of myself. I don’t know if what I am doing matters at all, but because biking and teaching are healing for me, perhaps that is a selfish but sufficient enough reason to keep going.

Thank you to those who care and those who care not so much for taking the time to read through these thoughts.

Sincerely,

Sophia

…

Now, back to the blogpost:

Perhaps Charles Dickens had Nevada in mind (as well as the French Revolution of course) when he wrote, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

The team (sans Timothy) at Cold Springs Resort (not really a resort and no cold springs in sight), photo courtesy of Timothy

Nevada has been a sin graph, or in terms more dear to me, an odyssey. From Middlegate to Austin to Eureka and now finally Ely, Highway 50, my psyche, the weather, and our team, have truly traversed peaks and valleys (some very high peaks and very very low valleys). Climbing more than 3000ft in a day, often more than 1000ft on one leg has somehow become usual for us. We have fallen into the in-someway-beautiful-but-mostly-insane rhythm of waking up before sunrise, packing up our insignificant footprints left in one city, hopping on our gradually appendage-like bikes, and cruising (more often huffing and puffing) more than 70 miles to a new location where a trash bag of dinner scraps and maybe a ghostly mark of Ody’s tire tread is all that is left of us, before repeating everything again, somewhere just as faraway and foreign.

Some classic bike breakdowns on Highway 50

In a game of Contact (a word guessing game) yesterday when we hid behind Ody from a sudden storm, I guessed the word “liminal” as the clue word, and that is much of how I have felt on The Loneliest Road in America. “Liminal” comes from the Latin term limen, which can mean threshold, doorway, beginning, and end (and most variations of these terms). Crossing Nevada, I have been on the limen between many things: pedaling on my physical threshold where my mind tells me that my heart will simply stop but my (sometimes infuriating) podcast and Joel’s (weirdly) colorful jersey in front keep it beating; peeking through the doorway of my own mind to sometimes embrace and other times deposit thoughts and memories from various periods of my life; embarking on the beginning of loving the team infinitely – loving Aja and I’s special “language,” loving Katherine’s unbelievably absurd jokes (that somehow lift me out of every trough I find myself lying in), loving Timothy’s dance moves and word plays and genuine excitement (and sometimes hatred) for pushing up hills every leg, loving Parth’s always diplomatic demeanor that keeps us (relatively) stable, loving how Vincent while still not fully recovered from dehydration, offered his water bottle to the rest of the bikers (and also how he drank the leftover broth from cooked quinoa), loving Joel’s always present ear (often encased in days-old sunscreen) for my haphazard thoughts and stories; and reaching some ends of things – the end of holding myself at a safe distance from vulnerability (in fact I have had two and a half cry sessions so far), the (approaching) end of considering things too far beyond what lies just below my tire, and of course the end of our time in Nevada.

Aja and I in one of those Nevada storms

Vincent truly enjoying the leftover quinoa broth

O Nevada, I have exclaimed many times the past few days. A state of ups and downs in all senses, a state of liminality, of beginning and ends, a state of tears (perhaps too many) and laughs (never enough)...I will miss the high I feel at the peak of every hill, I will miss the group penguin huddle in yet another storm, I will miss the many many times I wanted to stop and one teammate or another would extend their (both metaphorical and literal) hand to pull me along. I am infinitely grateful to this liminal state.

nubem eripiam…usquam abero et tutum ad patrio te limine sistam (Aeneid ii, 606-620)

See you soon,

Sophia

Day 12: Desert Dispatch

Yesterday was a long, hard day of biking, and so was today. A challenging, rewarding day, but a trying one nonetheless. After passing over the Sierras, I was under the misguided impression that the rest of the country would be flat, easy riding. As the last few days have shown, this is not the case. At roughly 8:30am, Sophia, Aja, Joel, Vincent, and I took off, and within three minutes of our departure we faced a winding, 1000-foot incline (Parth and Katherine were in the car today). After sweating our way up that massive hill, we sped down until we reached another, almost equally challenging climb. This was the rhythm of the first two legs of today’s ride. Up, down, up, down. No wonder that Joan and Greg, our hosts in Carson City, described this stretch of the state as the “washboard region.” 

Highway 50. Look at those clouds!

Still, things are getting easier. At some point in the last week and a half, we became stronger. Vincent, who just returned after a week in COVID isolation, has remarked again and again how much faster we are now than we were before. At the top of each hill my legs were sore, but they almost didn’t hurt. Almost.

But it’s not just the constant elevation changes that make Nevada formidable. Each leg of the today’s ride brought new challenges. In the morning, it was the heat, the sun searing my neck and arms. (Once we picked up speed, we made our own breezes, and the heat became almost unnoticeable.) Later on, it was the wind. In the second and third legs of today’s ride, we rode straight into a brutal headwind. The wide-open, flat desert terrain left us exposed to sudden, powerful gusts of wind coming down from distant mountains, and on a few occasions we were nearly knocked off balance. And on two separate occasions today, we found ourselves caught in the middle of sudden desert squalls. The first storm arrived while we ate a brief picnic lunch at a rest stop (rest stops are few and far between on Highway 50). Just as I composed my second peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a powerful wind knocked away lids, plastic bags, and a slice of Kraft cheese. Rain began to pelt against asphalt. In twenty minutes, it had all but subsided. The second storm rolled in while we were at our third stop – the last of the day. This one was more dangerous, since it was a thunderstorm. Katherine had to shuttle us from our third checkpoint to Eureka.

Highway 50. Note the cricket stains on the road.

Perhaps the strangest feature of the highway is the Mormon Cricket. The Mormon cricket is a reddish-brown, oversized cricket, about the size of an exceptionally large thumb. The road is littered with these insects. In some stretches, it’s impossible to find a square-foot of road without either a living cricket or a mangled one. In the most extreme points, the road is permanently stained with rust-colored tire tracks.

From this accounting of challenges, it might sound like I’m not having fun, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a challenge, but it’s an exhilarating one. The little things – the feeling of coming to the top of a hill, joking around with the team at breaks, speeding down the side of the road straight into a valley, the vast, alien desert scenery – make up for any rough patches ten times over.

vincent, joel, and sophia after climbing a tough hill.

To end this post on a fun note, I’ve included a brief interview I did with the rest of the group. I thought it would be nice to give readers a little “under-the-hood” look at our day-to-day travels. I asked everyone a few questions and recorded their answers.

Till next time,

Timothy

What have you been listening to on your ride?

Aja: I’m listening to a playlist called Spokes with lots of dramatic music for climbing hills.

Joel: I’m listening to a RadioLab episode about professional wrestling.

Parth: Yesterday I listened to the news, a Daily episode about elite private schools, and Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!

Sophia: Yesterday I was listening to a podcast on Zhuangzi. Today I was listening to a bunch of random Chinese music.

Katherine: Absolutely nothing.

Vincent: Nothing. Just the wind.

What have you been thinking about on the road?

Joel: I’ve been thinking about where the smooth shoulder on the road comes from. It’s sometimes there and sometimes not. I wonder if someone wasn’t doing their job right.

Parth: It’s a kind of dark answer, but honestly since Roe v. Wade was overturned yesterday I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and what that means for our country, and the state of democracy. I was mentioning this earlier this morning, about being collectively traumatized, repeatedly, by six largely white, largely male people who are unelected. It’s this sort of voicelessness and fear, and I’ve been thinking of how to cope with that. (Joel: I feel shallow now…)

Sophia: I don’t want to follow that! My mind is blank. 

Aja: I’ve been trying not to think about the big picture of this trip. I’m mostly just thinking about the few feet in front of me, because if I do think about the magnitude of the entire trip I think it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.

Katherine: Parth’s been making me super existential today. (Parth: Sorry.) 

Vincent: Mostly just one pedal after the next.

What snack has been propelling you through the Nevada desert?

Aja: PB&J and canned tuna. And the gatorade.

Sophia: PB&J and Go-Go Squeeze applesauce pouches.

Joel: Peanut butter.

Parth: Fresh fruit and Cheez-Its.

Katherine: Hardboiled eggs.

Vincent: Bread.

Day 11: I'm back baby

My life was sooo different 24 hours ago. Today was crazy, and really feeling like I jumped into the deep end (~65 miles, ~3000 feet of climb) holy cow; but it feels nice to be back w/ the team and back on the roll

I still had a bit of residual Covid cough as we were leaving Middlegate, but it got steadily better. We hit the road fast in our first segment and made it to the first rest stop without too many problems and made it to the Cold Springs Station Resort — Aja and the others had some great chats with the locals (including an archaeologist?) and we ordered EGGS woooott that we ended up chowing down on the stop after. 

I started feeling a little bit tired and tried to stuff myself with electrolyte drinks and snacks, but that was a mistake. I ended up feeling bloated for most of the ride :P and I think I keep slowing down progressively throughout the ride. My quads were burning, and I was trying not to push too hard in my post-covid recovery, but still needed a lot of small breaks along the way to keep up with the others. I’m super impressed with how much faster they’ve gotten since I got covid a week and a half ago — I was definitely holding them back a bit today, but glad that we all made it through.

I spent most of the ride trying to catch up to the others (and on the running jokes that I’d missed while on quarantine). Seems like Joel has become a big fan of reaching the tops of mountains! And I spent a solid 30 minutes thinking about compliments for Joel’s extremely strong biking…

Parth was running into a LOT of back wheel issues, which we attempted to fix temporarily on the road, but kept pestering him throughout most of the second half of the ride. We ended up taking lots of small breaks along the way (which were much needed, especially for me), but also because riding in the Nevada desert was deceptively difficult. The ride was really beautiful, since we were in a massive valley surrounded on all sides by mountains, and we entertained ourselves by laughing at the massive crickets, cicadas, and their strange attraction to Timothy… 

The final climb up to Austin was an extremely steep hill that all of us needed to take multiple breaks on and walk. The storefronts were really interesting and had a nice rural vibe, but most of them were empty :-/  Joel and Sophia ran into trouble with the quarter exchange at the laundromat, and our wonderful meal planners Aja and Katherine had trouble finding fresh veggies at the markets in the town :o But our final destination was a pretty nice RV park, with toilets and SHOWERSS!!! At the RV park, I had my first real (warm) shower in a week and half, which was a great change from the ‘horse hose’ showers that I was having during my quarantine haha. Felt squeaky clean afterwards and was really glad to finally enjoy the rest of the night with the team :)

The biggest thing that I learned today is that a small incline extended over a large distance (e.g., miles) can turn out to be quite challenging. And vice versa on the downhills — we had a few major climbs, but also a few extremely cathartic downhill rides — wind blowing, face smiling, skin sweating, and I loved it all.

— Vincent out

Before

Low res image of the team and me standing alone sadly in the distance after we found out i got covid. This is the day we split up and I started my quarantine (last Wednesday). Look how sad and covid-infected I am :(

After

Look how much better I feel after my quarantine! My face is much higher res now :)) (i’m the one in the back with the cool cap and neck gaiter, which some of the others have made fun of me for… :-

day 10: middle (of nowhere) gate

hello world!

Aja here reporting from the one and only Middlegate, Nevada, population seventeen (not including the six, soon to be seven) of us. we managed to score a motel room for the night and, after a delicious meal of burgers and fries at the one restaurant in this tiny… town? if you can call it that? are getting ready for bed and patiently awaiting the return of our San Anselmo horse whisperer and dear friend Vincent. 

Highway 50 didn’t earn its accolades as the Loneliest Road in America for no reason. we’ve been riding in Nevada for two days now, predominantly in a straight line speckled with tumbleweeds, the occasional trailer, and, in one particularly eye-catching section, rocks spelling out the preamble of the United States Constitution. the scenery is beautiful though. especially the formations of clouds. 

2019’s team warned us of the mental challenge that Highway 50 would pose, and they certainly weren’t wrong. last week’s steep mountains have been, for the time being, replaced with miles upon miles of shallow climbs that stretch on for deceivingly long. while it was once easy to bookmark stretches of effort with physical landmarks, every hill and tree here seems to blend together into a mirage-like landscape with very little opportunity for shaded refuge. our team has gotten into a good rhythm though. today we practiced our peloton formation, riding in a tight single file line that periodically switched leaders to reduce wind drag. between podcast listening and music jamming, carefully gauging distance between bikes to avoid clipping each other’s tires, and becoming hypnotized by pedal strokes and the Nevada skyline, the time passes surprisingly quickly. 

we took two rest stops during today’s ride to meet up with our snack-bearing saviors Katherine and Sophia. PB&Js, canned tuna, dill pickles, La Croix, and, Timothy’s favorite, Cheez-It Grooves, were today’s break staples. myself, Joel, Timothy, and Parth stopped several additional times throughout the route to check out the scenery, snap photos, and, about five miles out from our destination, to seek shelter from the rapidly darkening clouds of a thunderstorm in the distance. Katherine, once again our savior, shuttled us the remainder of the way in Ody as winds picked up substantially. 

Middlegate consists of the motel we are staying in, a bar/restaurant, and an RV park - perhaps a bit bleak, but maybe instead indicative of the beauty of this lonely lonely road. Rural Nevada has been a pleasant break from Stanford, a pleasant break from Los Angeles, the busy city I call home. the people we’ve met have been kind - the Subway workers who gave us free bottled ice water, the farmer who wished us a safe journey on the side of the road, the church director in Fallon who allowed us to set up camp, cook dinner, and shoot some hoops in their building last night. we’ve collectively settled into a routine of early mornings, early bedtimes, and more mindful afternoons cooking together, chatting, laughing, and savoring the time off of the bike just as much as the time on.

post-dinner, our team gathered up for a few rounds of Longwave, a new favorite internet game (thanks Parth!) which quickly devolved into senseless rounds of belly laughter. we went outside to watch the sunset, observe the bats carrying out their nightly routine, and soak up the wacky, incredible experience that is biking to middle-of-nowhere Nevada just for the heck of it.

today was a good day. onto the next!

aja

before the storm

The Storm

‘twas a bit windy

Joel shooting hoops last night! i wasn’t kidding!

Middlegate giggles

sunset watching sans bats! plus our home for the night

day 9: notes from nevada

carson city → fallon

when i visited her house last year, my friend michelle described a phenomenon called “ambient awareness” — she defined it as one’s ability to know how their partner/friend was feeling, without having to talk to them about it. it’s the feeling of walking into your apartment and knowing that your roommate had a bad day, for example.

a curious deer observes our movements, through the window of our host’s home

i think we’ve developed pretty strong ambient awareness on the spokes team—from my perspective, we’re all pretty good at knowing when to give each other space and we’re developing unspoken ways of communicating.

our hosts from last night seemed to think so too—during dinner, i commented how joel had woken up twice, not once like he thought, to use the bathroom and one host commented that we already sound like a married couple.

after dinner, katherine spearheaded a much-needed effort to reorganize our sag wagon. over the course of the next six hours, the team (well, mostly joel, katherine, sophia, and aja) took everything out of the van, sorted it into different boxes, and packed it back into the van. during that time, i was setting up for the spokes movie night: we were watching everything, everywhere, all at once. we hung up a linen sheet on the side of our host’s garage and set up our projector to watch the movie. unfortunately, the reorganization didn’t finish until 11pm, and there wasn’t enough time to watch the movie afterwards.

high off the energy from reorganizing the car, we were all insistent that, in the morning, we would be more efficient getting out the door. generally, we take ~3 hours from waking up to rolling out, but tomorrow morning, we were determined to wake up at 6 and start our route at 7:30.

this morning, at 6 sharp, I woke up to a skin-crawling symphony of six different alarm noises. i feel like you can tell a lot from the alarm choice that a person makes: joel, aja, and i are simple—we use the standard alarm. katherine and timothy prefer more elaborate noises as though they need to be eased into the soul-crushing experience of getting out of bed.

it seems that our determination held strong this morning (even though we’d barely gotten six hours of sleep): we’d finished most of our preparation by 7:30 and we started biking around 8am, two hours after we’d woken up. many of the spokes are still pushing for us to wake up earlier, develop a more streamlined process for moving our belongings to the sag wagon, and create a more systematic organization of the car. i’m more nonchalant about those things—and tremendously impressed by our improvement since the beginning of the trip. in a few weeks, we’ll likely be a well-oiled machine.

we set off for our first full day of biking through nevada, mostly on highway 50. i found the experience to be mostly flat and quite pleasant. the terrain was substantially different from california; lots of pastel colors and rolling hills in the distance. we were biking really close to cars which was very stressful—what’s more, apparently Nevada drivers have a habit of honking twice at bikers as a way of saluting them? i didn’t like it.

katherine boiled eggs for us last night and at the second rest stop, sophia decided to… eat? obliterate? one:

sophia holding the remnants of her egg — sorry, her “arch-nemesis"

my favorite part of today was an un-planned stop. there wasn’t a restroom at the rest point, so after we’d pulverized the remaining eggs, we went to a nearby subway. not only did the employees let us use their restroom, they offered us cold water from their fridge and we got to chat with them about their lives—we heard about how they met each other and started dating, how they hate high school, and how excited they were to meet folks “on an adventure.” to the subway staff in silver springs: i doubt you’ll read this, but if you do, thank you for your kindness 💜

two hours and six sore butts later, we arrived at our stop for the night: a church in fallon which generously allowed us to sleep in their auditorium and use their kitchen, showers, and laundry machines.

it’s a lovely space, and i’m excited to spread out on the floor after last night’s experience of packing ourselves, like sardines, into such a small house.

---

biking so continuously has given me some weird cravings; today it was ice cream. we all went to a locally-famous ice cream shop called skeeters and devoured the delicious food outside. some of us snuck to the nearby kfc to get fried chicken (another bike craving) which the flexitarians and meat-eaters on our team enjoyed.

the day wrapped up with another delicious dinner made by katherine, aja (who made a sauce!! even though they hate sauces!!), timothy, and sophia (even though she doesn’t want credit 👀). we had falafel, salad, rice, potato crisps, and candied pecans—all of which nearly blew away in the wind after katherine moved us outdoors.

65.26mi, 4:10:31 moving time

—parth

Day 8: Vincent from quarantine

These past couple days have made me incredibly grateful. Not just for my beautiful quarantine location + kind hosts, but also for the technology, convenience, and people that I normally take for granted in my life. 

Life on the ranch has been a little bit lonely (at night-time especially) but it’s given me some time and space to reflect about the past several months, including my graduation from Stanford, and to soak in the scenery. Fortunately my Covid symptoms have been pretty mild (coughing, tiredness, slight fever), so I’ve taken a couple of long hikes to the trails and lakes in the Mount Tamalpais Watershed area around me. I’ve grown used to the daily routine of waking up, wandering around, and taking care of food + necessities before going back to sleep — which, honestly, has been quite a relaxing change from the blistering pace of Stanford, but I’ve also been a little bit anxious at having to take time off from Spokes. 

The property that I’m staying at is incredibly beautiful and is still close enough to the town for me to enjoy grocery and food deliveries, and I’m extremely grateful that the cabin I’m staying in is very large and comfortable. I don’t have wifi or electricity in the cabin, but I do have cell reception and mobile data, which I’ve used to stay in touch with the team and entertain myself through social media and news feeds. 

At first it felt a little bit disorienting to not have clear markers for change - like the checkpoints of our bike rides - or other variations in my day that might give me a clear sense of the passage of time; but I’ve become a lot more comfortable with the slower pace of life. The highlights of my days include taking quick (cold) showers with the hose by the horse stable, enjoying fat burritos for dinner, hiking 8 miles to the nearby lakes and back, doing laundry in buckets by hand, and making the 40 min trek to Safeway to get curbside grocery pickup (and to steal their wifi).

I’m trying my best to soak it in, since I’m starting to realize that this may be the last time in a long while that I can sit still without pressing obligations, but I’m having a hard time still dealing with the sluggishness of relative isolation. Social media has helped me a lot, as have the other conveniences of having a smartphone and a lot of external support (thank you “Jon” from UberEats), but it still feels a bit empty. I think that for all the criticisms we give to modern society, there’s something quite grounding about having a goal to work towards — even if we’re all just competing in the ‘rat race’ of life. 

There’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel — I’m scheduled to fly over to Reno on Thursday and meet back up with the team. I can’t wait to see them and I’m sure that when I hit the road again I’ll be wishing I had this kind of rest and alone time. But it’s more than enough for me right now. Can’t wait to get rolling again.

DAY 7: Tales from The Van

In the off case that you’ve been wondering: “When’s Katherine writing one of these blog posts?”—well, I’m finally breaking my silence with an explanation. Truth be told, I haven’t biked since the morning of Day 2. But before I get into all that, let’s talk about the day that we had today, one week since we left Stanford bright-eyed and unwitting.

photo by Aja

If you told me a month ago that I’d consider an 8:00 am wake-up time late, I’d have been appalled. Truly, though, after many days of setting alarms for 6:30, we had collectively grown to consider 8:00 “sleeping in”. We awoke to a fully risen sun and fueled up with hard boiled eggs, oatmeal, Keurig coffee (what a luxury), and other morsels. We said bye to the neighborhood dogs, our host Greg, and his balcony bees. 

Our leisurely 10:00 am departure was immediately beset with another bike malfunction. Parth’s back wheel had somehow become misaligned, and his brakes weren’t working properly. Whereas initially Joel and I were the ones planning to ride in the car, it quickly became clear that Joel and Parth would have to switch places in the pack. Joel changed into his bike gear at record speed—under 3 minutes!—and I drove off with Parth to the nearest bike shop (kudos to South Shore Bikes for helping us out free of charge, left a 5 star review for our new besties).

@Lake Tahoe! photo by Sophia

With a fixed bike in tow, we crossed state lines from CA -> NV and pulled into arguably our most scenic rest stop yet, Cave Rock Lake Tahoe State Park. We snacked on bagels and canned fish and after a bit of convincing from our daredevil Timothy, dipped our toes in the frigid water against a backdrop of towering rock formations and ice-capped mountains before we headed to our final destination for the day, Carson City. (Yes, I’m still in the car at this point.) 

We arrived at our Warmshowers for the night, celebrating because we knew we would be sleeping in the same place for two nights in a row for the first time since the start of our trip. Our hosts Joan and Greg prepared for us the most wonderful vegetarian meal with buttered corn, tabouleh, and asparagus which we enjoyed, all together, in their beautiful garden. 

I’m wrapping up this blog post on the porch of our cabin. Inside, I can hear my teammates laughing as they play Code Names, and I can’t wait to go in and join them. As for why I’ve been driving instead of biking for the past five days? 

Ella, Joan’s dog, begging for scraps at the table

On Day 2, after a previous day spent biking from Palo Alto to San Francisco, I woke up with an unignorable knee pain. I ignored it and I started biking, and hurt my left knee as a result. Turns out my bike hadn’t been fitted properly, resulting in my pain and eventual injury. Ever since then I’ve been designated driver. Between stops I run errands for the team: groceries, REI, Target, repeat. On particularly grueling legs, I shuttle my sweaty teammates from point A to point B. 

The trip hasn’t shaped up the way I thought it would, but I’ve come to accept that wholeheartedly. There’s a lot I have to be thankful for, including the good spirits of my teammates, peaceful rides in the car and sublime views whizzing by, and other moments like ab-shaking laughs with Timothy and Aja in the morning to dinner duty with Parth, and nonsensical jokes with Sophia at pit stops to contemplative car conversations with Joel. I’ve built up a great rapport with Ody the van. I’ll be counting the days until I can be back on the bike. 

We’re determined to make the most of our very first rest day tomorrow. Alright, I’m headed back inside!

Katherine 

Day 5-6: Climbs, Camping, and the (C)indness of Strangers

Sacramento ⇒ Sly Park, Sly Park ⇒ South Lake Tahoe

I apologize that there was no blog post yesterday, I couldn’t post as we were camping in a campground with limited wifi. I’ve heard that some mega(n) fans missed the post yesterday.

Yesterday started out with our very welcoming host cooking us breakfast. Having breakfast ready and made is such a welcome change of pace from oatmeal cooked over a camp stove. She sent us with the leftovers and then some. Our host even repaired a hole in Timothy’s shorts!

Our first leg of the journey was on a very well-maintained path in Sacramento. These past few days have really made me appreciate the difference that a good bike path makes. Not having to worry about approaching cars lets us enjoy the view a lot more, and maybe chat as we ride. After a bit, Parth noticed that their rear wheel was a bit loose. After a bit of Googling, we headed to a bike shop. Parth made a very good call–turns out the bike was bordering on unrideable. The bike shop fixed it up, thankfully, though!

We continued on to the next leg, which had the most climbing of any leg we’d done this trip. We definitely felt the climb. Parth and Aja took a well deserved rest in the car for the rest of the legs, leaving Sophia, Timothy and I to finish out the legs. The three of us entered a state that Timothy later described as “cult-like”, though I’d maybe use the phrase high-hype. We cheered each other up the hills, which made the elevation gain much more bearable. However, we were halted by the coming dark, and had to call the car to pick us up, out of safety considerations.

We were delighted to find, upon arrival, that Parth and Aja had already set up the tent, and begun making dinner. There’s nothing like coming back from a ride, and the food being ready. We finished setting up in the dark, and went to bed.

Day 6:

We got going early for our big day. I was admittedly nervous: today was a big day. We would bike over 50 miles and climb about 5000 ft, which is more than anything we’ve done. Moreover, today was a tricky day with logistics. We were heading into an area where we may not have cell signal.

Timothy climbs a hill that was burned by a forest fire

We enjoyed the beautiful descents amidst the amazing scenery of the start of the Sierra Nevada. The climbs were also pretty, but also pretty sweaty.

A sampling of our views today

To conserve my phone battery (my backup battery was drained), I didn’t listen to anything on the ride today. Instead of laundry listing each leg of today, I will provide some reflections that came from those hours of quiet biking.

Sophia taught us a useful trick for climbing the hills: keep your head down. Not only does this save your neck muscles, you also don’t see the hundreds of feet you still need to climb. This makes a good metaphor for today’s riding. I’d been worried about today’s ride for a week now; I referred to it as “the crucible” of the first stint of our trip. Yet, now that we’ve emerged from the ride, I realize life would’ve been a lot easier if I’d just “kept my head down” and focused on each day individually.

I am struck by the adaptability of humans. None of us have biked anything close to the mileage we’ve put in the books the last few days. Yet, not even a week in, this life feels normal. Cheering my teammates up a hill in who-knows-where California feels like normal life now.

A selfie from 8,500 ft after an intense climb

Cresting the pass into Tahoe today was an unparalleled experience. After a long day of climbing, finally reaching the end goal was a great high.

All smiles upon arrival!

I’m writing this as our host in Tahoe gives us free range of his kitchen, including full use of the pantry. I continually am blown away by the generosity of Warm Showers hosts, and so many others along the way. The kindness takes all sizes, anywhere from Bubba’s Diner letting us use their bathroom on a rest stop to the gift of a prepared dinner.

Echo (the neighbor’s dog) came to greet us as we arrived, which made for a more entertaining stretch (photo creds to Sophia)

Onward,

Joel