(Dixon, CA -> Folsom, CA)
Cole here taking a shot at bloggin for Day 4 of the trip (it’s going so fast!). After card-playing the night away with our hosts Brad, Scott, and Nicole last night, we hit the road for Loomis bright and early to beat the Sacramento heat. We were lucky enough to convince Brad, a Spokes alum from last year, to join us for part of our journey, and scored some more wisdom from him on the road. The first few days of the trip had helped me shake off my initial nerves at the idea of biking across the US, so I was super stoked to have a day of carefree pedaling and thinkin’ time to reflect on the end of my first year of college. After nine months of new friends, classes, clubs, and living in a new place at Stanford, it was a relief to return to something more familiar: pedaling (I’ve been biking since I was 4). It seemed like the rest of the Spokes crew was in the same stoked-boat, and the first 20 miles flew by as Maceo bumped some tunes from a speaker in his water bottle holder and we rolled by more ag land and through the beautiful UC Davis campus. Our first stop was at a roadside fruit stand, so we stocked up on peaches and other miscellaneous fruit items to keep us smiling on the way to our next stop in California’s capitol, Sacramento.
After checking out the capitol building, wandering through a food festival in the downtown (free sunblock stand, score!), we met up with our loyal driver-for-the-day Travis to snag some lunch. Per Sean’s enthusiastic, frequently repeated recommendations, I put some seasoning in a can of garbanzo beans and ate it with a fork for lunch—I pretended like it was really good, but mostly to be nice—it tasted a lot like you’d expect a can of seasoned garbanzo beans to taste (sorry Sean). We ate in a beautiful shady park with Maceo’s friends, Tselot and Beti, who work in the Environmental Protection Agency in Sacramento. It was so cool grilling them about working to save the planet, but Asia and I were still so tired from all of our riding that I tipped over while sitting on my bike. I would have just stayed there, lying on the ground (ah, so much more comfortable than a bike seat), but Travis pulled me up and sent us back on our way.
Our next 20 miles were on a shaded, twisty bike path next to the American river, and I started to wake up a little bit thanks to NPR podcasts and having to constantly swerve to avoid hitting the squirrels sprinting at random towards my bike wheels on the narrow path. Luckily, no squirrels were hit on the way to our next stop, which had a bridge going over the river at perfect jumping height. After grabbing some epic slo-mo video footage of Maceo and I hopping the railing on the bridge in unison into the icy cold water below, we hopped back on our bikes to finish the last 9 miles to meet Anna’s parents in Folsom, where they had generously offered to drive us the last 13 miles to their house. Asia and Maceo busted some sweet dance moves on their bikes to make the last hour fly by, and we pulled in to Folsom to end the day. I still felt like riding and somehow still hadn’t had enough thinkin’ time, so I hopped on my bike and headed towards Anna’s house while the rest of the team went to get ice cream in Folsom (pretty weird, I know, who gets ice cream when they can just keep biking instead?). Overall, it was an action packed day full of Brad’s wisdom, fresh fruit, slo-mo bridge jumps, aggressive squirrels, and epic dance moves. Can’t wait for more days of biking with this sick team!