Today is the day! The eight members of Spokes will finally be united!
After graduating from MIT (!!!), Evan hopped on a plane to meet us in Bristol, Virginia, but before we met him, we had to bike a little over forty miles from Lebanon to our campsite near Wise. With nearly two weeks of biking and almost 500 miles under our belts, we powered up and over the hills much more confidently than our first days out of DC.
When we rolled into our campsite at Camp Bethel, however, our confidence diminished as we realized we had made one little mistake in our campsite reservation. It turns out there are two Camp Bethels: the one we were currently sitting at on our bikes and the one we had reserved a campsite for… a five-hour drive away. Just as we were ready to turn our bikes around and pedal in defeat to the nearest hotel, Dee, one of the camp directors swooped in to save the day. She generously offered to let us stay in her cabin for the night that she had reserved for Monday. Of course, we enthusiastically took her up on the offer and unloaded our gear into the beautiful rustic cabin.
After we had settled into our home for the night, Maile drove to meet Evan at the airport while the rest of us sat around the cabin trying to figure out what to do with our free time. We eventually divided up tasks for the team, including putting Bill in charge of labeling all our gear. He may have gotten a little carried away as he labeled everything from jars of peanut butter to books to the eggs we would use for dinner.
Finally, Maile and Evan arrived at the cabin, and we learned that Evan had not, in fact, been in the bathroom all this time. He had actually been graduating back at MIT. After inspecting the newcomer, we decided he’d make a fine addition to the team.
That night, we practiced through our workshop lessons, and Erin and I tried our best not to burn down the cabin with our whoosh bottle. Once we were convinced that we could teach our workshops without starting a fire, or even worse, revealing how little we actually knew about our subjects, we packed our supplies into the van and called it a night.
