Today we tried an interesting experiment. Yesterday we decided to all pretend to be another person on the team for one day. We pulled names from a hat that evening and decided to begin the experiment the following morning. We didn’t know who everyone was that evening but this is what we figured out the next day:
Caralyn imitated Bill
Bill imitated Caralyn
Maile imitated Leah
Leah imitated Evan
Evan imitated Erin
Erin imitated Devin
Devin imitated Edgardo
Edgardo imitated Maile
For the rest of the blog where it’s relevant I’ll put Real Name (Person they are Imitating). For example: Leah (Evan)
I got Evan, who I felt like I could imitate reasonably well. Here’s what I picked up from Evan:
He is super efficient in everything he does and is very deliberate with his actions.
He is always the first person ready to go (like he is dressed and packed in the time it takes me to snooze my alarm).
He wakes everyone up in the morning by softly poking them at first and then dragging their sleeping bag off of them.
He eats really really really fast (I’m from a big family and he eats faster than anyone I know).
In the mornings he usually brings things to the car and then helps pack up.
So this morning, I woke up a bit earlier than everyone else to get all my stuff ready and get dressed. Then at 5:45am I began to wake everyone up. Most people were actually awake at 5:30 but Caralyn (Bill) decided sleep in a bit. I poked her until she hid under her sleeping bag and then I tried to pull it off but ended up dragging her off her mat. Hey, it still did the job.
It was a very confusing (but absolutely hilarious) morning.
Bill (Caralyn) made pancakes and tried singing to Disney songs but failed miserably.
Erin (Devin) drank hot tang and absolutely nailed Devin’s various ways of standing. She also ate an entire apple (core and all) the way Devin does.
Evan (Erin) tried to eat really slowly and said babe to Bill (Caralyn).
Edgardo (Maile) put too much sunscreen on his face and reminded everyone we needed to leave at 7.
Devin tried to play Edgardo’s music but didn’t know any of the right songs.
Maile (Leah) wore a fantastic top bun and said we couldn’t buy any more cliff bars because they were too expensive.
Also Bill’s quads were infamously inflexible at the start of the trip so I often helped him stretch. So of course, Maile (Leah) also helped stretch Caralyn’s (Bill’s) quads as Caralyn pretended to be in a lot of pain.
I (Evan) tried to eat really fast but I didn’t do very well.
It was a very funny morning and it definitely contributed to us leaving waaaayyy later than intended, but it was worth it.
After the morning though, everyone went back to their old selves which helped with efficiency.
I biked with Devin and Bill and we left Burlington CO around 7:45 and headed to Limon CO, around 80 miles. Biking alone with Devin and Bill is really hard when you are a Relatively Speedy But Not That Speedy kind of person. Devin and Bill tend to feed off of each other and go super fast while you either keep up and die or fall very far behind (and then catch up when they slow down or stop for you).
In some cases it’s good, like that day we biked 90 miles after the City Museum and Bill, Devin, and I finished the last half together. If they hadn’t pushed me, I doubt I would’ve been able to finish that day. Or that day where we had a sweet tailwind going into Great Bend, KS and averaged a 23 mph pace for 30 miles.
Today, it was a bit more difficult for me to keep up. The road was either gravel, which I’m really slow biking through, or a really badly paved road that was basically just a large rumble strip. So, I wasn’t going too fast.
After a nice lunch in a park, we took off again and google tried to take us through someone’s wheat field.
After we got back on that terribly paved road, it was no shock when we got two flats. As soon as we fixed Devin’s front tire, mine went flat, so they took us a while to fix.
We finally arrived at the KOA in Limon, CO. We set up tents, showered, and cooked burgers, grilled asparagus and mashed potatoes.
After dinner, I took our dirty clothes to the camp’s laundry room and did a couple of loads.
One thing we’ve all realized on this trip is how little free time we have. Coming into Spokes, we all thought we’d have tons of free time, but it all gets eaten up into little tasks. We usually end biking around 3 or 4 and then afterwards we do random stuff like:
Set up tents
Set up sleeping bag and pad
Shower
Stretch
Core workout
Route/ Host planning
Grocery shopping
Workshop shopping
Blog
Laundry
Bike repair (either ourselves or by going to a bike shop)
Cook and eat dinner
Wash dishes
Upload receipts/ photos
Catch up on emails
Budget organization
Identify each other’s feet and butts
Document route for next year’s team
Hang out with hosts
Pack/ unpack car
Write
Read
And the most important: sleep
Seeing it all written out, I guess it doesn’t look like a lot but we are all pretty exhausted by 8:30/9 every evening so we try to get to bed early.
Since this is also a very teamwork heavy trip, we also spend basically every minute of everyday with someone on the team, and we are usually in larger groups together hanging out and talking. So it’s really important for us to find alone time where we can take a bit of a break from one another. There are a couple of ways people do that:
Driving: The driver usually has a couple of tasks (grocery or bike supply shopping) but they typically can get a couple of hours to themselves. While everyone else is biking, the driver can blast music in the car, call family and friends, or take a nap.
Meditating: A couple people have the Headspace app and use that to get some peace and quiet.
Doing laundry: I think I might be one of the only ones that uses laundry as an escape, but you can often get some alone time by waiting in the laundry room to forward* the wash and then waiting up for everything to dry. I like to read, write or listen to music during this time.
Reading/Listening to Music/Journaling: A couple people can get alone time by just tucking themselves in a corner and relaxing.
Going to the bathroom: Hey, you are alone, but with eight people sharing one bathroom, you can’t exactly take very long.
Showering: Guaranteed alone time. Unless it’s at a YMCA, or community pool/ recreation center. That’s actually pretty often the case. Shoot, I guess it’s not guaranteed alone time.
Hiding: Caralyn said she likes to hide from everyone. Not sure I’ve ever seen her do it but I guess that means she does a good job.
Ah well, as you can see it can be pretty hard to get away for a bit from everything, so it’s important to let others know how you are doing and when you just need to be alone.
*A note about forward: so it turns out this is a word only my family uses. It means to move clothes from the wash to the dryer. Ex: I’m going to forward the laundry real quick. I thought it was a commonly used word until I got to college and realized that no one knew what it was. But I still use it, and I’m slowly converting everyone. So far Devin, Erin, and Caralyn have used it without my prompting. Caralyn still insists it won’t become a thing and will fall away just like “fetch”. I disagree. One day, it will be used all over the US.
-Leah Yost