Tuesday, July 9th, 2024
Lamar, CO --> Fowler, CO
86.06 mi, 1,526 elevation
Hot, flat, and dry. That's all you need to know about today's ride really. Here are a few pictures featuring an obligatory middle-of-nowhere gas station stop, a delicious key lime pie break, stuffing my jersey with random goodies, and JD and Hank aimlessly biking in circles.
So let's dive into something a little bit more interesting.
A lot of you may have been wondering, what do you pack for a 75-day cross country bike trip? Well, today's the day you have been waiting for: a Spokes packing haul!
Because Chrissy is a minivan, we have very limited space because we needed to stuff our camping gear, learning festival supplies, personal items, and all our food/water. We each brought one duffel/carry-on plus a backpack for personal items.
I remember that before we even left MIT, JD was especially insistent on only bringing one backpack. Very valid considering our tight constraints. Until I saw him bring his ONE backpack, with more than half of his items actually packed outside of his backpack.
JD packing habits aside, I would say we all ended up packing as minimally as possible and did a pretty decent job! I brought a carry-on and a small backpack, shown and annotated below:
But of course, none of us really knew what to expect over the course of the summer. So now, I present to you some of the most arguably unnecessary and useless items each Spokes member brought on the trip:
Jess: "My most useless item is my disclip, which can be used to hang my disc from my backpack. I would say it’s even more useless than the disc, which we unfortunately haven’t found a time to use yet this summer, because (unlike some other people on the team) I really dislike having loose things hanging from my bags."
JD: "My most 'useless' item for this trip is my Flipper Zero. For those who haven’t heard of this device yet, it’s basically a multitool for RFID, radio, infrared, keystroke injections, and other GPIO input/output. Some might call it a hacking multitool, but you have to understand the system you’re dealing with before employing the flipper and anyone with an Arduino and communication modules are just as dangerous. I planned to write some custom apps for it this summer, but considering that it’s difficult for me to find time and motivation to write my blog, I am realizing that I do not have the time for this project. After spokes it will be on my to do list."
Hank: "As I was walking out the door to fly back to Boston before Spokes, I saw an umbrella hanging next to the door. How could I forget such an essential item?!? I quickly stuffed it in my bag without thinking about the fact that one cannot use an umbrella while on a bike. I have had no need for it since the start of the trip."
Rebecca: "My retainer. Sorry mom. I just haven’t worn her once because I’m scared of dormant bacteria because I didn’t know how to clean it for like 164972 years. Hopefully the shame from putting this in the blog will inspire me to deep clean it."
Sophia: "Little shark figurine! A few years ago, my sister and I bought a collection of sharks and spent an afternoon researching each species’ personality to assign to each member of our family. This is my blue shark. The blue shark is one of the fastest sharks in the world and very wide ranging!"
Cleo: "I am actually functioning with too little gear. Generous donations of bike shorts, socks, sport bras, shoes WITH soles attached, portable chargers and pjs would be greatly appreciated."
Amulya: "these coffee cookies are from when i went to mexico 1.5 years ago, i was saving them for a bad day but i guess i saved them so much i forgot about them."
Varsha: "I brought along my emotional support 4-month-old sweet potatoes from my Boston apartment. I hate wasting food and had this delusional fantasy of cooking it during the summer. Spoiler alert: I had them for 3 weeks into Spokes and then had to throw them away because they sprouted :( You will be missed sweet potatoes <3".
Now you know what to pack and what not to pack for your cross-country bike trip :)
a disc is always necessary - kelton
Rebecca, Dad said that that was "Too much information. We didn't need to know that."
Sorry indeed Rebecca