Day 59:
The whole team was excited to start biking again, but in the morning we received some sad news. Unfortunately due to the air quality it was unsafe to ride today, so we would have to take two van trips to transport the team to Ontario. The one benefit is that we were all able to go back to sleep as we did not have to leave until 12. The first van trip was mostly filled with our backpacks, bikes, and other random things that we need, while the second trip was filled with people. A few brave people volunteered to go on the first trip to unpack everyone's stuff and have the next stayover by themselves for a few hours.
The rest of us hung out for a while in Boise and tried to keep ourselves busy. Many of us however just took this opportunity to take a nap, which was actually quite refreshing. The good thing about this is that we got to spend a few extra hours with Anna before she said goodbye and we all made our way to Ontario. And yes of course we all made the joke that we were going to Canada. When we arrived in Ontario we saw the whole town encased in a slight “smog” and we could all smell smoke when we stepped out of the car. Although once we got inside we saw that the inside of the church had plenty of space and had lots of those nostalgic big white plastic tables. The team was joking that it was like being a camp counselor at summer camp.
It is actually Parker's 21st birthday today! While I was relatively disappointed that I could not ride today, the team soon raised my spirits as they surprised me after dinner with a red velvet cake. (My favorite cake, although I am still unsure how they knew) They also let me choose what movie to watch after which really turned my day around. We all popped some popcorn, layed out our sleeping bags and turned on The Lego Batman Movie. Although this may seem like a kids movie the whole team enjoyed it and it brought us many laughs. Sometimes you just need a funny movie to take your mind off the smoke outside. While not my ideal day for my 21st birthday, I have no regrets and would not have rather spent it with anyone else. After the movie we all went to our spots to sleep and discovered half of the lights did not turn off. This made things fun as we all moved to the darker spots of the room. We all went to sleep hoping for better air quality tomorrow, but we shall see what happens.
Day 60;
Everyone who decided to go in the second crew found themselves very hungry and in need of lunch. We knew however that in these upcoming days we might go out to eat, so we all decided to go to the grocery store and get a meal that would be cheaper. This made us all think back to our childhoods where we would all have “struggle meals” or meals made from random scraps in the house. Most of us chose to eat some version of a taco, whether it was filled with just salsa, cheese, or lunch meat. Aadit was even very creative and made baked beans in a hot dog bun. It was also fun to talk about what we would eat as kids which is quite interesting to see the difference based on where we all were from and how we were raised. After this we had quite a bit of time to kill until the van came back for the second load of people, so we all decided to download minecraft on our phones and start a new world. A funny quote from Maaike was “The AQI is a beautiful 0 in minecraft.” And this was quite true, the outside world might be smoky but in minecraft we all had a wonderful time building houses. It almost felt like covid again and resorting to video games because we were all stuck inside.
During the van ride we realised that shuttling might temporarily become the norm and that we should make it fun. We started playing a couple games. Not the usual road games that you would think of though. The first of which being imposter. Everyone got a word and then the “imposter” got nothing and had to try and fit in. How the game works is everyone says a word related to or similar to the word they got to “clear” themselves of being the imposter. The imposter wins if they get the others to guess that someone else was the imposter or if they guess the word correctly. While being spread out through the van it was slightly hard to hear everyone, but it was awesome to include the whole team in a fun group activity to pass the time. The other game that we started playing was codenames. While very similar, this game was on our phones. We split into two teams, and in those teams there was a clue master and the guessers. Everyone got a big board with about 25 words, 18 of which being 9 words that each team had to guess. The other 7 words were either neutral, or there is also one each round that if you guess that word it is an instant loss. In this game similarly to the other, the cluemaster has to give a hint of a word that matches with multiple of the words the teams have to guess. My explanations of these games may be quite bad, but our team had so much fun playing them in the van. It really made our days go by that much quicker.
Once we got to the stayover since the smoke was relatively bad outside we opted to stay inside for most of the night. Although some of the team did manage to find a restaurant that had a $8 burrito with unlimited chips and salsa which was awesome. Except for this everyone really stayed inside. Since this was not our first day of riding in the van we had gotten most of our things we needed to do done yesterday. As we were all “trapped” inside it felt very similar to covid once again. Whether it was making up our own games or playing actual games like among us and minecraft the whole team made sure to make the most of our time inside and spend it together. Days like this can really bring the team together. Although everyone would much rather be out biking, the time that we spend indoors and in less than ideal situations really brings us a lot closer together as friends and as teammates. As the aqi was not looking up for tomorrow everyone went to bed slightly later, slightly hoping we would be able to ride tomorrow, but also knowing that most likely we would be able to sleep in.
