We were supposed to be in Mexico City right now. Eating tamales. Climbing pyramids. Pretending not to be winded while climbing pyramids after eating tamales. Instead, I’m standing in my bedroom, staring at a suitcase that’s both overstuffed and missing at least three important things—probably pants.
The phone rang yesterday. One of those louder than normal calls you know, even before you answer, is going to change things.
My mom’s condition had shifted based on the new pain plan. The hospice nurse said she now needs 24-hour care. They’ve increased her dosage for the fentanyl patch. There’s a tincture of hydromorphone for breakthrough pain. Her Stage IV lung cancer has colonized her liver and is probably now in her brain. It’s no longer a question of if, or even when. It’s soon.
I canceled everything. Michelle and I had already called off our spring trip, sensing the turn. But I’m flying out first—she’s staying a few days longer with her mom, keeping a promise, before joining me in Chicago.
I’ll be walking into my mom’s apartment tomorrow. Not the home I grew up in—we moved too often for any one place to earn that title—but the place she settled into a few years ago after her last husband passed. It’s small. Cramped. The kind of place where the kitchen faucet dibble takes ten minutes to warm up and the bathroom wallpaper is more textured than anything on the walls at MoMA.
There’s no cat. No dog. Just a tomcat that keeps trying to sneak in like it owns the place. My mom’s not a fan. She’s been hissing back at him, which seems oddly effective.
Five days ago, the care team removed her cigarettes. My mom has smoked since she was 13. But you can’t light up next to an oxygen tank—not unless you want to go out in a very literal blaze of glory. She didn’t protest a ton; simply pretended it was what she wanted and turned the TV up louder.
She watches reruns now. Mostly Leave It to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show. There’s something weirdly comforting about those black-and-white slices of Americana for her, especially when everything else feels fragile and uncertain. In Mayberry, the biggest problem is who accidentally put the fishing pole in the washing machine. Here, it’s who last gave her meds and whether she’s had enough water today.
Hospice at home is a beautiful contradiction. You’re surrounded by familiar things, but also constant reminders that nothing is the same. Pill bottles. Diaper packs. “Comfort kits.” A clipboard by the microwave tracking when the last dose was given. The shadows grow longer, and the days feel both too long and too short.
And still, I find myself searching for joy in all of it.
The last time I was there, she asked for meatloaf. With mashed potatoes and green beans. A meal from a different decade, prepared in a tiny kitchen with a faucet that could’ve qualified as a slow-burn endurance test. I couldn’t eat a bite of it myself (gluten), but I made it anyway—because she wanted it, and because it reminded her of being a little girl. Her mom used to make it. She said the smell brought her back to a time when the world made more sense. And then she cleaned her plate and asked for seconds. That moment—her, closing her eyes and smiling with pure, childlike satisfaction—that’s what I’m carrying with me on this trip.
I leave tomorrow.
I’ll wedge myself into a too-small seat, navigate O’Hare like it’s an obstacle course, and then step into a version of my life where everything else is paused. The gravel bike research, the training plans, the overthinking about whether titanium is too much bike—all of it can wait. I may have packed one of my cycling gloves, for reasons unknown, but there’s no riding in this next chapter.
There is, however, purpose. And grief. And unexpected comedy.
Like the fact that she still tries to argue with rerun characters out loud. Or the time she looked at the hospice nurse and said, “Don’t sugarcoat it, girlfriend—I’m on my way out.” Then turned to me and asked if I’d remembered to bring her peach juice.
There’s a kind of mystery to this part of life. Not in a grand, philosophical way, but in the small, daily moments that reveal themselves like clues. You start out thinking you’re just going home, and you end up rediscovering who someone was in the details: the way they watch old shows, the smell of the meatloaf, the flicker of their humor—potentially, our shared humor—even through fatigue.
This isn’t the ride I had planned, but it’s the one I’m taking. Quiet, slow, and filled with reminders that presence matters more than perfection. That love and family looks like mashed potatoes and last-minute flights. That sometimes the bravest thing you can do is sit beside someone holding her hand and just be there.
Tomorrow, I go.
No idea what the week will hold. But I’ll keep my eyes open for the clues. I’ll look for the moments worth remembering. And I’ll keep showing up, one rerun, one conversation, one breath at a time.
Things I didn’t expect to write about
This isn’t the story I thought I’d be telling right now. I thought I’d be writing about tire widths and tubeless setups, not hospital beds and hydromorphone. But this—this—is part of the ride too. Not the kind you train for, but the kind that shapes you just the same.
Wild Spokes was always going to be about more than a cross-country bike ride. It’s about grief, grit, reinvention, and what happens when you stop waiting for life to settle down before you do the thing that scares you. Sometimes that thing is cycling across America. Sometimes it’s flying home with a suitcase full of mismatched clothes and showing up to say goodbye.
The big ride will still happen. The bike will still get built. But for now, I’m pedaling through this stretch—slow, quiet, steady—and letting the road lead where it needs to.
Thanks for riding with me.