02.08.2017
Vita writing:
We woke up at 6:30am. For breakfast we had an infinitely sweet muffins that we had obtained in warehouse store the previous day (is everything really so sweet in America or is it just us… brrrrr), we had a cup of fresh yesterday’s coffee, we collected all our countless stuff left them under the supervision of Gleb. We took a subway ride to the Civic center, then took the bus Number 30 North. It turned out that you need to register the Clipper cards twice – on entry and on exit for this ride. I probably did not do it right and some additional money was pulled away. It’s good that kids were clever, they made it all right for their Clipper cards.
We went to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was foggy, thick fog all around the bridge. We were trying to see it and take pictures of the foggy bridge. We took a trail uphill. The fog did not vanish, but we were happy about the view. For a short moment even the bridge’s contours could be seen following by cheerios sounds. We went down the hill and over the mighty bridge. Wind blew in the ears and it was strong. Overall views all around were fabulous.
We started to go back to the center of San Francisco by foot. We were tired and happy. We stopped by the Dome — the beautiful art temple, built in the 20th century. We sat drained into deep philosophical reflections of life. Philosophically clever turtles swam in the pond.
Let’s go to the Super Duper burgers. And we did have real burgers. I usually do not eat such things in Latvia. Then Daumants introduced everyone with his drink of Root Beer. That got all four of our family.
Drivers went to get the cars, but we’re still wandering along ways of San Francisco. We took the trolleybus number 22 to get closer to the subway. In our way we enjoyed beautiful neighbourhoods with beautiful private houses. Wonderful flowers, roses at home gardens etc. Architecture, unusual facades and beautiful windows. Fabulous … Huge lavender shrubs that when touched by hand were smearing some sort of fabulous oil. For some time after that I still smelled my hand to enjoy the nice scent. We went to the City Hall, Opera and many other interesting places.
When we arrived at the motel, we were waiting for drivers for quite a long time. We sat on the cold floor to chill out somehow and we continued to wait for our drivers. Finally, the cars were there and we started to fill them up and we are on our way.
At first we can not find were the shopping center is located, it was dark already. After a huge shopping at the Walmart, people finally start using our walkie talkies. Now it is so much easier. Karlis ahead of the team 3 is well oriented and we are happy to get to the motel. But oh, there are cockroaches in a room. Good night. The feet are heated, the nose is burning from sun and the tiredness is huge.
Jānis, Laura, Agnese comment:
The little adventure named car rental was as exciting as tiring and long. Everything started with a long ride (but in comparison – not so long) by metro (BART) during which we had several discussions about some american choices of accessories – that is Laura does not like rings that some choose to put in their noses. After the metro trip a short distance from from the station an employee from the car rental company Enterprise picked us up and drove us to the car rental. During this trip we received a free story about the Babel tower.
The choice in the car rental was very vast and impressive. For example, there was a car available with completely used tyres, with which even the smallest rain would create a feeling of being in an aquapark. One of the cars available could not be locked, which, of course, dismisses all worries about the things inside. However, at the end, we received cars without features mentioned above and a couple of the cars where even better than what we paid for, although I must admit that the reason for it could be that the car rental company ran out of cars. Daumants received an grey Hyundai Sonata, Imants received an white Jeep, Juris got a black Nissan Altima, Kristaps a red Hyundai Elantra, Ilgonis received a dark gray Chrysler and Salvis received a beautiful, dark Dodge Charger. After all six teams received their cars we where ready to go.
It turned out that each car could only have two drivers, which displeased us, because two drivers where going to join us in Los Angeles. After we explained to the employee of the car rental company that this was a pretty big problem, we where allowed to choose three drivers for a couple of cars. At this point we heavily felt the absence of Austra and Loreta, because several teams had to be reorganized.