Final day in San Francisco
Today was the first of many goodbyes. Most people were going to leave on the 21st, however Greta was leaving on the 20th. She wanted to see her sister before she moved into UVA and leaving on the 21st would have been too late. So, instead she had a 6am flight. So she stayed up with Charles, who then drove her to the airport. Me and Sarah also woke up in the middle of the night to say our goodbyes.
And then there were seven.
I awoke again at 9am and saw Ramona was also awake. So we decided to make the most of it and pack the car ONE LAST TIME.
For context, we booked a round trip car rental and me and Ramona were going to drive the car back to Boston. This is in contrast to last year’s team who booked a one way rental, so they had to deal with the logistics of packing up and sending the bikes and camping gear back across the country. Since we were bringing the car back, post trip logistics were a lot easier.
Packing the car for our upcoming road trip was not much different than usual. We’ve done this for 75 days, so we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We consolidated some of our boxes, threw a bunch of stuff out and changed the organization of the car to make grabbing food items easier. With most people’s personal belongings out of the car, we also managed to fit 2 bikes in the car in addition to the 3 bikes on the rack. We managed to finish most of the packing by the early afternoon, so we had a lot of free time.
We decided to go out and explore San Francisco! By we I should say me, Sarah, Ramona, Tian, Ishaq and Charles. At some point, me and Sarah were unintentionally split up from the rest of the group. So we decided to go to Ghiradelli Square to get some shakes and chocolate. The rest of them went to Japantown after seeing the Painted Ladies. Then me and Sarah met up with the rest of the team in Japantown where we had Thai food for dinner. This was the team’s Final Supper (sadness).
We then went into the mall and after failing to find a bakery, we settled for crepe shop, where me and Sarah had some delicious fruit crepes. It was getting late, so we decided to head back, but we were in the technopolis that is San Francisco, so what better way to get home than to call some autonomous taxis! The six of us split up and got into our cars. It was quite the futuristic experience.
Everyone spent their last night here doing their own thing. We tried to get to bed early, because Ramona was going to wake everyone up early.
So that concludes the very last, final Spokes blog…
or does it?
Stay tuned for our post-Spokes blog series which will follow me and Ramona on our 10-day road trip back across the country, featuring Charles for the first two episodes!
MIT Spokes 2025 
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