A spicy morning. Where to begin? Probably at the beginning? Anthony wanted to do an FTP test on OLH. Hong said he was going to pace him up. I decided to start early and let them catch me and Natalie was going to start even earlier. This morning I woke up too early, went back to sleep, and then didn't want to wake up when my alarm went off. But I sort of have a system. My clock radio doesn't really get good reception and I've always just tuned into WiLD 94.9 and the JV Show. Even before JV passed away, the show was getting dumb, and now even more so. Usually they'll start talking about something that irritates me enough that I have to get up and shut them up. I really thought about saying I wasn't going but the JV Show got me out of bed. I was a little late though. I rushed over to the base of OLH thinking everyone was going to be ahead of me. When I got to the base, Hong was waiting. Apparently Anthony hadn't arrived yet. Since Hong was on his e-bike, I set off to let them catch me. I never quite figured out my pacing. Because I was late, I was already rushing and probably pushing too hard. Maybe halfway up, Hong passed me but Anthony wasn't with him. I asked Hong, why he wasn't pacing Anthony up and he replied because he was too slow. :) More like Hong couldn't ride slow enough given the weight of his e-bike? Between 2/3-2/4 of the way up Anthony passed me. And just after Upenuf loops back to OLH, Austin passed me. He gave me some motivation and I bumped up my effort to chase him. I wasn't quite able to match him but I did go faster. We all made it to the top relatively close to each other with Alex arriving just after me (with some suspect banana slug all over her front tire, fork, and brakes). I guess we all paced it pretty well. It was wet along Skyline and the start of the 84 descent. I was ahead the whole descent and actually just made the light at the traffic control near the bottom. I considered stopping so I could wait with the group but decided to wait at the bottom. Apparently I missed some car drama which is ironic because I was thinking on the way down, how the morning is the best time to descend Hwy 84 because I've gotten so luck with the lack of cars getting in my way. For the group, some lady and a truck buzzed them really closely on the descent just before the stop light where they all ended up waiting. They tried to talk to her but she ignored them. I'm not a fan of Woodside Rd. into downtown Woodside. There's a lot of traffic and no shoulder and entitled drivers who don't know how to drive. But we escaped all that alive and went to Kite Hill to check out the wildflowers. In the neighborhood we encounter garbage trucks picking up trash again. I now suspect that it's Natalie that's the problem. Every time we ride with her it's garbage day. There weren't any new wildflowers blooming but Natalie did become just as overcome by the beauty of them as before. I was hoping maybe some new flowers would've sprouted from her tears last week.