It was nice to be lead on an adventure for a change. Emily had this idea for a ride that strings together all her favorite dirt in San Francisco. The route she sent me had so many waypoints, my computer was choking when I tried to look at it. :) On paper, it was supposed to be warm today but in reality it was cold for much of the ride. It was overcast and windy, and especially cold at lunch. It wasn't until we got to Mclaren Park, further south, that the skies were blue and sunny. Very glad I brought all my layers although I probably should've taken some stuff off sooner. We made a stop at Arsicault for a pastry before hitting the Presidio dirt. Pretty much when we entered, we encountered an unleashed dog that seemed friendly at first but then started barking at me. I think it wanted me to chase it? It was also running away from its owner so the dog just kept circling us so we couldn't go anywhere. Another person walked up and the dog calmed down. The owner asked them to grab the collar but they didn't and the cycle started all over again. Eventually we got going again. There was so much new dirt and a lot of fun trails at Sutro, Laguna Honda and Mclaren. Some new stuff in the Presidio and the park too. A lot of punchy climbs and technical bits that I was pretty happy I was able to clear. There was a rocky section that went through a gap between some rocks at Sutro that I managed to ride through but I ended up scraping my right shoulder on the rock as the rocky ground bumped me off course a bit. I think I may have also hit my camera because the lens hood got smushed so it's not square like my other lens. They're matching now. Also early on we ended up going through a very overgrown trail of blackberries. I got hit with some thorns and my right hand was throbbing for a while. It turns out I had a couple tiny thorns stuck in my hidden under my glove. It was hard to get photos with all the singletrack and trying to navigate too. The singletrack was super fun but with all the growth there was nowhere to pull over out of the way. But I still managed to take more photos than I thought. As we were finishing up in Golden Gate Park, we came across an Annie's hot dog stand. Perfect timing as it was lunch. Emily got tacos from Underdogs Tres. It was so cold and windy there that I got a not very hot chocolate from Tartine to warm up. Also got some crispy potatoes which were quite hot and hit the spot. We had planned to also stop at Cuppa before hitting up Mclaren for a snack. I got some Spam Musubi but I wasn't actually hungry. I don't know if it was that or that they weren't that great because I really didn't feel like eating them. I'm just hoping I didn't get any poison oak because there was WAY too much non-consensual touching from all the overgrown vegetation. Added Emily Bei Cheng's photos at the end.