Thank you to Natalie Telis for suggesting, last month, doing a birthday ride today (since she was going to be out of town for my birthday). And I'm glad Emily and Robin were able to join too. First time doing Flow Trail for both of them. I wasn't sure how I'd feel as I'm recovering from a cold but the climb up felt pretty good. As long as I kept it below red line, I was good. I discovered later on the steep punchy stuff on the way to Flow Trail, a) red line is lower, and b) it feels way worse. We started off with some pretty singletrack as warm up and shortly after starting it we came around the corner to find two fawns on the trail and their mom off in the bushes. Emily let out the loudest (and longest), "AWWWWWW!!!!" To those babies it probably sounded like a war cry and probably scared them so much they ended up in Los Gatos! :) I haven't been back to Demo since I was there with Natalie for her birthday. The trails were more blown out and dusty for sure but Natalie was keeping up send-sationally through the tech. Cool to see her improvement - getting more comfortable and faster. She even did the rooty drop on Flow that she walked last time. I was definitely sending it harder and having more fun on Flow this time. When it was time to make the climb back out, my legs were cooked. It was quite warm and we all ran out of water by the time we got to the parking lot. Fortunately there were a couple guys there that were done and gave us the rest of their water. Life savers! Half way up the climb back to the top, I was getting hungry again. I ate quite a lot today so I was surprised by that. I had no more food and my legs basically shut down so I just dragged the rest of the way. The descent back down through the Forest of Nisene Marks is so nice. Just a great way to end a ride and a great ride overall. I had planned on doing some new singletrack at the end but I didn't expect it to be quite as late as it was. Also I really wanted to get food.