From many visits to Fort Ord, I've distilled all my experience down to this route that's just my favorite singletrack - maximum flow (trails). But today was not maximum flow. The trails were the sandiest I've ever seen them. Some trails were pretty badly rutted and beat up too. And on top of all that, there was an organized 50K trail run/race happening today. Luckily we really only ran into runners on the trail mainly on Trail 49. Despite all that, I still had tons of fun. I was a bit more cautious in the turns because of the sand and runners but I didn't really have to go much slower and I feel way more comfortable in the tech even with the trail conditions. I've gone to Fort Ord for my birthday in the past and had considered it this year but ended up doing something else. So this is sort of a makeup birthday ride. Ant, Zoe, and I were on MTBs and I felt a little bad for Irene, Suzanne, and Peter being on gravel bikes with the trails in the condition that they were. Irene fell a couple times because of the sand and Suzanne just finished telling me how fun one of the trails were when she went down on a patch of sand. Luckily these were all low speed, low impact, falls. I followed Ant down one trail and he made it look far more difficult and wild than it was. I was just calmly riding behind him wondering what was going on.🤣 I think he was doing some intentional skidding into turns but they didn't look intentional. I was doing no skidding. 🫣 They completely redid Trail 30 out of the parking lot. Reconfigured it and accounted for the flow of water so it drains properly now without destroying the trail. At least that's what I assume they've done. The following trail, Trail 25 was also resurfaced. I thought maybe they'd all be redone and I was a little wary. The trails were rounded, I'm assuming to help with water running off of them. That meant they were loose over hardpack trails that were often off-camber. I think I preferred the trails the way they were, even though they were so sandy today. Right before we started Trail 25, Peter got his chain stuck between his cassette and the spokes. After a bit of fiddling and experimenting, I helped him adjust his limit screws. I thought we were going to find a new place to have lunch but we ended up going to El Chilacatazo again. It was still good but actually much better because there was parking and the place was pretty empty vs. being completely full last time.