In which Catherine tries to kill me. 😜 The first part of the ride is a long steady climb up North Coast Ridge Rd. with gorgeous views of the ocean on one side and the mountain range on the other. It gets rockier and chunkier the higher you go. On the way back, we took a 20-25+% singletrack trail back down to Hwy 1. The steepness wasn’t the issue as much as how loose and chunky it was. Many parts of it were really overgrown too leading to a lot of non-consensual touching. A couple parts I could hear the hum of bees all around us. Luckily no stings but I did get bugs taking bites out of me. Somehow I managed to get splinters and pokies inside my bibs even though I didn’t sit down or crash. I nearly crashed a few times and I had to bail off the trail because I couldn’t stop. On one steep section of descent, I couldn’t slow down anymore and I was catching Catherine. That was the scariest moment when I thought I was going to rear-end her. Fortunately the trail leveled out in time. The plan was to do a sunset ride at Andrew Molera State Park but we decided to get dinner at Big Sur Smokehouse instead.