We went to a wedding out in California recently. The ceremony took place up in the mountains. To get there, we had to drive up a switch back for several miles.

Going up was fairly easy as it was daylight and relatively quiet. The trick was driving back down.

Having driven up the switchback and experienced some of its 180 degree turns I was actually looking forward to driving back down it. And while the top speed for the road was 35 miles per hour, it was still an interesting challenge.

When my wife discovered that I was planning drive up to the wedding, she immediately banded her elderly parents from riding with me. They had to take the shuttle service instead. So, we took her sister-in-law and her sister- in-laws brother instead.

Well, the trip up was fine as we were fighting gravity. This meant that I had to accelerate out of the curves in order to get up the hill. But, going back down was different. I didn’t have to accelerate after the curves as gravity took care of that for us. All I had to do was brake before the curves.

Well, I thought that the drive back down was fine, even though were only hitting 35 mile per hour max. My wife was not impressed.

I think I have been banned from driving on switchbacks.