In the Air Tonight

“I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord

And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord

Can you feel ir coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord?”

- Phil Collins

AQI. For those reading this in the PNW, we’re all too familiar with the term. For those that aren’t from here, the reference is to the Air Quality Index. An AQI of 0 would basically be perfect. Anything below 50 is not bad, and our AQI in Portland and the ‘Couv is usually in the 20’s. That’s when it’s not forest fire season. Two years ago, with a couple fires burning unusually close to Portland, we actually had the worst air quality on the PLANET, with an AQI over 500. The forest fire season often goes through September and into October. Such is the case this year. For what it’s worth, it didn’t get “world-worst” bad here today, but it certainly wasn’t ideal conditions to ride 123 miles. For most of the day, the index was around 119. I wanted to keep going until my mileage exceeded the index. At one point, it got up to 159. Thankfully, it came down because that probably couldn’t have happened on an e-bike, much less a human-powered one. The fire causing all this heartache is to the south of us now, and I’m heading the other direction. I should be on the west side of the Cascades tomorrow morning, so hopefully it’s better over there. We shall see. Sadly, even though I was on the bike for almost 7 hours today, I only took 2 pictures. With all the smoke, there was absolutely nothing to see more than a couple hundred yards in either direction. Beautiful views of the Cascades will have to be imagined. I’m sure you can Google up some pictures from less visually challenging days.

The other reality about Oregon’s high desert is that the temperature fluctuates a lot over the course of a day - usually within a more human range than Nevada or the Mojave Desert in SoCal. There, The “lows” got to 90 and the highs were in the 110’s. Up here, the lows are in the 50’s and the highs are in the 80’s. It can make for a pretty cold start to the day, particularly since I just used the forecast highs to pack and accordingly, did not bring a jacket.

The best part about the day, however, was that the road closure and subsequent detour, provided me the perfect opportunity to invite ourselves to our friends, Mark (aka Bitter Ginger or Badder Baker) and Michele’s (Better Baker) beautiful home outside of Bend. When I grow up, I want to be like them. What a life. They shuttle between a home in Vancouver and their place here in Central Oregon - although I don’t know why they ever go back to the ‘Couv. They live a life of leisure that I definitely envy - and they’re younger than we are. Mark figured out retirement was more fun than working a couple years ago and they are maxing it out. I hope Kelly and I can be as good at it.

Two more days to go.

That’s what the sun looks like with an AQI of 119 at 8:30 in the morning.

Oregon is #47, but I forgot about the State of Jefferson. I’ve now done 48 of 49!

Strava freaked out on me again today. It started the clock, but not the meter! It only showed 83 miles. Lame. Redundancy is key!