Is there ANYONE riding on the West Coast today?
 

Mexico to Canada, the entire West Coast air quality just sucks. Heck, even up into British Columbia, and down into Baja California. Many people have lost their homes, over 40,000 have been evacuated in Oregon alone. Here in Portlandia, we're hoping for rain early next week. We've been staying indoors, the air is considered hazardous outside right now, and I know we've got it better than further down the Willamette Valley.

I've seen a couple of people walking their dogs on the MUP behind our house. Ours are going outside just to do their business. The Atelier is shut down for now until we get some clearing.

I keep telling myself that our house is far from the fires, we have air conditioning, and I can work from home, so we're pretty lucky.

Alot of the parks within a 50 mile radius have announced closures due to poor air quality. As it is Los Angeles has bad air quality and the smoke makes it hazardous. Past few nights I couldn't breathe properly at night.

I advised a few friends not to ride these but I can't force them not to. I'm staying inside these days.

Stay safe everyone.

I am supposed to go tomorrow but I will check in the morning. I can’t smell some but the sky down here in Southern California is grey looking. I didn’t ride last Sunday because it was 109 degrees at my house. The sky looks real eerie right now and the sun is orange through the haze.

Cycle UK has for today, Sept. 12th, put on their “ largest group ride day”. On the East coast I sure got out and rode. I wish you all the best out there my Friends!

PS. Miguel! Still rocking my Schwinn Madison everyday dancing with the cars to make the deliveries!

Indeed, hang in there West Coasters and I hope everyone’s home and health stays whole. The old saying “May you live in interesting times” certainly applies now and the argument that the saying is a curse rather than a blessing holds true.

my brother is in Ashland and I haven’t talked to him but I guess one major fire started about 1/2 mile from his house. I am thinking it is as you say , the whole coast. The air doesn’t seem bad when I'm out but I will see in the morning. Sunday is ride day, I had to work today.

Awesome!!! I was wondering about it recently. Glad its getting miles put into it.

i just had the cartridge bearings replace cause I wore them out on the CXP-22 wheelset I run on it. The ride is fricking awesome! Thanks to you!

again, wish you all the best out there!

I'm not... I'm hardly even taking walks, and drove twenty miles to Porterville this morning just so that I could take a fifteen minute run because the AQI was only 80 there for the moment. My wife and I just got back inside from a walk and it's raining ash on Visalia right now - we were literally putting our hands out and catching bits of twigs and goodness knows what floating down, and the nearest fire is about forty miles away. I haven't seen blue sky in more than a 45 degree radius directly overhead in three weeks.

My parents lost their lovely century old cabin in Alder Springs on the way up to Shaver Lake a few days ago in the Creek Fire.

Everything sucks right now. I have never been so depressed and I'm only 31. I am too young to feel this tired... Planning to leave California in 2021. With a recent degree in forestry and too much general knowledge of what's going on here, I am afraid to say it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, no matter what preventative measures local, state, and federal government agencies take at this point in time.

-Gregory

Gregory,

Sorry to read about all this. “ century old cabin”, that hurts!

.
...not me. We had one three day break right after the first fires kicked up in late August, and I rode all three days. But nothing since then.
I need to get out and mow the lawn, which is getting kind of long, but I'm waiting for Monday or Tuesday. It's been very tedious.

I saw a cooler front with some possible precipitation headed toward Washington and Oregon, so you might get lucky up there. All we'll get out of it is more wind.

Nope. It's really bad right now. Hunkering down at home and counting my blessings.

Literally socked in with smoke here in the sierra foothills, but the air 2/3 clears up from about 8:30pm to about 9am.

So I can still get in a jog or a ride using my 3M N95 mask and not have any symptoms (other than smelling bad when I get home).

Indoors I do pull-ups as usual, except I now do three sets instead of two.

My jogging ends at the grocery store for food, so I avoid using the car (as usual) and thus not stink up the car.

The dry fuels aren't growing any faster these days, this just happens to be one of those years when a lot of it finally gets burnt, due to lots of lightning strikes and other fsctors.
The fires are being allowed to continue to consume forest acreage in many cases, ostensibly to eliminate the fuels but also somewhat influenced by the economic value of lumber harvesting.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...5e9ecbdc_b.jpg

The western U.S. currently has the worst air quality in the world.

I'm sorry for your family's loss. It looks like the Pine Ridge & Adler Springs area was hit the hardest. I was riding in the Prather area last Saturday and couldn't figure out why so many campers, RVs and boaters were going down the hill at the start of the Labor Day weekend, even after seeing several Cal Fire trucks on their way up.

I guess we just have better conditions and proximity to tanker crews, because our local fire is tiny compared to what's happening both in LA county and up in NorCal. So the IE has had pretty much typical AQIs this whole week. And I ride early when it's better-- I think it was like AQI37 this morning, and I'm less than 15 miles from the El Dorado Fire. The wind did push in the muck from the Bobcat Fire, but we're used to LA garbage air wafting in. Peaked around AQI130 this afternoon, mostly due to particulates.

So I did my 30-ish miles this morning, probably 40-ish tomorrow.

Not me, in L.A. the air quality has been very bad, these last few days. I was in the bay area around the holiday weekend and it was worse there.....in SoCal.we haven't even reached the "real" fire season so I can't imagine how much worse it will be when the Santa Ana winds blow through...:mad:
Best, Ben

I'm living in the middle of a 90,000 acre ash-tray with no electricity except from what I generate myself, no air filtration, and most of my neighbor's houses have burned. It is kind of hard to get worked up about the smoke (and I am the type of person who hates camp-fires).

Gives me a headache.

But maybe it's all my head.

:wtf:

I rode today.

The sky was cloudy, a mix of our usual marine layer (low clouds and fog) and way up high, over the top of the marine layer, some smoke from the fires.

The air is cooled as it passes over the Pacific Ocean and being cold and dense, it hugs the ground. The warmer air inland rises up and sucks the cold, dense air in as it rises. This creates the on-shore flow. That flow pushes inland no matter what and it forces the smoke to go up high and over the top of the marine layer. The sun looked hazy and sickly yellow but the air at ground level smelled clean and smoke free.

Best news today is that Canby and Oregon city evacuation notice has been lowered. Right now rain is predicted for Tuesday, but any weather forecasts beyond 48 hours is a guesstimate. AQI is right around 400 right now.

We've hunkered down, watching TV, playing board games, checking weather, air quality, and local news often.

The AQI index registered 617 at one point today so I stayed indoors.

I rode an easy hour or so each morning this week. Planned a little longer easy for today but my 40 dollar offer for a Clunker Stumpjumper was accepted. A 45 minute drive followed by honey-dos, and maybe tomorrow I'll ride easy. Headaches? Yep--sharp pain mid day but short lived. Weird.

The Bay Area in Northern California
 

Record-Breaking Streak of Spare The Air Alerts Continues

...this was on the 7th, at 23 days. Add another 5 to that and today made 28 days in a row. Like I said, very tedious. :(

I'm gonna be another big NOPE entry on the whole riding thing as a Seattle proper denizen. Thursday was marginal throughout the day, but cleared up well around 10:00pm to midnight. The forecast of heavy smoke came true over night, and I was glad to have shut everything up. Alternating fans or my portable AC unit. HEPA air purifier as well has been run primarily in my bedroom. I finished an updated build on my needs-a-Technomic Expedition, which now sits on Soma 38mm tires and newly-swapped-back MA2 rims (formerly TB14s).

Sadly, this is no time to ride. I'd be happy riding in a downpour right now. Instead we're all cooped up again and I'm just more than a bit over all of this, honestly. I'm just a solo dude in my apartment, so apart from visiting friends, the solitude gets to a guy (and I'm pretty good at living by myself). One of my younger brothers is a firefighter for Canby and has been really busy as you can imagine. I am praying for the safety of him and every other firefighter out there, as well as for rain to come swiftly.

Seattle has been in the high 200s or 300s for air pollution depending on where you look. We're hovering around 200 right now. The cool weather feels nice, but just really really off. I am thankful for what I do have and that this older apartment building isn't a leaky bucket. I will see some friends tomorrow, even if that means subjecting my car's air filter to unfun air. Glad it has a cabin filter, that's for sure.

Since this is Bike Forums, I will post my Expedition, looking out the window forlornly. We will ride as soon as possible!

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...45bb0fd3f9.jpg

I rode out to the mailbox and back (0.7 miles round trip); wife chastised me for it :(

This is the first day it's been real bad here in the extreme NW corner of CONUS. Finally caught up to us.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6c32b9fffb.png