Just maybe what clouded my decisions appeared as plain as the nose on my face, which, by the way, sucked in the smoky haze as if nothing hung in the air other than my anticipation for a late summer ride in the Oregon Cascades.
Oh sure, visibility yesterday made me long for a fog horn on my Santa Fe. That air turned my stomach. By evening the ash falling left a hint of winter flurries despite the steamy temps.
But this morning?
Just a little haze in comparison. Hey, I could see the sun. It cast shadows everywhere, albeit soft orange shadows. No hesitation as I say at the end of every Hey, Just Ride column: Time to ride.
So I did. I rode. My Golden Lab Summer and I tooled around for two hours.
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t feel horrible from smoke after the ride. The knot in my stomach and uneasy feeling came when I looked at Summer, who didn’t act like her puppy-ish self when we finished.
She just kinda laid around, not really interested in anything other than some more water than usual. An after dinner walk? To the end of the campsite driveway, taking care of business, then back to the mat.
I let her hang with Debbie the next afternoon when I rode under clearer skies that slowly turned to a dingy gray as the evening fell and the wind changed direction.
Finally it hit me. The last few miles back to camp I slowed to a slog, as if I rode through quick sand.
When I got back, I sat (collapsed?) into my camp chair as if I just did a five-hour marathon. Debbie kept asking if I was OK. That let me know that, no, I wasn’t.
I checked the weather.com app. The air quality had been around 100 earlier that day. Now it sat at 207.
The next morning, we woke to more fog horn conditions. Air quality 257. That’s it, time to leave, not ride.
I headed to higher ground. Air quality 54. Summer charged back to the front again. All was well. Until, well, the wind turned …
Which brings us to this week’s question: When do you scrap a ride because of air quality? Do you check the air quality index?
If it’s hazy enough to noticeably impact visibility, then I scrap rides. It doesn’t happen too often, but this summer winds have occasionally pushed Canadian wildfire smoke into my area, and after doing one ride in it, I’m happier to sit a ride out than repeat the experience
Definitely check the aqi in Washington state these days. My personal threshold is the upper orange range. But I think I violated that 2x this summer. Sometimes you just gotta go.
This is the first year that I can remember where air quality has directly impacted me. Earlier this summer I went for a run on a bad air day. After that run I had some bronchial irritation that lasted for a few weeks. About 4 weeks ago, I got a head cold (not Covid) and since then the bronchial irritation has returned and worsened. I’m still trying to fully recover from that. I can’t prove anything, but I think the poor air quality and this post-head cold bronchial irritation are related. I’m much more aware of the impact of bad air quality than I was previously and will now cancel a ride or other outdoor activity as a result.