Out on the line
When I woke up this morning, it was so bright and sunny that I could almost forget the horrible weather that made yesterday so much fun. So, after pumping out the basement, I draped myself with several layers of wool (and cotton) and dragged the Trek out for quick run out to Gresham and back.
The “quick” part of the trip managed to somehow get lost, most likely because of a combination of the wrong kind of snow on the line (just enough ice under the newfallen snow to make the bicycle feel like riding an intoxicated snail, so down I went to 52:24 and a much more leisurely 12kph,) yet another flat thanks to the rapidly disintegrating Bontrager Race Lite tires I purchased a mere 1200km ago, and the appearance of a new seasonal lake in east Portland (which required a few detours to ride around):
The Springwater trail goes underwater at Lents Junction
And so does Foster Rd
And this gentle stream is the reason why
The flooding was pretty amazing, though after a while the pictures of the raging torrent that used to be Johnson Creek get somewhat repetitive (I was carrying my 50mm Super-Tak lens, so the telephoto view looks pretty much the same from Sellwood over to Gresham.) You’ll have to take my word (and the NWS weather emergency warnings, and the various states of emergency that were declared over the northern end of the Willamette valley last night and this morning) that there was a lot of excess water trying to get down to the Pacific Ocean today.