Talk to anyone visiting Portland, and one topic that inevitably comes up is the rain. No matter what season they’re visiting you’ll hear things like
“Does it rain the whole winter?”
“Do you still go outside?”
“Can you still bike in the rain?”
We’ve been having a very strange year. Back in the middle of October, I had to open more windows because my apartment was getting overheated. We had a high of 72F which is 10+ over average ,and dang close to the record high. Here I am at the end of the year and we’re looking at temps in the teens.
People have different feelings on the seasons in the PNW. Some wish it was summer all the time (These are usually people who wish Portland was just a cheaper California) others don’t mind the change, but have a preference of one over the others. Some people actually love the rain and much prefer the dark clouds to sunshine. More and more I’m finding, however, people are a fickle bunch who are always longing for change. It says a lot about the long, hot, dry summer we’ve had to find so many people who long for winter. Between the drought risks, lack of snow on the mountain, or just being sick of the heat people are ready for winter to arrive.
September is the BTA’s official “Bike Commute Challenge” month. They encourage companies all over the city to promote commuting via bike to work. You compete against your coworkers, in both percentage and miles ridden, along with total percentages of employees biking compared against other companies your size/industry. Last year I biked on an Univega mountain bike frame with road tires. That, combined with not the greatest gearing, lets just say I didn’t bike as much as I wanted. I’ve since traded that in for a nicer Trek road bike that’s both lighter and better geared.
Obviously, from the title, by now you’ve gathered I completed with 100% success. I feel I need to annotate this with a footnote saying my milage was off due to getting a flat tire on my way home one night and taking a bus the rest of the way. Technically this still counts as a “bike commute” but I lowered my milage that day to reflect this. That brings up the biggest lesson I learned from all this, and that’s buy nice tires. Over the course of the summer I managed to get about 6 flat tires. All these on tires less then 8 months old. I got a slightly nicer tire with some actual tread and thickness, and saw a marked decrease in flats.
These are the breaks 