California Smokin'

For anyone who's been watching the news, California has been burning to the ground. Something upwards of 200 wildfires started by lightning all over the state. Unfortunately the winds have been carrying all of the smoke over to Reno! I've been wanting to post about the smoke but I've had to wait quite some time before it has cleared up enough to get a good comparision picture.

The above are pictures taken from the parking lot of my favorite mountain biking trail from my cell phone. Click on them and look at the full sized versions to get the full effect. I think it's quite odd that all these fires started literally days after California passed their same sex marriage law....not that it has anything to do with it :)

Well, anyway, both days these pictures were taken I was going out on my bike which I have grown to love recently. I learned a valuable lesson the day that first picture was taken. When the sky looks like that, you really shouldn't go mountain biking! About half way through the ride I got this terrible headache and both me and my buddy riding felt light headed and like we just could not catch our breath as we tried resting. We're I smarter I probably would have called it quits right there as all I could think about was how I needed oxygen, but I figured we were about halfway anyway so what was the difference in riding back to the start in one direction or the other. Luckily we were able to finish the trail without me passing out (which I felt coming a few times I thought).

The sky literally looked like this for weeks. I was able to escape for a brief week up to the fresh air of BC, Canada, but then came right back to it. Luckily we have had some brief but heaven-sent rain twice now, which cleared it enough for the second picture. But we're not out of the woods yet. Thank heavens we live in a time and country where we have the resources and firefighters of such skill and ability able to battle such blazes. We're it not for all their hard work this post could have been about a lot more than smoke that came over here.