Rain and Rides

Half way through the month and Philadelphia has taken a strong lead in the rainfall totals.  Nobody could have predicted the city would be well on the way towards the ten inch mark in one month.  The good news is we are very early into this rainfall tracking, and I would bet willing to be almost anything that one of the other cities passes Philadelphia within a short amount of time.  The other thing that should start to take shape, if it hasn't already, is the truth that cities in the northwest U.S. really don't see a lot of rain.  That's the reason I picked Portland.


I was able to get out riding twice in the past two weekends.  The first came at Jim Thorpe which was a nice change of pace.  The thought behind that ride was to get away from the 90 degree temperatures that week.  If I go up again I would probably do the whole ride which I think is about 50 miles.  Add in a mostly gravel trail and it makes for a more difficult ride.  There also isn't a place to stop and walk around unless you want to sit by the river.  However the town is charming enough to allow for a quick walk through.  It will be on my radar in the future especially towards fall.


Last week I went for a shorter ride.  I'm trying to experience as many areas as I can and the only thing I can do is try them out.  This time it was in the Blue Mountains.  You can only experience so much on a bike.  There wasn't a ton to look at outside of dense woods and the speed you go at makes looking into the greenery almost nauseating.  What I do like though is that there are so many things revolving around nature to do that people have no idea exist.  It's fun to explore.  As much as I enjoy the outdoors there are some things that throw me.  About half way into the ride I started to hear a high pitched noise.  I didn't think much of it because even on a windless day the breeze as you ride makes noise in your ears.  This noise was different though.  I looked back to my rear tire a few times to see if the spinning was the culprit of the noise.  Then I slowed down thinking the noise would change if it was coming from my bike.  I almost came close to asking the few other riders I saw if they heard it to just to be sure it wasn't me.  Eventually I decided I had to stop riding.

This is what I heard.  Feel free to up your volume.




Now outside of a few birds chirping there is nothing that should make noise out here.  There are no roads close by or rivers or streams.  Everything is calm except for that sound.  Even listening to it again I get a vision of tires spinning.  It's not.  It hit me soon that the paper that morning had an article on the front about people now seeing the cicadas.  That had to be it.

Half of the ride ended up being a whistling version of that bizarre sound.  It wasn't that bad but it never changes.  Only at some point the bugs weren't around anymore and the normal wooded sounds came back.  It was very odd.

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No tropical activity at this point.  No areas look to be in line for excessive rainfall this week.  Severe weather looks to be limited.  It's hot where it is normally hot.  Fire season is kicking in like it does every year.  It's an unfortunate byproduct of living in the picturesque areas of the west but something that has to be dealt with every year.  Let's remember most of these areas border on a desert type climate.

Our area should finally be able to dry out from the heavy amount of rain we received.  Looking like a nice week.