Trip - Day 1

I was going to write something thoughful about why I'm doing the trip today, I guess that'll be tomorrow or something.

Let's cut to chase and ignore the beginning of the ride which was uneventful. You have the normal thoughts of "should I just go home, it's just an hour away" type of ideas.

Washington was easy. I entered Oregon, got some gas, and headed east on I-84 basically routing to Boise.

This was all nice -- the scenery was pretty and I had my tunes piped into my helmet.

Then I started to gain some altitude. It started off as something that looked like a ground-fog. Until something hit my face shield.

Snow.

It was the snow equivalent of a drizzle. The temperature got down to 41F which was low enough to worry about bridges freezing, though thankfully nothing got worse than a wet sheen.

Heading down the other side of the mountain I got an enthusiastic thumbs-up waved out the window of a big rig.

I stopped at a rest stop to cool off my brain.

Someone I was riding alongside of stopped as well. He noted that it would be better from here.

Remounting Matilda I journeyed on.There was a sign "constructio: 2 miles."The road constricted to one lane bounded by jersey barriers on either side. We started to climb again.

The snow started up again as well. This time a legit snow.

My face shield had to be wiped every three seconds to brush off the accumulation so I could see unimpeded by the opaque snow. The windshield had at least 1/2" on is as well -- thankfully I look over the windshield.

I couldn't pull over since I didn't have a real shoulder I felt safe on. I couldn't turn around. I was on a single-lane highway with a 50mph speed limit. I was leaving a visible tire dent in the snow behind me in the accumulated slush.

This was by far the most sketchy situation I've been in thus far. Even Usal Road wasn't this bad.

I passed the rig again.

Another thumbs up.