For the last three weeks, Boise has been draped in a temperature inversion. A blanket of frosty, stagnant air has filled the valley between the foothills and the Owyhees, and hasn't moved. The temperature, once a strong pulse from frigid nighttime lows, to balmy daytime highs -- flat-lined in the thirties. Air quality took a nosedive. The riding was fine in the same way gas station coffee is fine: rather tiresome, and never excellent, but consistent and tolerable. And besides, dry and calm and cold was better than wet and fierce and nasty. And besides, with enough pedal strokes, one could climb a ridge or two, and leave the fog behind, and breath the cleaner air, and feel the full strength of the sun's rays.
But today the winds returned! Like a blast from an atmospheric pressure washer, that inversion was chopped up, churned about, and blown out of here! Good riddance, mucky air. Hello dramatic Boise bluster!
I feel sorry for all those skiers in the area -- the hills are still bone dry, but DANG does that make for some stellar late-December mountain biking.
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