Why I Did Not Go Running This Morning

Last night a fairly big windstorm came through the Vancouver/Portland metro area. I live a little northeast of Vancouver and we got hit pretty good. But luckily there was only minimal damage to our place.

A huge pine tree branch came crashing into one of the dog runs and crushed one of the fence panels. I have one extra panel in the shed so I can replace it easy enough, but I might have to buy a couple bent brackets. Other than that, another branch whammed into the side panel of my truck-bike carrier. It dented it slightly … but heck, it’s a beater truck so meh.

A tree came down across the street … and friend emailed to let me know that 20 trees were down on his property, one smashing through his shed.

At about 8pm last night some guy was knocking on the door. He had walked in the dark trying to find someone to buy gas from. He and his wife were in an area that was in danger of having trees fall on their place and they wanted to get into town to wait out the windstorm. But they were out of gas. The dude was about 70+ years old. So I grabbed whatever gas I had for my mower – I think about 3 gallons worth, and drove him out to his place, filled his tank, got his wife and their pets in the car and made sure they got to where they were going safely. He tried giving me $ … but like, yeah, I’m gonna take advantage of a scary situation? Uh uh.

By the time I went to bed the windstorm had calmed.

This morning I had the slightest urge to go running, then remembered the windstorm. The last time I ran after a windstorm I near fell – so I decided to forgo the run. (In the mornings I sometimes run near my work place. We have a shower at work so I’ve been taking advantage of early morning runs.) I start at 6:30am so it’s also dark – and while I have a head lamp, it’s still kinda hard to see at time.)

Anyway, during a break about an hour ago I took a walk where I would have been running. Navigating around branches and stuff would have been difficult!

Below are some photos I took. I hope you all have a great day and weekend!


(This is what the path looked like for over most of the mile and a half circular route.)




(Me standing by a fallen tree near my run spot.)




(Same tree – it was uprooted.)




(Another tree that fell – someone had already been by to saw the branches off.)