The Gorge Is My Gym

The chilly west wind with clouds in the western Gorge continues for one more day today before summer kicks in. We’ll see 16-18 this morning east of Hood River, picking up to 23-26 east of The Dalles in the afternoon. With these low clouds overhead, the wind in the western Gorge will be in the upper teens.

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Tomorrow looks sunny and calm, so it’s going to be a terrible day for wind sports and a great day for road biking, tanning or wakeboarding. If you’re thinking about dusting off the boat and wondering if the water’s cold, be advised that the Columbia is now 61 degrees.

The wind starts off light on Saturday, but as a system approaches the coast in the afternoon, the wind will go from nothing to upper teens to low twenties pretty quickly. Watch for the strongest wind at Stevenson in the low twenties with upper teens from Hood River to Rowena.

Tonight, as always on Thursday, it’s the Post and Pint mountain bike ride, leaving Dirty Fingers at 5:30 and returning for pints from Mitchell’s keg after a couple hours in Post. Also tonight, starting at 6pm in the Big Winds parking lot, it’s the Big Winds Big Loop party, with film highlights of this past week’s sailing, along with the awards ceremony for the Big Winds Big loop contest. Yes, there is beer at this party too, but it’s not free (although Mitchell’s isn’t either, technically, because you have to ride your bike for a couple of hours to earn it)

Moving on to tomorrow, it’s First Friday in Hood River, it’s the first day of the Rainbow Gathering at Skookum Meadows (that explains all the hitchhikers you’ve been seeing on SR-14), it’s the reopening party for the Hood River library (although the library doesn’t actually reopen until July 5th), and finally, at 5:30, there’s a tandems-only bike ride leaving 10 Speed Coffee in Hood River.

And strangely, although this is the biggest holiday weekend of the summer, I have nothing on my calendar other than the 4th of July. Help me out here, kids! What am I missing?

Have an awesome day today!

Temira

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