Daughter and I drove to the beach and back this morning. It was raining heavily and sections of road were striped with ruts filled with standing water. At 60 mph, the car was squirrely in those parts. Good time for a lesson to her about slowing down and driving outside of the flooded ruts. Good time to decide that, on her next trip back home, new tires are going on her car. In the meantime, I'm lowering the pressure on the current tires.
Those ruts are caused by studded snow tires. I have no idea why Oregon still permits those tires for all vehicles. All of our roads, if not quite new, have those ruts and they harbor not just standing water, but also ice in winter. A state with a serious backlog of road maintenance shouldn't make it worse by allowing these tires. As far as I am concerned, studless snow tires work so well that studded tires should be strongly discouraged. A $100 tax per studded tire would do it.
Our trip to the coast was to photograph starfish for an article in the school's environmental web magazine, for which she is a photographer, illustrator, and writer. A virus has killed off most of Oregon's starfish in the last few years. We found only one isolated starfish, in tidepools where they used to be common, and it was sick. A fitting photo for the article. I'm glad we got the shot. Plan B was for her to provide an illustration of a starfish, which would have be fine too, but you always want to deliver on Plan A if you can.
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