Riding Through What Remains
Words and Photos by California Travis
It’s been one month since that morning but it feels like so much longer, and the ruins look like they’ve been rusting in the elements for years. On November 8th around 7:30am I started a group text about a Thanksgiving Day ride and by 8am it had turned into people sharing photos of a smoke plume southeast of Chico that looked rather ominous. I took my own photos on my ride to work at PAUL Comp, because with half the sky and the rising sun being blocked by thick black smoke, the effect was very dramatic. Living in Norcal, we’ve gotten pretty used to fires, so didn’t think too much of it beyond how cold and dark it was with the sun blocked out most of the morning. When our accountant showed up to work from Paradise looking frazzled saying there was an evacuation order, things started getting very intense very fast. It hadn’t rained at all since spring and the area was so dry we had to use a cement drill to put stakes in the ground for our cyclocross race the week before. With high winds, the fire was spreading extremely fast. I texted my mother and stepdad who lived in Paradise to check on them. They had headed down the hill to Chico for work and were halfway down the hill when they got the evacuation order, so by then, it was too late to turn around and grab any valuables or photo albums.
