Surveying the pollution

Following the cancellation of the Donner Lake Triathlon this week, I decided to head up to the mountains anyways to take advantage of a weekend on the left coast.  While up there, I went on a long 3 hour mountain bike ride.  I was tired and sweaty and my clothes smelled vaguely of a campfire from all the haze in the air.  But I couldn't sense any ill effects from the smoke other than a dry throat.  My would-be teammates and I were all a bit frustrated with not being able to compete and we couldn't help but question the race organizers' decision to call-off the race.  What should the criteria be?  What level of smoke would have been OK?  Should they have let it go on and let competitors race at their own risk?  On the one hand, the organizers are "not the boss of me" (I don't want to be told when it's OK to race).  But on the other hand, they definitely are "the boss of me" (they're the ones putting on the race).

Here's a very dim picture of the view above Donner Lake...

Somewhat similar to a picture we took last year from the same spot...

Obviously a bit different from last year to this year.  

The question of competing in bad air quality brings to mind the predicament of thousands of athletes heading to Beijing next month for the Olympics.  An unscientific report from a BBC correspondent showed similar air quality measurements in Beijing to what was seen near Donner Lake.  I'm guessing there won't be any cancellations happening there...