Internal Combustion

The city of Portland owns a racetrack sited at its northern extreme. It is something of the bane of at least one adjacent neighborhood’s existence.

I live somewhat further away, to the west. Nonetheless, today’s eight-hour motorcycle track meet already has prompted me to close all my windows—a mitigation which has done little to calm my nervous system which already reached a near-overload crisis point within the first fifteen minutes of nonstop noise.

Below is the text of an email I sent at 9:19am to Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who oversees the Parks & Recreation Bureau, which is responsible for Portland International(?) Raceway.

I might receive a response. I won’t receive any relief.

The raceway must be stopped.

Today’s all-day motorcycle track day has only just begun (it’s 9:19am) and as an actually-autistic adult with sensory processing disorder and even all the way over here in St. Johns, inside my apartment, I already can feel my nervous system creeping towards a total overload. There’s literally nothing I can do to escape. It’s untenable to expect me to have to, say, spend eight hours in ear plugs in my own damned living space.

I am literally being tortured right now.