What do you do when it's too hot?

[kelownagirl]

I rode Sunday here in SC--at 2 pm. Doubtless it was in the mid-nineties.

I didn't take enough cytomax (my little boy left one of my bottles full of something a month ago and it was too scuzzy to take with me).

The sun was broiling.

I'm dumb enough to do it again.

I am busy with family meal preparations, house cleaning, etc in the evenings.

and by the time it cools off significantly, it's bascially dark.

I do that a lot too. And often I forget to wear sunscreen....

[pardes]

Last year I was the first one to say that I couldn't possibly live without air conditioning. I blamed the reliance on mild asthma and being old enough and solvent enough to be able to afford it.

Then the central A/C blew up. I couldn't arrange having it fixed immediately due to intense work hours and so I pondered the fact that most of the world lives without A/C and I would try to see what it was like. I'm a chemist and a Boomer and I like sociological and chemical experiments.

A heat wave came and I stripped down to nothing and laid in front of a fan. The hotter and stickier I got the more I was determined to see what was on the other side of the misery. More misery.

The dogs were inconsolable. They panted and stared at me with acid looks and flopped their bellies on the tile floor. One night it was so bad that I stood in the shower three times (with the Dachshund once) and laid in front of the fan until I dried off and then did it over again. It was a long night.

The weather broke and for the rest of the summer it was just warm and muggy and eventually I didn't think about it anymore.

At the start of this summer, I decided I had learned how the rest of the world feels and decided to buy a window A/C for my bedroom so I could get to sleep without ten showers a night.

I'm astonished to see that now I don't really like cold A/C air and keep the control to about 80 degrees. In fact I installed it in the bedroom next to mine and sucked it into my bedroom with a fan because it was way too cold to be in the "cold" room. For the true lovers of A/C this would be equivalent to smoking a cigarette through a veil.

The dogs have adjusted as well though the Dachshund threatens to call child protective services every whipstitch when I don't turn it on as soon as I get home. She's easily bought off though with a slice of cheese.

Meanwhile, the benefit of this is that I can bike in the worst of heat and as long as I have enough cool water to drink I am fine. I don't even think about it as being "hot." This is a complete turnaround from a lifetime of summers where I couldn't EVEN BEAR to be outside even in mild heat. What a revelation.