So. It's expected to be about 90 degrees here today.
I know, I know. I hear my New Mexico peeps saying, "pish posh, 90 degrees is a walk in the park!" and you are right.
90 degrees in Albuquerque is a fine day for a walk/run/jog/picnic/bike ride/what have you.
90 degrees here is intolerable. Because of one thing...
Humidity.
See, the human body was made to be an evaporative cooling device. Just like a swamp cooler, really.
From the Wikipedia entry: "Evaporative cooling is a physical phenomenon in which evaporation of a liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact with it."
Right. I sweat. The dry air evaporates it. I feel fresh as a daisy. A sweaty daisy, but a daisy, nonetheless.
In the Bay Area, due to this large body of water, the uh, you know, Bay, we have a bit of humidity. Not much, mind you. Not Georgia on a hot summer night or Singapore all year round. But enough.
Enough that my finely tuned machine, calibrated to the New Mexico climate, can't properly obtain "fresh as a sweaty daisy" and I just obtain sweaty.
But that's not the point of my discussion.
The point is...it's due to be pretty hot today. "Pretty hot" is something of a rarity around here. We get maybe two weeks, when all totaled up each year, of "good lord it's hot" days.
The rest of the time, the weather is temperate and mild.
Because of this, few homes and businesses have any sort of air conditioning. I know, right? I almost passed out when I first moved here. "You want to rent me an apartment WITHOUT air conditioning? Do you want me to *die*?!?!?"
So in order to stay cool, people go to their drawers and the back of their closets to withdraw their "warm weather" clothes.
Herein lies the problem. In New Mexico, it gets hot a lot. Everyone has at least ONE pair of serviceable shorts, usually two or more. Something that people wouldn't be upset at being seen in public with you while you were wearing them.
Not so in the area where it doesn't often get that hot.
Yes, the first "damn it's hot" day of the year means seeing shorts that are a bit tight and frightfully short.
I don't mean on a cute girl, I mean on the overweight middle aged dad-man whose legs haven't seen the outside of pants legs in decades wearing the shorts he bought for Spring Break back in college, thirty years ago.
This morning I saw a woman walking down the street in a purple bathing suit with the elastic about shot, thus hardly supporting her ample upper parts. This was paired with some lycra bike shorts, scarcely concealing her ample lower parts. She also carried a pack of Kools and smoked profusely. But that's a whole other blog post.
Unless you are actually ON a bike, I'd like not to see the bike shorts, please.
Look, not all of my stuff is great to look at, but I have the decency toward my fellow mankind to wear a pair of shorts that don't crawl up my heiney as I walk. My skin is pale from too many days under office florescent lights, but I make an effort to keep cool and keep my dignity at the same time.
For the good of all mankind.
Stay cool out there, ya'll.
