Sure is hot out there. And here I am to ramble on about a one hundred degree day. I have nothing new to say about the heat though and I prefer to say new things rather than the same old things. Of course everything is probably the same old thing and I’m just fooling myself after all plenty of people have written about plenty of days, hot or otherwise.
I went for a walk in the heat this evening. Ninety degrees out at 7:30 PM. At least I didn’t go out in that one hundred degree heat of the afternoon. Actually I did go out in the afternoon but I wasn’t walking. I was driving. It was cooler than walking especially with the car’s air conditioning on although I didn’t have it on all the time since the drives were mostly short. Too short to use the AC. On short drives I’m often I’m sweltering in the car’s heat waiting for the cool air to kick in. It’s cooler to have the windows open if the drive is short.
I did go for a cycle this morning. I normally cycle after nine AM so I can get a good hour’s worth of work in to start my day and to avoid the rush hour traffic but this morning I left half an hour earlier. It was already eighty four degrees out and I wanted to hit the road before it got even hotter. It was eighty seven degrees out as I finished my ride about forty minutes later. And it was humid too.
My seven year old nephew once asked me why I have two water bottles on my bike. It’s for days just like this one. Normally I only go through one water bottle a ride. I even drink from the smaller bottle. It’s about sixteen ounces with the larger one probably being around twenty ounces. Today I nearly finished both bottles. There was only a little bit of water left at the bottom of each. That only happens a handful of times per summer.
As I was finishing my ride I had a funny moment. Here I was riding through the heat and humidity of a hot summer morning and my mind flashed back to my winter bike rides. This past winter was the first time in my life that I kept my outside bike ride up all season long. The moment I was remembering was when the temperature would dip down to about twenty degrees Fahrenheit and the surface of the water in my bottle would freeze. Though I certainly wasn’t drinking much on those days, I would maybe drink half a bottle, when I needed a sip I’d have to break the ice to get one. That memory made me smile in today’s heat. The world is a wondrous place.
When I ride my bike I never wear headphones but when I walk I do. I walk to get out of the house, break up the day, get a little exercise, and listen to some old Howard Stern Show tapes. They are actually MP3s these days but you get the drift. I also listen to music as I walk but lately it’s been mostly the Stern Show. I can always use a good laugh.
I’ve been a regular listener to the Stern Show since the late 1980’s but I’ve never gone back and listened to old shows before. They sound fresh but can also be nostalgic. People have left the show over the years and sometimes I am hearing once familiar voices that I have not heard in a years. Plus all the show MP3 files have dates on them and as I look at the dates I often think back to what I was doing then. Such is the way with most things that have obvious dates on them. They can be time machines.
I drink a lot of water on my walks too. Often more than when I’m on my bike. My main bike ride lasts about forty or forty five minutes and I drink up the smaller sixteen ounce water bottle. My walks are from thirty to forty minutes and I bring the twenty ounce water container with me. It’s often done as I am returning. I walk during the hotter parts of the day so that probably explains why I drink more than when I cycle but it’s also because I carry the water as I walk. I may as well drink up so the bottle is easier to handle. I also can’t really over-drink as I walk. If I drink too much when I’m cycling I get a sick-to-my-stomach felling for a little while. That doesn’t happen when I walk.
Another thing I did on this hot day was to go out to the diner with a buddy. It was a late lunch and I was, once again, glad to be out of the house. Things have been a little too routine for me lately so breaking the routine can be a relief. Often when I go to that diner I get breakfast. French toast with two over easy eggs right on top is a favorite. A little bit of syrup over them and I’m good to go. I don’t use the butter they provide at all.
But today I went for the hamburger. A cheeseburger to be exact. It hit the spot. I was thinking about getting the cheeseburger deluxe but decided against it. I kind of wanted some fries but I really didn’t have the room for them. I’m not a big eater and it was a late lunch for me. I have gotten the fries before but I have to be sure of it. If I have doubts about if I want them or not I err on the side of not. I’m not big on that after-eating bloated feeling.
That late lunch threw off my teeth cleaning schedule. Though I brush my teeth multiple times a day I floss and rinse right after dinner. Since I had a late lunch I didn’t eat diner. I snacked through it. Nibbled a bit. It’s about 8:30 PM as I write this and I just remembered to floss and rinse. That’s a couple of hours late. I stopped writing this to brush. We’re all creatures of habit.
Besides working on a bunch of paying work today the other thing I did was watch some TV. I had no energy today to get any of my own work done. Well, not more than a couple of minutes at a time. I hit some creative doldrums. The TV show I watched was a couple of episodes of the new season of “Burn Notice”. That’s a show that I usually watch right away but for some reason haven’t this season. I had the last three episodes on the hard drive and checked out two of them. They were good. That show has held up well over the years.
Another mundane thing I got up to today was to check if the patch I put on a bike tire tube held. On Tuesday morning I went to go for my usual bike ride and discovered that my tire was flat. I changed it out for a good tube and went for my ride. It wasn’t until Thursday that I got around to patching that tube and another that had been sitting around with a hole in it. I tested them on Thursday and only one tube held air. I had to patch the other one again and there it sat until this afternoon when I got the pump out to check it. The new patch held. Now I have two spare tubes again. Both have a few patches on them. I’ve been looking into buying some tougher tires.
That’s how I spent my hundred degree day. No great excitement or great insights but at least I didn’t get heat stroke and die. That’s always a plus. It was much like any other day except it was really hot out.
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