Well Steamed

This winter we had record-breaking cold snaps and snow/ice for long periods of time. Now at the end of May/beginning of June, we are having record-breaking heat waves. The day of our Sheridan Air show, it was the hottest it had been on that day since 1911. I don't know what the heat index was, but the actual temp was something like 97 or 98. The last few days have been just as bad.

"The Indiana Department of Environmental Management issued a high ozone level warning for today for parts of central and southern Indiana, making it the second day in a row. Temperatures in the 90s and almost no wind cause emissions from cars and other air pollution to be more of a problem. Smog Watch, a state-managed tool for assessing air quality, classified Howard County and south through Indiana as “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” The heat index Tuesday reached into the mid- and upper-90s in the Kokomo area. The weather service on Tuesday declared today’s temperatures to be high enough to warrant a hazardous weather outlook. “It’s going to be miserable,” Hendrickson said. “The biggest thing is people should avoid working hard outside and drink plenty of liquids and wear light clothing and try not to get too hot.”

Try not to get too hot. Brilliant. Yesterday when I pushed the Cub from the hangar to the fuel pump, even with another guy helping, I felt like I was going to stroke out by the time we got there. I could not catch my breath and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer. I went to the freezer at the office, put my hands on the frost/ice inside, put my hands on my neck, and still didn't cool off. It's so hot and muggy that it feels like there is water, not oxygen, in the air sometimes. You take one flight in an enclosed cockpit where the temps are good and solidly in the 100s, with minimal air flow, and you need to go home and shower. My first flight was at 10 a.m. after I took Kaylee to her swim lesson, and I got done with my last flight at 9 p.m. tonight, and my clothes and I were, well, steamed. There's no cooling off in the car on the way to anywhere, because the air conditioning doesn't work (to be fixed soon) and the windows down, which is a must, just blasts in hot traffic air. Staying hydrated is a trick, but if you stay hydrated you sweat even worse, which is of course your body doing what it's supposed to in order to keep you cool, but isn't overly fun. Not staying hydrated is obviously not an option, for safety. I carry a water bottle with me. (Which reminds me, I need to get more water bottles). It is frankly miserable. Particularly considering how very much I have always hated being hot, have been sensitive to being hot, and this passed "hot" quite some distance ago. Some folks will have one flight, maybe two in a week, and know how hot it is and how sweaty they are after their flight, and be glad to be done for the day. Doing it several times a day for a whole day, every day but Sunday...can be a challenge.

These days are also crazy right now. Mine went: Kaylee to swim lesson and back, flight lesson at Glenndale until 11:30, lunch, errands, work on billing, run to Greentown (so glad the car was so quickly fixed!), get home, go to Kokomo to do a test flight on an airplane after it had 4 cylinders replaced, fly to Sheridan, then do almost 2 hours of instruction, ending up with the plane in the hangar and me on my way home at 9 p.m. Stop for dinner, do dishes and laundry, snuggle with Kaylee, finish off the accounting part of billing, and make blog entry at 12:31 to try to be in bed by 1 a.m. and start off all over again tomorrow morning with flights starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m., with temps forecasting 95, not including heat index. Maybe I'll take a thermometer with me in the cockpit tomorrow and see what it says. Thermometer does not seem like the right word since I'm not taking my own temperature, though maybe I should, but I can't come up with the right word right now, if that isn't right. And I don't care. ;)

I'm not grumpy somehow, even though I may sound that way, but I AM tired. And hot. Did I mention hot? ;)