[geeks] how to beat the heat....

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, June 26, 2002 at 14:51:39 (-0500), Jonathan C. Patschke wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] um, hi. I'm new.
>
> He also had a habit of drinking hot coffee to force himself to sweat more
> when he finally did sit down to rest.  He said it cooled him off faster.
> Once he got cool, he'd follow it up with cold water so that he'd stay that
> way.

Yup, my parents and grandparents all swore by hot tea as the best thirst
quencher on a hot day.  It helps though if the humidity isn't so damn
hot that a human body isn't a condenser (i.e. skin temp is lower than
the dew point!).  :-)

Back when I was a kid on the farm and we put up hay the almost
old-fashioned way in stacks, the guys on the tractors always had both a
thermos of tea _and_ an old plastic jug that had been filled with water
and turned into a block of ice.  Usually they held the jug to their
necks and drank the tea, and then take a swig of ice water to finish
off, while us kids (who were the ones given the really dirty and hot job
of packing the stacks) weren't really allowed much caffeine, and so we
would usually drink the rest of every drop of water that would melt in
those jugs, as fast as it would melt (but then we'd do stupid things
like chase after the tractors to grab a drink! :-).

> The general consensus around here, though, is that the heat was a -lot-
> more bearable 40 years ago.

I find the heat is a lot more bearable out on the Prairies where the
humidity isn't so damn high!  ;-)

Of course pollution is a real drag too.  We've had lots of smog alerts
around here and I'll be damned if yesterday the air wasn't so bad here
in the city that breathing it felt like drawing in the exhaust fumes
directly from a tailpipe of an overheated racecar.

I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like to work in a
big office building on the east coast of the USA (or anywhere else the
humidity is bad) during a real heat wave and before the days of AC.....

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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