Hot City Diary: Day 106

Earl shows up in this huge vehicle.  It's straight outta a Mad Max movie, some kind of dually on steroids.  It's bright yellow and has Earls name printed on the door and his fathers painted on the passenger door.  He's been laying some tile all morning and on the way home he charges $60 bucks to get it all done.  The pool is no longer leaking.  He's worked his magic.  The pipes are tighter than a pickle jar and now the algae must die.

It's only 108 today and I've been slithering around on the floor for days.  My doggie is right there by my side, licking my face.

We will dash back and forth from the pool.  I go inside and my dog goes to the edge then it's a quick lap and then back into the house.

The dog days of Summer are here.

Hot City Diary: Day 105

It's a searing 113 out.  I try to get some errands done and things sorted out and drive around a bit and the sun burns as it hits me thru the window.  I'm tucking my arms in with all the windows down and it still feels like there are 4 blast furnace doors open.  I try to stick my head outside and give a little yelp, but it comes out dry and like I just stuck my head into an oven with wind blowing at 50 mph.  It hurts.  The yelp becomes a dry cough and I'm rolling up all the windows to put on the air conditioning.  I try to look around to see how other drivers are coping with it, and they're all tinted up.  That's how you do it in the desert.  You tint it up big time and it's not that big of a deal with the cops because they know how ridiculous a day like today is without any kind of tint.  My car must be 120 inside, just from sitting in the sun; and then driving around with the blast furnaces open have only added to the heat, and I've spent most of the day cooking myself in my metal box as I drive around town.  I can feel the heat on my arms but there is no way to avoid the heat.  It hangs right in front of you,  I can feel it crawling up my spine into my head.  My skull is a bone crockpot with my brain simmering in blood and totally being cooked.  I'm going to be a vegetable If I don't get out of here soon.  I totally cooked my muscles and my brain in the last 45 minutes and no wonder everyone looks like beef jerky after they've lived here too long.  I need air conditioning, but it's expensive, but I need it or else I'll end up cooking myself to a crisp.

I roll up all the windows and turn on the air conditioning and try to relax.  It's only for a couple months.  Maybe I shouldn't go out in the daytime anymore.  I'll have to wait until at least 7 when the sun goes down behind the mountain.  It's so god damn hot in that sun.  Anything over 110 is totally unfair.   How brutal this desert can really be for the Summer months.  The cool air floods the car.  Things start to cool down.  My brain stops boiling.  I can think clearly again.  I've got to get out of here is my first thought.

Soon it might be like this for half the year,then maybe more.  What will happen to the Coachella valley when it's over 100 degrees everyday?  No amount of air conditioning will make that a good choice.  It will return to the desert and all the residents will have moved on.


All the plants look like they just want me to kill them already.  Watering twice per week is not enough anymore.  They need water everyday during the dog days of July and August and sometimes September.  Even the white bugs that have gotten into the hibiscus are dying in this heat.  Serves them right.  This is just the beginning.  It stays this hot for months.  Hovering between the 80's for lows and the 110+ for highs.  It will reach 120 at some point.  Maybe even higher this year.  We might all be the proud citizens to own the bragging rights on the Hottest day ever.  That's the exciting part, isn't it?  We're breaking records.  But these aren't the good kinds.

Hot.

Hot City Diary: Day 104

Strange things are happening at the hotel.  Some guy in a gold hat was doing front flips into the jacuzzi all night.  Trippple Zay.  It was like cray cray, but now totally Zay.  Rounds of drinks to someones credit card and the fun was to be had at the hotel.  There wasn't anybody acting weird at the hotel tonight.  No strange 60 somethings trying to relive their youth but being weird and just staring and not interacting with anyone, except to pinch somebodies girlfriends bum.  Not tonight.  The blonde with braids that get's TRASHED and loses her ID and everything, every Thursday for metal night.  She was in a rush one night and took a spill and her dentures came out.  It was awkward.  She washed them off with the orange and lime water and put them back in.  That part was kinda cool, but whatever.  Nothing like that is happening tonight.  Nobody on mushrooms, nobody puking out front in the succulents, nothing.  It's nice and quiet.

I think it cooled down to 82 around 4am.  It was nice.  It's only gonna get hotter.  I think today is due to top out at 111 today.  It will cool down to 84 tonight.  (I'm on weather.com) and that looks like we've seen the last of the low 80's for 3 months.  

The pool pump is broken too!  So there I am, barefoot, and running across the outdoor cement when my feet start to melt.  I run to the pool pump area because I've just put up an umbrella a few weeks back and know I can find shade.  It's swamped.  I jump into the water and curse.  Damn it!  What kind of dumb luck is this?!?  Just when the heat has descended upon us.  The pool will never last a day with water circulating.  The Pool is 90 degrees at the surface.  Possibly 80 at the bottom.  Algae is gonna start blooming in no time.  It's time to ramp up the chlorine and the conditioner and run the pool engine for 8 hours a day.  I better get this fixed soon.

I call Earl up the street and it's his wifes' funny voice mail and I leave a message and hope they get back to me soon.

Hot City Diary: Day 102

No masturbating in the Jacuzzi.  A couple of hotel guests have complained that a young man with his passed out girlfriend by his side was pulling one off in front of other hotel guests.

He received a warning.

It must be Friday.

Hot City Diary: Day 101

There's nothing to do but watch Depeche Mode 101 all day.  That and more marathons of Alaskan TV shows.

Inside is the place to be.  Who wants to be outside at 105 when it's a cool 88 down here on the tile floor.  I can get to where ever I need but as I crawl around and look up, I see the air cooking up there.  Molecules are moving ever more faster.  Madness.

I turn on the TV and set up the Depeche Mode roadie classic 101 where we get to ride along with a bunch of fans and go to some of the concerts and then prep for Dodger Stadium or wherever it is.  Wait, it was the Rose Bowl.  Depeche Mode plays the Rose Bowl at the end of the tour.  AND it's awesome.

I set myself up with some pillows and spread out on the tile floor next to my dog.

Then we'll watch some Alaskan TV shows:

It's a time to drink a lot of water and stay inside.

Hot City Diaries: Day ____

The pool sparkles in my dreams.  The pool sparkles and sparkles and shines under the heat.  It must be a dream of the times when we had chlorine and conditioner and a floater and some acid and some of that special anti-algae mixture to keep the algae at bay.  PH levels need to be checked and rechecked and then maybe you're gonna wanna check em a couple times more and wait until the sun goes down and put in a little more chlorine.  Drew at the Pool Store thinks you can never have enough chlorine in a pool.  Such good stuff that Chlorine.  Keeping it all clean.  I have a new pool shop, too.  The Pool Emporium is the pool shop of my dreams.

Suddenly,  I'm wandering the shelves at the Pool Emporium and things are great.  Rows of inflatable toys.  Some noodles.  Some hardware and rows and rows of chlorine and pool additives.  All kinds of colors and sizes of bottles.  He keeps the chlorine on the floor in 4 gallon crates and the other products line up high on the wall.  Drew wants to talk about all kinds of shit.  He's great.  Wishing he could see you more.  Treating you like you were special.  What a guy.  Things are great over at Drews.  One time he was like "You can have this barracuda pool cleaner diaphram but I was holding it for someone else, I'll just tell them that it hasn't come in yet."

Hot City Diaries: Day 99

It's in the teens again today.  One Hundred and Thirteen degrees.  Inside without the air conditioner is ninety five.  I spend most of my time in the pool with a sombrero on.  Everything is hot and the things inside the house are warm.  The tile inside the house is the coolest thing, so I find myself laying down on it a lot.  I slither up and down the hallway like a snake to use the restroom when I come in from the pool.  I'll slither into the kitchen and just stand in front of the open refrigerator.

It's too hot for anything.  Anything over 90 is uncomfortably hot and this 110 plus weather pattern every summer is just out of control.

The plantation shutters are closed.  I have my favorite Alaskan TV show playing.  The dog is inside.  I lay down on the couch and point a fan in my direction.  The TV has tales of great things that people do up near the arctic circle.  I google my distance to the arctic circle and it comes back as 2264 miles.  I'm frying down here in the lower 48.  It's a furnace this month.  July is a horrible, horrible idea for the desert cities.

The dog and I slowly cook ourselves in this fantastic 3 bedroom, 2 bath tile lined oven.

My mind wanders as I fall in and out of sweaty uncontrollable sleep.  Tossing this way and that.  At one point I slide right off the couch with all the sweat that has built up as the faux leather seems like a bad idea now, but it's not so bad during the other part of the year.  I crawl back up and fall back asleep and I dream that I'm running across the tundra to my snow mobile.  I've got some trees to cut down and then maybe I'll be lucky if I don't freeze to death while I'm doing it.  I've got to empty my fish-o-wheel and feed my sled dogs and cut some more firewood.  I've got a grip of things to do.  No time for lounging around on my couch in the shade.

Damn this time of year.  Double damn it.

I get up and try to drink a beer but it only makes things stranger and sweatier.  This would be great if I had my hot Italian wife running around in her underwear, but Shelly was the smart one, she left town for the summer.  There's no way to survive the summer.  I'll never be the same.

How does it get this hot over here, and it's never this hot in Los Angeles?  What's up with that.  It's only 100 miles away.   I stop to think that I live in Riverside, now.  I'm a resident of Riverside, now, and this kind of heat is par for the course.  This is the reason that the houses are so cheap.  Three months out of the year, it's impossibly hot.  No good reason to go outside.  There is only TV and Alaskan daydreams during these times of crisis.  Let's just hope the water keeps running.  That lukewarm water.

Hot City Diary: Day 83

It's the Fourth of July and residents of Cathedral City are lighting up the nights sky.  It's one of the only cities that sells fireworks in the entire Coachella Valley.  There are 3 fireworks kiosks throughout the city and they are operated by the local school district so that the profits from the sales help fund things at the area schools.

"Bang, Bang"

"Zip, Weeeeeeeeeeeee"

"Pop"

The night goes on in this fashion.  It's been hot out all day and the heat seems to transfer over into the night, now.  The heat radiates back up from the surface of things.  All those cement, asphalt, brick and tile surfaces have picked up a lot of heat during the day and now they're heating things up.  I should spray everything down, but that would waste a whole lot of water.

"Zip, Boom!"

It was 106 today and now it's hovering around 85, maybe a little higher with all the heat off the backyard.  The hibiscus is not doing very well.  I'll have to make some shade structures so that they'll survive the summer.  The air conditioner has been running inside my shade structure all day, and  I fear that this months electricity bill is going to be off the hook.

"Zing, Ka-Pow!"

"Whipoweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Flashes and explosions fill the sky.  You can hear some cars honking their horns down the street.  Everybody is excited about independence day.  Freedom.  A human really doesn't have much in this life, so freedom is worth more than the best shade structures.  It's worth more than those fancy million dollar shade structures up in Thunderbird Heights.  The dozens of homeless cases under the bridge at Date Palm Drive and Highway 111 can attest to that.  They might get pretty damn close to heat stroke everyday, but once the sun goes down and it's decent out, they are free do wander the four corners of the earth.  Sure, they're not gonna get farther than the Carls' Jr. down the street, but they can dream.  If somebody has a bicycle then they can travel all the way down to La Quinta if they want to, but it's the freedom to dream that counts on Independence day.

"Pop, Bang!"

Suddenly there is a loud pop right at the side of the house.  The air conditioner turns off and the power goes off in the house for a couple seconds then comes back on. What the fuck was that? It sounds like somebody threw a firecracker into my side yard.  So, I pause my Alaskan TV show and make my way outside to the side yard.  I can see flickers of light dancing on the sun scorched wooden fence that separates the side yard from the backyard.  Oh, shit.  The air conditioner is on fire.  I knew I shouldn't have run it for so long without having it serviced.  Good ol' Dirty Dan probably never had this thing serviced.  I grab a hose and spray down the unit.  200,000 BTU's of heaven is now a 1 ton piece of useless metal.  It hisses and pops as I spray it and some of the neighbors heard the noise and mingle out in the street hoping for somebody to be nosey enough and look over the fence.  I quickly spray down the unit and make my way back inside before anyone finds anything out.  They can just think it was a big firecracker.  I'll be the laughing stock of the neighborhood if they find out I'm without air conditioning during one of the hottest summers on record.

I'll also be dead without any air conditioner.  Good thing Shelly is in Italy or else she would be pissed. I'm pretty sure the finances won't allow me to get another until next year.  I'll just have to ride out the summer sans Air Conditioner.  That doesn't sound good.

"Bam, whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Bing!"

Hurricane Arthur

Drunkenly Arthur make his way along the coast, causing all kinds of havoc.  He's had one too many Singapore Slings, yet he still picks up steam and gathers his stuff, only to throw it out all over the countryside.  Slamming waves hit the shores and they come more and more and taller and taller now.  The waves and the rain and the wind are mixed like that exotic cocktail he was enjoying outside of Miami for a couple days.  That warm weather and warm water mixes, very much like the ice cubes in Arthurs drink.  He's staggering now.  Flailing out with his arms and bringing gusts of wind and who cares about the water at this point because the wind is ripping things off of houses and businesses and sending them flying into other houses and businesses.  Well, the water is back, too.  It's a couple feet higher than it was a moment ago.

Arthur finishes his drink and tosses the glass and then reaches for another.  He's aiming for a category 2 Hurricane by midnight tonight and then he's gonna move across the shoreline and outer islands in the  Pamlico Sound and totally wreck everyones day at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge which has about 20,000 acres of Alligators.  Can't really evacuate the Alligators.  They don't work well with people sometimes and it would take a real long time to round em all up.  If only they could get it together and just walk out that would save a lot of Alligators lives.  That, or just go underwater.

I'm stuck in the house and can only watch it on TV.  I don't dare go outside, today.  It's 105.  There's not a cloud in the sky.  Not one cloud.

It's been too long and now it's gone.

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