Goodbye comfort, hello hell.
As the final days of cool weather escape us, we can expect the temperature to steadily rise, culminating with the months-long period of African heat known as a Florida summer.
Sure this means more trips to the beach, but it also means higher electricity bills and, for those of us who work outdoors, at least double the laundry.
While the summer is great for vacationing tourists, Floridians don’t spend a few days here, and then retreat to a land of less inclement weather. We live in it.
We work in this weather. We walk our dogs in it. A few of us even exercise in it.
Now, before someone asks “Why doesn’t this dude just move?” I don’t want to move. I was born and raised in St. Petersburg, and aside from the invisible hellfire that permeates our air for much of the year, I love it.
But being born and raised in St. Petersburg also means that I’ve never gotten to experience seasons like other Americans. Here, we don’t get four seasons – we get summer and a winter/fall hybrid.
Manual laborers can attest to the awfulness of our summer. While many people can ditch the heat for their air conditioned offices, we have to go where the greenbacks take us. This means we often spend our long days drenched in sweat, trying to down enough fluids to avoid a heat stroke.
Slathering on sunscreen while working outdoors is futile. It only adds to the discomfort, as it mixes with our bodily juices and becomes a gelatinous, salty cocktail of eye-irritating liquid fury. The one upside is that the smell of SPF-whatever can help mask the stench of B.O.
As an electrician, crawling through an attic in the summer is awful enough, but one filled with fiberglass insulation is extra miserable. As soon as the skin’s pores open, that itchy crap becomes a temporary part of my biology, causing me to scratch like I just contracted scabies. Combine that with the decaying rat carcasses, and you’ve got yourself the setup for a nice little contagion-themed horror film.
From about noon to 5 p.m., a relaxing trip around the neighborhood with my dog turns into a feat of endurance. Lucky for me, however, I can wear shorts and a tank-top; she can’t change her Chow-Border Collie DNA, which means she is forced to wear those layers of sweaters humans call fur. Unless I want to commit an act of cruelty by transforming her into some ambiguous breed of dog, shaving her doesn’t help.
By the time we return home from our “leisure” activity, I am forced to take my 17th shower of the day, while my exhausted dog hits the ceramic tile floor to cool off.
People who enjoy exercise aren’t going to stop because of 90-degree weather and a little humidity. While many people forego outdoor physical activity during the summer to focus on Wii Fit and exercising their thumbs with a PlayStation controller, many of us still like to run and play sports. Sure we could all take up surfing and get the best of both worlds, but we live on the West Coast of Florida, where the waves aren’t that gnarly.
So, instead, we stay healthy by skateboarding, hiking, and running and biking for miles. It might sound like self-punishment, but exercise is important to many of us, and changing that aspect of our lifestyles isn’t an option.
All this whining probably makes me sound like I hate it here. So, I want to repeat: I don’t; I love Florida. We are surrounded by beaches and the ocean, hiking trails, art, music, sports teams, theme parks, great food and beer, and other sources of entertainment.
But our summer heat sucks, and I am sick of working in it. So now you know one reason why I came back to school.
