It got up to about 90 degrees today. I watched most of it from my office window, in a climate-uncontrolled office.
There’s a thermostat in my office. It has a digital readout with green lights telling me what the university has programmed for us. They sprung for the deluxe version, too. There are two buttons on the thermostat that don’t do anything. They’re just there to make you feel as if you have some control over the 76-degrees-in-the-summer. You don’t, but it’s a gesture.
And that gesture did not help when, at quitting time, I opened the door and felt 90 degrees today for the first time since last September 21st.
That’s 254 days.
Now, as I get older, I find that I don’t relish the real flesh-burning heat of my youth. It once was a badge of honor or something, I guess, now it is just a thing to endure until you find some air conditioning. (I blame a bad bout of heat exhaustion I had in the late-oughts.) Ninety isn’t bad, unless you’re working in it. Ninety is good and warm, no matter what you’re doing. But you can, in a few days or so, get adjusted to it.
There’s a reasonably fine line here, I would say, and I think that changes over time, over the course of one’s experience and, again, what you’re having to do outside. Anything in the mid-90s seems right up next to hot. If you get over 106 degrees or so, in our usually humid climes, and it just feels painful.
But even 90 degrees, the first time you get above the mid 80s, can feel deflating.
What I’m saying is, 254 days is a long time to go between summer temperatures. This is a dawning realization, one that will prompt me to spend more of the summer outdoors.
What I’m really saying is, how is it June already? And, simultaneously, how did this month take so long to arrive?
This is where I erased 1,600 words on the notions of things that are far off and close at hand, how time flies, but also sinks into the muck on the bottom of a lake.
It was warm enough that I decided to not go for a bike ride today. Par for the month. Err, last month. May featured the fewest rides of the year, so far. And it is starting to show on the mileage chart. Computer, show us the mileage chart!
It’s a humble set of marks, but, for me, these are good numbers.
Except, look at all of those scary little plateaus in the purple line. This chart is based on a daily mileage spreadsheet (what, you don’t run spreadsheets on things like that?) and plateaus on this chart mean no bike riding was done. Meanwhile, the colorful average daily lines just keep marching on. It’s your classic case of when projections and realities sometimes wind up at odds with one another. In May, some travel, illness, and busy schedules slowed me down. That’s something we’ll have to remedy in June. Starting tomorrow. There needs to be more distance between the purple line of reality and the only mildly ambitious green line which signifies averaging 10 miles per day.
But, first, since it is the second day of the month, I’m already one day behind on updating all of my spreadsheets, cleaning the computer, and so on. This is how I will start my weekend, which begins right … now.
Have a great June weekend everybody, and thanks for stopping by today.
