I really feel for the folks on the West Coast as the heat sound positively punishing out there–housed, homeless or van dweller. Here in the midwest it’s only in the low to mid 90s today. This isn’t even bad compared to the 100s out west yet I’m planning my days around the heat and humidity. I can’t sleep much past about 8am or so as the sun gets the van too hot. And I can’t get to sleep until about 1-2am as the residual heat of the day has been retained in the thermal mass of the van. So I’m getting about six hours a night, which is okay–just not ideal.

Lately I’ve been finding air conditioned buildings to spend my time in midday and late afternoon as living in a van during the day in the summer is out of the question. I’m quite glad that I look like just another local doing a little research and soaking up some free internet as I’d hate to loose this resource. Power, internet, water fountains and nice cool air conditioning. There’s no homeless look about me, at least I don’t think so. The library has been a bigger and bigger help to me as the battery on my laptop is getting near useless for anything but quickly checking email and a little internet usage unless I have a somewhere to plug into. It’s holding maybe 25% of the power it originally did and is mighty inconvenient.

So I’d love to get on the internet more at night. Or even just be able to write. But that’ll have to wait until later as I’ll need to find a new battery somewhere. Until then I’ll just be happy reading or journaling. I’d much rather be productive but that’s a tall order in a town where everything is closed at 9pm outside of grocery stores and gas stations.

Which makes me think of an article I read about the West coast heat wave. One person interviewed was describing her means of sleeping. She lays on an air mattress in her living room where there’s the greatest air flow and falls asleep with frozen wash cloths on her head and feet. As they warm and she wakes she replaces then with fresh ones from the freezer and hopes the supply last until morning.

This was presented as a worst case scenario in the article and it struck me as I was reading it. I’d love to have air flow! A breeze, anything! And a freezer? How luxurious! I’m just glad I’m not parked out West or I’d be getting eaten alive by bugs as I’d be forced to sleep outside in a park somewhere.

The funny thing to me is that I’ve been thinking how much nicer life would be on the West coast as it’s generally much more mild than the Midwest where I am. Is this fate telling me to be happy where I am?

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed