Fall, October, the best.
Tonight was the first genuinely comfortable ride home I've had since late May.
For the past four months, all my ride to and from work have warm, at or above body temperature. This was the hottest summer on record. Keep in mind, we're talking about the hottest summer on record for Tucson, Arizona, not Rockester, NY or Wyoming.
Most times, I'm heading off to work at 9:30 a.m. and heading home around 7 p.m. My bike computer keeps track of and temperature. During most of the summer, I'd head out and note the temp reading, watching it steadily climb during the 1/2 hour ride to work. One late June day, I remember it reading 116 as I arrived at work. I don't sweat much during the ride, but once I stop moving and park my bike, my pores open up. I can then look forward to spending the next 8 or 9 hours covered in a layer of my own funk.
There's something disheartening about spending four months in a constant state of dehydration. You can drink all you want, but when the temps are that high, your body can't radiate it's heat outward. It's the environmental heat that raises the body temp further. Hydration is a losing battle at best.
In cold conditions, you can cover up to conserve heat. You can ride faster, put out more energy to generate more heat. But during desert summers, ultimately you can only get naked. Not practical, much less enough to even things out.
But tonight, the temps were in the mid 80's. Riding through the air actually cooled me off, a sensation I hadn't experienced for well over 100 days.
During October, it will only improve. The cooling down in October seems more satisfying than the warming up in March. When you come out of the bitter cold and into the heat, it's experienced as a gradual lessening of the suffering. Once you hit the heat, you aren't immediately warm. The warming process is actually kind of painful, pain you go through to get to a certain specific endpoint of comfort.
But when you come out of the heat and get cooled, the satisfaction is immediate. The very first instant of cooling puts you in a state of ease through and through. The process of cooling is savored.
And October is a full 31 days of this satisfyingly steady cooling process being repeated. Here's to a long, cold winter.
Stay cool,