Keep yourself hydrated! Drink plenty of water with just a pinch of salt in each glass. Do not depend on Gator-Aid© or those over hyped sports drinks to quench your thirst. Those drinks will cause electrolyte imbalance. Stay away from beer, coffee, and tea as well. All of these drinks are dehydrating.
Eat a banana every other day to keep potassium up.
If you get overheated a cool, not cold, washcloth on the top of your head is the best way to cool the body. If that's too weird you can put cool washcloths on the back of your hands. These are the two main cooling centers for the body. A cool cloth across the back of the neck is third, and works, but I don't recommend it.
Linen is the fabric of choice as it allows air flow across the body, you'll find the sweat will cool you down rather than collecting on the skin - I assume high humidity as well.
A porous straw hat is recommended for shading the head.
And always remember: rattlesnakes are to be left alone. In the rarest of rare cases you, or someone you are with, is bitten keep calm and call the local sheriffs department.
So, Welcome to New Mexico! Follow these simple safety tips and Enjoy Your Vacation! A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
With drinks and banana, I did all the right things without realising why it's good :-)
At home, I wear only underwear... about humidity, it started without (that was one of the ingredients for a heating-up this strong at this latitude), but climbed up strongly by yesterday: water is evaporating from everything at record rate, for example the big lake Balaton receded by 13 cm.
Now, to feel less impressed by what I am in now, what was the worst you lived through in New Mexico? Maximum of maximum day temperature, maximum of minimum night temerature, length of 100F+ (104F+) period? *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
We were out hiking and a dry storm moved in on us unexpectedly. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
Heh. I think I had that yesterday when I peeked out of the window on the train home...
That (travel) wind doesn't cool at all was one of my 40°C+ discoveries. The other is that my dog was made for much higher temperatures than me, she had no problems running around as ever in 32°C at 22h, while I... took it slowly. Then again, the Friday night teens on the street, or at least part of them, were fine, too. (BTW, I could write a diary about teen culture here in the countryside... I mean, Friday night programme: buy a bottle of wine or heavier and silently[!] drink yourself stiff on a street corner with friends...) *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
A friend of mine used to call that kind of wind "a blowtorch". Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
if it's dry, you can carry around a small spray bottle filled with water, and take advantage of the evaporation for cooling.
I practised pouring water on my head from a bottle of water (which I also drank from). The trouble was that once the bottle was half-full, it heated up rather quickly, and even the evaporation cooling wasn't much. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Of course, this isn't 42C ... hot days this summer have topped out around 35C (much hotter, of course, inside the truck for the unloaders on the box line), but the humidity is certainly well over the 5% mark ... when I'm beginning to sweat at 0530 and the mists in the pre-dawn light show that its near 100% humidity, I know its going to be a fun day in the warehouse. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
A normal day/night temperature swing is 30-60F degrees depending on the season and the cloud cover. (Clouds equals warmer nights, cooler days.) So even when it is hot during the day it will cool rapidly as the sun goes down and the nights are always pleasantly cool. For example, it was 102F today at noon but it's (checking the thermometer) 44F at 1:00 AM. (The interior temperature of our non- air-conditioned adobe house is 76F -- which explains why adobe is a superior building material for New Mexico.)
I guess I should add we live at 6,500' or about 2,000 meters in altitude which needs to be added when thinking about temperature swings. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
Ironically, we stayed in Budapest one summer and had to move out of the then new Kempinski Hotel there because of its puny air conditioning system. So, heat is heat. It's all what your body happens to be used to at the moment. I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears
Linen clothing tends to be more expensive than cotton but it also lasts much, much, longer so it's the old 'Pay up front or Pay more down the road' situation. I get around it by buying summer cloths in the fall/winter when the stores are giving them away¹. Flax has a stronger 'outer shell' that can be itchy/scratchy at first but that softens over time, and washing. The 'bad' thing about linen is that 'rumples' while wearing.
An Iowan friend used to swear by jute, burlap is the most familiar fabic from this plant. She would buy the fabric cheap, cheap, cheap, take it home, and boil the bejesus out of it in a big cast iron pot over a fire in her backyard to soften it. Every so often she would remove the cloth and beat it with a old 5lb fulling hammer she got from who knows where. (I swear I'm not making this up.) After she was done she would sew skirts from the cloth.
Neither flax or jute, take dye well. Well, they don't take dye at all. What you see is what you get. I rather like the natural, subtle greens, browns, and cream colors. And the 'home-spun' look of the fabric.
¹ Being from the Midwest US German/Swedish sub-culture I never got a nickel I didn't immediately fall in love with! A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
the straw hat does wonders with the sun.
