Heat Wave

This is the Chicago heat you read about in the papers, where people are found dead in their apartments. Every time we go out to the street, Colin and I consider the possibility that we might burst into flames. It doesn't help that we have both just finished reading Roadside Picnic, and thinking about the Zone--with its altered laws of physics and sudden mysterious hazards--further defamiliarizes the broiling cityscape. I swear, when we're in the apartment, we huddle up around the air-conditioner just as if it were winter and we were huddling around a not particularly blazing fire. We've even taken to sleeping in the living room in order to be closer to it. This effectively reduces our apartment to a studio. I guess it's good to know that we could live in a studio together if we had to, albeit somewhat crankily.

We have tried various other things to stay cool and save our electric bill. On Sunday, we decided to spend all day in coffee-shops. There are quite a few around here, after all. That worked all right in the morning, but by afternoon everyone else had the same idea too. The coolest ones were too crowded for us to sit in, and the one we finally did end up in, a Caribou on Broadway, had air-conditioning not much more effective than ours. It didn't help that we had to sit by the window, with the glass heating up so our legs felt like greenhouse plants, and a whoosh of hot air coming in every time someone upened the door.

The next day, Monday, we decided to go in to the UIC campus. Colin's building is efficiently air-conditioned, and there's a good coffee-shop on the second-floor. The problem was getting there. We sweltered waiting for the bus. Even drinking ice-water (which we have been drinking copiously, not from any abstract desire to stay hydrated but because it lowers the core temperature a bit!) hardly had an effect. When the bus came it was squealing and screaming. Fan belts do not respond well to heat, it seems, and the bus was making such awful noises we could hardly hear ourselves think.

I did get some good work done at UIC, but Colin realized there were some missing notes he absolutely needed and without which he could do nothing. So after he did all his various errands, we headed reluctantly home to look for them. I could have stayed there, I suppose, but I'm still a bit hazy on the local geography, and by then it was lunchtime anyway.

We waited for the return bus on an overpass with an overhanging tree which provided at least a bit of shade. I set my backpack down gratefully (my work supplies are incredibly heavy) and squatted down beside it. If I'd thought sticking my tongue out and panting would have helped, I'd've done that too. Finally we spotted the bus down the street. I hoisted up my backpack...and out from under it scampered an enormous rat!! It dashed over my foot, veered perilously through the heavy highway traffic, made it to a small green space on the other side, and disappeared. Needless to say, I let out a mighty shriek when it ran over my foot like that. "What?" Colin said, "What, what?" Fortunately it took some time for the rat to negotiate the traffic, so I was able to point it out to Colin despite my inarticulate state. After that he agreed that I deserved to have shrieked!

The rat definitely hadn't been there when I set down my backpack. As near as we can tell, it must have crawled up from the side of the overpass and considered my backpack to be a tempting bit of shade. Importunate creature. And what a shock! So that's how you know it's crazy hot. Even the rats are acting crazy.

Our plan for the afternoon was to check out the closest beach. We're only a few minutes walk from the lake, but there is no swimming where we are, only some big rocks and a concrete step-structure. The closest place to actually swim, Montrose Beach, is a little over a mile to the north. Ordinarily we might try to walk but Colin's foot is still bothering him, and besides, it was so awfully hot. So we took a lumbering squealing bus up to the closest cross-street. It was still a pretty darn long walk from there, I have to say. But it did include a nice view of the skyline over the sailboat harbor.

Once we got there, it was crawling with people, but also kind of a sad and rundown place. Technically there was a sort of room to change in, and technically there were showers, but I've seen better facilities in third-world countries. Oh well. We dropped our bag trustingly in the sand (no lockers) and hit the water. The place was well-life-guarded, and the life-guards were deeply intent on herding all the people into as small as possible an area. This was rather comical, since--at least within the area we were allowed in--the water never got deeper than our waists. Never mind. It was glorious to be surrounded by cold water. Though we both thought it odd that it was not salty. We splashed around and played as best we could in such shallow, crowded water, and most important managed to get deeply cooled off. We also managed to get so tired that on the walk back our bodies felt big and clumsy, bludgeoning and stumbling through the hot, thick air.

The whole thing would have been a lot more practical on bikes, because there's a lovely bike-path along the lake. But as yet we only have one bike between us, so the swimming thing can not be the sort of daily outing it might be under other circumstances. Of course we could drive... but how to find a parking spot when we get back? The perennial concern. We really need to be selling this car.

In any case, we survived the worst of the heat wave in this manner. Today, Weatherbug claims, it is a mere 75 degrees, and humidity only 76%. It still feels awfully hot and humid, and I'm still cuddled up to the air-conditioner, but at least the air-conditioner is making some headway on cooling down the room.