Category: Pacific Ocean

The Power of Evaporative Cooling

You know, growing up in the high desert, the weather gets hot. Real hot, like high nineties and occasionally slipping up over 100 degrees.

And people joke all the time about, “well at least it’s a dry heat!”

And inevitably someone will make a scoffing noise and say that “dry heat” doesn’t matter.

I’m here to say…it matters.

It matters to me, anyway.

About three weeks ago, I was in Las Cruces.

The temperatures hovered in the high eighties, touching 90 at one point. The humidity was 7%.

It was fantastic!

I basked. I was like a salamander on a rock. I looooved every moment of it.

Yesterday, in the part of the Bay Area where I live, it topped out at a bold 77 degrees.

Yes, just a small 77 degrees.

With 84% humity.

I almost died.

Well, ok, no. I didn’t almost die. But I felt like I was gonna.

Look, the human body was made to be an evaporative cooling device.

You sweat, either the wind blows across the sweat or the air evaporates it, or, ideally, both, and your body manages to maintain a good temperature.

Add an indoor a/c unit and a glass of iced tea into the mix, and those warm summer days are quite tolerable!

At almost eighty degrees with NOTHING helping me dry the sweat and every frappin’ place I go (including my own home) has NO air conditioning (zero, ziltch, nada)…well, I had only a cool glass of iced tea to get through the day.

It wasn’t enough.

I. Was. Miserable.

I actually was *grateful* for the fog rolling in around 4:00. Thank gawd for that Bay Area temperature inversion that I usually curse!

As sweat poured off of me, I could feel the wind ahead of the fog and the temps dropped fast and I enjoyed the peace I hadn’t been able to find all day.

Today promises much of the same. I shall position myself directly in front of a fan and not move around much.

The Good Man likes to tease…..”Oh you, my Woman of the Desert*…where’s your heat tolerance now?”

It’s back where it might be very, very hot…but at least it’s a dry heat!

*That’s a reference to the book “The Alchemist” which I found neither spiritual nor interesting. The main female characters says that about herself…a lot. “I am a Woman of the Desert”….yeah. Whatever, sister. I am a Woman of the Red Couch. Hear my Cheetos roar.

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Evaporation!

Everywhere you turn….

Ok, I suppose some things are hard coded into my system. Cellular level and all.

Today promises to be a very warm day where I live. I woke up this morning and it was already getting hot, and so my mind thought, “hmm, wonder if it is too early to think about getting the swamp cooler set up.”

And then I remembered…I don’t live in the desert anymore.

Oh and by the way, evaporative cooling doesn’t work worth a damn where it’s humid.

Oh yeah. Whoops.

This all reminded me of when I looked for my first apartment in Northern California.

In Albuquerque I’d lived in a very large one-bedroom apartment up on the east end of Menaul. I was on the fourth floor and had a rocking view of the Sandias. Many of my utilities were taken care of, and I paid $550.

I was now looking at spending $1200 a month on a teeny tiny dark apartment in a crap neighborhood. And pay for it out of a salary that was only $5k more than I was making in Albuquerque.

Yeah. That was bad. But what I remember most was touring a pretty nice place that was in my price range (less than $1000 a month). It was clean, smallish, but suitable. It was a warm day down in the South Bay, and I inquired, “where is the air conditioner?”

The landlord responded that there wasn’t one.

NO AIR CONDITIONER!?!?! WHAT!?!?!?

I mean, to a girl from New Mexico, this is certain death! You don’t NOT have an air conditioner!!!

The landlord further explained that really, it’s not necessary. The really hot days are few and the wind off the Bay and the ocean keeps it cool.

I was skeptical.

Thirteen years later, I’ve still never lived in a place that had an air conditioner. Admittedly, there have been some still, hot days where I yearned for the simple beauty of a swamp cooler. On those days, I stay longer at work to soak up their climate control.

So while my home is a/c free, my car does have cooling. I won’t own a car that doesn’t, though I have friends who saved a few bucks by leaving that off. No way.

I have a vague feeling this is going to be a long, hot summer in the Bay Area where the tunnel of fans The Good Man sets up won’t quite be enough.

But then, when it gets that hot, the next day the fog rolls in over the hills and dampens the whole day and you freeze your tukhus off.

Ah…summer in the Bay Area. Swamp Coolers not required.

This old dog learned a new trick

At Christmas, my husband received a gift from his step-mom. He unwrapped it and exclaimed, “A Ray Harryhausen collection! Honey, look, we got a Ray Harryhausen collection! Wow, thank you!”

And I was like, “who?” My sweetest is an educated film guy, so I figured it was some obscure director of strange and dark independent films. So I said, “hey, great!” with a shrug.

Who knew I was TOTALLY missing out?

Well, in my ongoing film education (The Good Man is keeping a list. I’m working through it….) he popped “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” in the ol’ DVD player while I was eating lunch one weekend afternoon.

Yeah baby! I figured out just who Ray Harryhausen really is. A master of creating amazing creatures in stop motion animation.

The stumbling roaring Cyclops from the late 1950’s is every bit as creepy today. In fact, in a lot of ways, I actually like that better that today’s over CGI’d movies.

Wow, so ok, I was intrigued.

At the end of the “Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” DVD, there were some special features. One was a bit about when Harryhausen got an Oscar (presented by his best friend, Ray Bradbury. What a pair they must make!) and at the end of Harryhausen’s speech, Tom Hanks comes onto the stage to bring on the next award.

He makes the segue by saying, “I know for some people it is Gone with the Wind or Casablanca, but for me, it’s all about ‘Jason and the Argonauts‘”

I looked at The Good Man, “Well we have to watch that next, then.”

And so we did. We watched as Jason and his merry band of Argonauts fight a huge bronze statue of Talos come to life and, oh man this part was cool, a whole army of sword wielding skeletons! Skeletons! I *love* skeletons! They clacked and grimaced and fought. Aw damn, how very cool!

Then we watched “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” and I remembered that I saw this movie, most likely on TV, with my big brother back in the day. I remembered the blue Shiva with swords in all the arms. (and let’s talk about the very naturally endowed Caroline Munro. Rowr! It’s so rare to see an un-surgically enhanced actress anymore.)

And finally, we had to get to the must see film because, well, it’s set in San Francisco. This is all part of my SF film education.

“It Came from Beneath The Sea.” Yeah baby!

What the movie lacked in dialogue and story (and it lacked A LOT), it more than made up for in great animation.

Oh, that angry squid snapping the top off the Ferry Building and wrapping tentacles around the Golden Gate! Whoa! And that far-reaching tentacle slapping down Market Street, squishing unsuspecting citizens!

Good stuff!

So okay. I’m up to speed on Harryhausen. I watched the Dirty Harry movies. We did the Hitchcocks set in SF (hello Vertigo!).

I’m excited to see what’s next in my ongoing edjumacation!

Top Five Tough Jobs Made Doubly Sucky In This Storm

The wind is howling (tornado warnings in San Jose) and we’re getting 1-2 inches of rain each day and it’s *cold*.

In other words, it’s winter in the Bay Area.

During a brief break in the storm, I headed out today to run a couple errands.

While out and about I saw a CalTrans guy (called the highway department to the rest of the world) in full head to toe bright yellow heavy weather gear.

He was out there yanking leaves and branches out of the storm drains.

See, here in the Bay Area, we feature a lot of eucalyptus trees. They have these tree trunks that peel off long strips. We also have plenty of palm trees that will drop a huge frond at the slightest breeze.

Add some pine needles from all the redwoods, a heap of your garden variety debris, and you got yourself clogged storm drains that then back water up onto the streets. Hello flooding!

As I watched the guy wade into rushing water and pull out another tree branch, I thought…now that’s a sucky gig!

Further down the road I saw the trash guy doing his job, also wearing full bright yellow storm gear against the rain.

And I thought, wow, also sucky.

So I mentally put together my list…top five jobs that are already very tough to do, but are made, like, eleventy billion times worse in this crazy storm.

Here we go:

1. As mentioned…CalTrans employee. Especially the people who work out on the major highways unclogging drains, placing pylons around huge potholes, trying to drain flooded low spots on the highway, etc. You get the idea. Ugh.

2. Trash collector. Look, on a good day this is a rough gig. Now put stinky trash in the rain and with flooded roads and people not driving safely and hoo boy, isn’t THAT a nice day at work?

3. PG&E field response. Yeah, when the power goes out due to high winds, these are the people that strap on, once again, the bright yellow high weather gear. Then they get to climb a frapping ladder and hope that one, they don’t fall off, and two, that all the water doesn’t conduct a little extra electricity their way. And the yo-yo’s in all the warm houses get all pissed off when they have no power, so there’s some abuse in this job too. Truly, a thankless gig.

4. Bridge toll taker. Ok, so there you are in the storm of the year, inside a box roughly as big as an old fashioned phone booth attached to a suspension bridge that is engineered to sway. Riiight. The bridge is swaying there over the frosty waters of this inlet from the Pacific with no wind break. And oh by the way, you have to leave that big window open on the tool booth and reach your hand out there once every half minute to take money out of people’s hands. No freaking thank you.

Finally, bar none…

5. Tow truck driver. Sure, this weather makes them a lot of money, but they also have to deal with all manner of idiots. Ever hear of a “solo spin out”? I hadn’t until I moved here. This means one person losing control of their car and whipping around, usually ending up off the pavement (and hopefully not down an embankment).

When it goes right, it’s a “solo” problem. When it doesn’t go right, it’s a horrible, traffic clogging accident. And the tow truck guy has gotta strap on the bright yellow gear and then yank all those cars out of the way while the stopped traffic curses at him, the car owners harass him and the dispatch is calling him begging for his help at another spot.

Gah.

Just, really. Gah.

I can say I’m not man enough for that job. Oh but I love to hear stories from tow truck drivers. Those people have seen some stuff…whoooieee.

Anyhow, as I bunker down with the heat running and a warm cup of tea in hand, here’s a huge thanks to the CalTrans employees, trash collectors, PG&E technicians, toll collectors and tow truck drivers on this crazy blustery day.

Oh, and also the police and fire rescue who are working non-stop in this mess. And the EMT’s in all the emergency rooms, too.

Thank you for doing a mostly thankless job.

(clearly this guy only has to model and never has to use this gear because he is WAY too chipper in that outfit. I’ve never seen a grin like that on someone who really had to use that gear)

While you were toiling away…

…answering emails, suffering the slings and arrows and the whims of management, teaching kids, making deals, working hard, feeling stressed, wondering what it is all about….

This seagull was eating a starfish.

Just thought you’d want to know.

(click image to enlarge, you’ll be glad you did. You’ll be able to see that he’s noshing with his eyes closed. Like this is a super tasty treat. You know how you close your eyes and mmmmm when something is especially tasty. Think of that when you look at this photo)




Image by Karen Fayeth