After an outdoor karate workout in August, while we were walking off the field, a friend started expressing surprise that a classmate was still working out, and how is she doing that? Nobody else could see her. We got him inside fast. Later, he explained that he was very vividly hallucinating her doing continual spinning kicks while balancing on a fencepost.
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Absolutely - I have long felt and strongly agree with this. In many ways it’s been even worse for the world than social media (or at least, the torrent of terrible that social media has wrought was worsened by following hard on the heels of the Reality TV phenomenon). IMHO.
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Yikes! I started to sweat really bad and my temples were throbbing so bad my glasses wouldn’t stay on my face.
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And then your body runs out of sweat, and you die.
It’s scary to think about how much energy is carried away by a liter of evaporated sweat. Take a camp stove, put a pot with a liter of water in it, crank that burner up all the way, and wait… My Coleman is ~7,500 BTUs, and it would probably take 15 minutes to boil it dry.
eta: The human sweat cooling system is amazing, but don’t demand miracles.
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Well, I seem to recall one of their slogans was “Hydrate or DIE!”, but I’m probably mistaken.
If I’m fool enough to go hiking in the central Arizona valley, IN SUMMER, I’m hauling around at least a full gallon on water, wearing sun block, and a large-brimmed hat. However, I’m not doing that because I don’t have that sort of death wish. (the smart people out here wait until fall before going hiking up a mountain, even if it IS in the middle of the city…)
Right. There was a show titled ‘Property Brothers’ that I always read in my head as Property Bothers’, as it was more fun that way.
Turned out that those two were later revealed to be not such nice folks as they portrayed.
“Long before they were TV stars, Jonathan and Drew began earning a meager income as clowns” That makes them suspicious right there these days.
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Yeah, reality tv is already cheaply produced and reckless with people’s lives, but religious tv is almost certainly ultra-low budget and totally lacking in any kind of safeguards.
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And, I hope, a long-sleeved lightweight shirt over at least a light cotton undershirt. With full-length lightweight pants over a light water-trapping baselayer. My summer wardrobe (from before I moved to Montana) is mostly REI Safari khakis for that reason. A bit pricy, but they’re durable and cool even working outdoors in 45 degree heat.
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Camelback is the craziest hike despite being the most popular in PHX. I did it around this time of year, arriving as the darkness turned to dawn, yet had to walk nearly a mile on city streets to the trail because all the street parking was already taken by throngs of hikers. By the time the sun was up it was already too hot to feel good about hiking the clogged trails.
God botherers didn’t do their research? Why am I not surprised?
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My neighbor died last year due to a heat exhaustion related heart attack. He was mowing his lawn in the morning, but it was already pretty hot. Unfortunately he collapsed in his backyard and wasn’t discovered for several hours.
He was a good person, and it was a very sad loss to his family, friends, and neighbors.
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Even if they’d brought more water I wouldn’t bet against a bad outcome.
I had a deeply unpleasant run-in with oral rehydration therapy as a kid when my family was vacationing somewhere much warmer and sunnier than I was used to: our water supply was ample; but my perception of thirst wasn’t 100% reliable and I was wholly unused to losing electrolytes in sweat so quickly even when idle. I just went from feeling fine, if hot, to being dubiously lucid and getting shoved full of ORT without ever really noticing the transition; and I was just lying around on a boat, not distracted by hiking related muscle pain or anything.
Having water would certainly beat running out of it; but I wouldn’t be thrilled by the odds of heat-stressed amateurs even with it, especially packaged such that it’s really easy to keep your mouth feeling nice and ■■■■■ with teeny little sips on demand that don’t actually add up to sufficient consumption to replace losses.
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I’ve lived in he desert for about 35 years now. I can explain it so just about anybody can understand it.
When my kids were in elementary school in the 90s, everyone was starting to recycle stuff. Our city had private waste pick-up and they didn’t offer recycling. I knew the children wanted to have a recycling program, and I was in a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, so I got a grant and wrote a cafeteria waste recycling curriculum, with experiments, so it was a class science project. Two local schools tried it. When I was experimenting with my own compost pile, I was measuring the heat with a long thermometer twice every day and looking for a high heat which would be caused by composting bacteria activity. I was getting confusing readings. My husband, who has an engineering degree, suggested that these odd heat readings were caused by thermal mass. Well, Of course! A big pile of compost is a mass. When it sits out in the summer heat, its mass slowly gains heat until it eventually attains the same temperature as the ambient temperature.
So where am I gong with this? Well, we are big masses. After several hours in the summer heat, we begin to attain the heat of the ambient temperature.
Remember when you were a kid and you felt ill and when your mom took your temperature, she was very concerned if your temperature was over 100 degrees? That’s because all moms know that you can die-your organs shut down- if you continue to have a high temperature. A temperature of 103 degrees is when the panic button gets hit, and she gets someone to drive you to the emergency room. (I drove my younger son to the emergency room when he fell off a trampoline and knocked out two teeth. I don’t recommend the mom drive, ‘K? From WHAT I REMEMBER OF IT, it was stressful.)
So again, where am I going with this? Here: Please stop telling people that if someone goes on a long hike in 110 degree weather, it’s OK if that person is “prepared”. No, no, no, no! You perpetuate the myth that having water will prevent thermal mass from happening. Don’t let someone you love make a mass of themselves! But seriously, it’s like when you were sick as a child-over 100 degrees and you’re in trouble. The correct procedure in the circumstance of when someone wants you to do this is to raise your hand up, palm out, to the level of your face and say, “No, thanks, I’ll stay at the hotel.” This simple procedure may save your life.
Thank you for your kind attention.
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“The Lord will provide (water and shade).”
“Thanks, but I’ll bring my own just in case.”
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