by Royal Hopper

It was 108 in the City of Sin Yesterday.

You could cook an egg on the sidewalk at 8 a.m. and by 10 the roadways  were hot enough to cook the bacon that goes with it. It was a great week for indoor sports as the 16,000 pool playing bar flies who came into town for their annual championship tournament can testify.

It was the kind of blast-furnace day that made even the pigeons work enough courage to try and fly indoors when a car window was opened. I saw two fight over a spot by the air conditioning vent where cool water was leaking out by the cup full.
The normally timid urban pigeons seemed so reluctant to vacant that patch of shade near the leaky vent that they stood up to a dog that was trying to eat them for several seconds before deciding that being eaten was a worse fate than being exposed to the summer sun.

It was the kind of day where you could cook a chicken by leaving it on the hood of your car for a couple of hours or make jerky by leaving your turkey sandwich on the dashboard while you were taking a nap to escape the heat.

It was the kind of arid heat that makes you look at the tourists stumbling down the sidewalks in their brightly colored ill advised shorts or equally ill advised suits and jackets and wish for them to stumble and fall in a nearby pond out pf mercy. No matter where you are from you are never ready for the desert.
It was the kind of week when you went voluntarily with your significant other and your female off spring to the trendy Swedish based big box store for an a hour of shopping because you were bored and it was to damn hot to go outside for long periods. It was one of the days when you actually feel a little sorry for those holding signs asking for money on the sun baked avenue.

It was hot..!

The desert is a beautiful place full of challenging vistas and stark dray dangerous beauty. When you are not staring at a neon sign the whole place looks like the set of a sci fi b movie about beautiful but dead alien planets full of strange lifeforms. (Just go downtown on a Friday night and you will see) They say  it is hottest right before it cools off and begins its brief warm version of winter and weirdest right before things get normal. (which they never do here)

Getting used to the heat in the desert is like getting used to snow in Greenland. It isn’t a decision it is just something you do or you do not do and you move to Idaho.
The heat isnt cruel or sadistic. It does not seek out the meek or the strong. It does not seek challenge or prey. It simply is or it isn’t. It is just life in the City of Sin.

Take Care Sinners