My sister and her husband just moved to Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast, and they had to shift all their furniture the other day in that heat. My step-father was up there helping. I just hope they didn’t all collapse with heat exhauustion.
Me, i’m here in Baltimore where it’s been a comfortable 10 degrees or so (50F) for the last couple of days.
Our good man Coldfire is aware of the following story because he’s a keen follower of cycling.
Last year around the beginning of November, I was appointed as a Development Coach for the Queensland Academy of Sport for U23 Road Cycling. Well, like most coaching positions on the periphery, it’s an unpaid gig you do for love, not money - which is cool. Some of you will know that the Gold Coast is a great cycling town, with all our flat beach roads and lovely hinterland.
Now, I swear to God - this past summer is the hottest motherfucking summer I’ve ever known in my life in South East Queensland. I was born in Southport some 41 years ago and I can speak with a degree of authority on this. If you’re an uber-competitive road racer, you’re out training and racing at least 5 or 6 days a week, every week without fail. And I’ve been averaging 350-400klm every week since the beginning of December with all these bloody bastard Olympic standard U23 dudes.
Man, when you’re doing THAT much training, you notice stuff like wind conditions and direction etc, and I have to say, in all my life I’ve never known 3 or 4 months of solid Northerly based humid hot winds that just never seemed to let up. I was talking with the lads about it, and we all agreed that those lovely pleasant south-easterly cooling sea-breezes just never seemed to arrive this year.
Imagine what it was like for us on Saturday morning? Our race started at 7 am and it was already 90% humidity and some 90 degrees F. By the time we’d finsished racing and then done another 50klm in training, it was 11am and it was 100F and we all lost at least 3kg in weight. We were supposed to race the next day and I started making phone calls and called it all off. Those sorts of extreme body exertions (even for world class U23 athletes) are just plain unhealthy.
Apparently, at midnight on Saturday night it was 28.5 Celsius and that was the hottest overnight temperature ever recorded in history on the Gold Coast. And to make matters worse, since our 15 month old daughter had been born it was the first night that Mrs Boo Boo and I had gone out to dinner on our own - like on a date or something. Wehn we got home she was in a demanding amorous mood. I was shot, I tell you. Absolutely shot…
I feel for you folks. It’s been very unseasonably warm here as well. Got all the way up to 3 today, and if it keeps up much longer most of the snow will melt. Quite the travesty. It’s not sposed to do that till April.
Speaking of last night’s storms…
My daughter was standing at her kitchen sink (on the northern end of the Gold Coast) running what was passing for cold water over hardboiled eggs, still in the all metal saucepan they were cooked in, when lightening struck the the ground or the house or something almost on top of them, and she recieved a massive jolt up her right arm. It went numb and aching immediately, fortunately the ambulance was attending a sick person across the road from her house and a neighbour rushed to get them - she ended up in hospital overnight under observation with an erratic heartbeat.
How scary is that? She could have died - people have died this summer from lightening strikes around Brissy. Anyway she says she is fine today, but I think it might be a while before she goes anywhere water or metal in a storm.
Winter can’t get here soon enough for me.