I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed, but it is HOT in Prince George these days.
I’m using various ways to try and stay cool – having the fan on at home; making sure I drink plenty of liquids; wearing a hat when I go outside (although I have found wearing a toque doesn’t help a lot); spending a couple of hours a day lying in an ice bath (not really, but I have been tempted).
Then I take a look at a place like Kamloops, which was up around 40 on the weekend, and I realize we’re not that badly off.
I know what the summers in Kamloops can be like, having worked at Kamloops This Week newspaper for about a dozen years.
There are a couple things I remember from those years. Kamloops has an event called Hot Night in the City, which is a car show on Victoria Street downtown. At least, it started being on Victoria Street. It has grown to encompass a few of the side streets as well.
On the day of the event, cars are parked along Victoria Street for about five or six blocks, on both sides of the street. It looks impressive, and it is. A lot of great cars and trucks on display.
The only problem is Victoria Street runs east-west. That means in the late afternoon, when the temperature is the highest, the sun is beating straight down on large pieces of metal, stretching five or six blocks.
It gets warm, to say the least.
I remember a couple of years walking down the middle of Victoria Street and feeling waves of heat hit me from both sides. It felt like being in an oven.
Merritt can be even hotter than Kamloops in the summer, a fact I realized when I was covering the Merritt Mountain Music Festival. You didn’t have quite as much metal reflecting the heat, but you did have a very large open space in front of the stage, where most of the crowd could be found.
There were always a number of security people in front of the stage, and one of their jobs was to watch for people who seemed to be having real problems with the heat. The first thing the security person did was grab one of the bottles of water spaced along the front of the stage and get it into the person, then get them more help if needed.
Of course, it was also hot for the security people those afternoons. I suggested to one of the people in charge of security that they take some of the bandannas they had, soak them in cold water, then put them in the freezer section of the fridge in the media room.
When one of the security people went out for their shift, they could grab one of the bandannas, wrap it around their neck, and have at least some relief from the heat.
Not a bad idea for anyone who has to spend time out in the heat, I would suggest.