So Arizona tried to kill me — part 1

  • I feel like a doof. When we moved from South­ern Cal­i­for­nia to the Mid­west, some­one there kindly let us know that win­ter makes a cou­ple seri­ous attempts to kill you every year. So shouldn’t I have fig­ured out on my own that Ari­zona would do the same thing dur­ing the summer?

    I think I can say that this is what hap­pened. Of course, I brought some of it on myself. We have spent the last two days dri­ving Greg’s car from Mis­souri to here, and it’s a good car — a snazzy red Jag — but it’s an old car. And the mechanic men­tioned to us that the AC was look­ing unre­li­able. I didn’t like the sound of that, but we didn’t have time to fig­ure out any Plan B, and so the guy gave us a zap of freon and off we went.

    And I can hap­pily report that the AC lasted us until the last cou­ple hours of the trip. When we were still up in the moun­tains and it was in the 80′s, it didn’t seem so bad. But once the moun­tains were in the rear-view mir­ror, some­one turned the oven on and things got nasty.

    To make a long story short, I grabbed a chair just inside a Fry’s Elec­tron­ics at about the time that I could feel like I wasn’t too far from pass­ing out from the heat, and the secu­rity guys eyed my lobster-complexion ner­vously. And it took a rather lonnnng time to not feel awful.

    Intre­pid Greg put me in an air-conditioned cab to get to his new “home” and the story ends hap­pily, with me finally back at 98.6 and cook­ies and cream ice cream wait­ing in the fridge to cel­e­brate my con­tin­ued sur­vival. Thus endeth my first day in Phoenix, and although I’m pretty sure I won’t be drop­ping dead every day, Kay still gets props for not­ing back here that the sum­mers are “shock­ing.” Why, yes they are.

    And I just real­ized that today is the Fourth of July. A bet­ter patriot would be fig­ur­ing out where to find the good fire­works dis­play. But since I almost was a fire­works dis­play, I think I’ll just stay right here until the Jag’s AC gets fixed. Or Octo­ber. Whichever comes first.


    Related posts:

    1. I want to have tea with Sir Hugh! Right now!!
    2. The rays of rav­ish­ing light and glory
    3. Cars and materialism
    4. Bro­ken voice­box, bro­ken head
    5. Gracie’s got swine flu!

    July 5th, 2011 | Grace | 7 Comments |

7 Responses and Counting...

  • Word­mama 07.05.2011

    Poor boo-boo! I think the prep is the same for your cool­ing sys­tem as for the car: water, water, and more water. Glad you sur­vived the first day, at least!

  • Mimi

    When my cousin-in-law, who lives in Gilbert, told me that it was sup­posed to be 118 this week, I thought of you. I’d just be sit­ting in the pool whim­per­ing. I am so sorry.

  • Grace

    That would work if it was the radi­a­tor. The AC sys­tem uses freon, and unfor­tu­nately, the car’s been sit­ting idle for so long that the sys­tem just has leaks and cracks and what­not. We had more freon put in the car before we left, and it lasted us for about two days, but we can’t keep doing that. We’re going to have to just drive it like this for a while, because, of course, doing the big fix it needs is a boda­cious expense.

    I know it all sounds very dra­matic, but we’ve fig­ured out that we can go the dis­tance until we can swing that expense. That cer­tainly wasn’t how we wanted things to work out, but I had more luck today with fig­ur­ing out the rules of trav­el­ing under these weird cir­cum­stances. That trip to Fry’s was a half hour trip dur­ing the hottest time of the day — I won’t be doing that again. With strat­egy and luck, we will live to see a brighter (but not hot­ter) day.

  • Grace

    Ugh. Well, let’s hope it doesn’t hit that. Or else I’ll hit … I don’t know. The bars? The floor? Something.

  • s-p

    I was for­tu­nate enough to be in north­ern Mon­tana dur­ing the heat wave. Last sum­mer I was work­ing out­doors dur­ing the 115+ stretch in July. I lived to tell about it.… wel­come to Phoenix. I’m back in town. If you guys are here, let’s get together.

  • Grace

    Ayeee! I didn’t even know that out­door ther­mome­ters went that high.

    And unfor­tu­nately, we passed each other. I was down there get­ting Greg set­tled when you were off on vaca­tion. I’m back in muggy MO now. Greg’s hap­pily esconced in your neck of the woods (or cacti, as the case may be), but I think he’s up to his eye­balls in work for a while. Hope­fully, he can make it to church to rep­re­sent for the team.

  • s-p

    I’m sure we’ll cross paths sooner or later. We’re “float­ing” among the area parishes for pos­si­bly a few weeks so we may or may not be at our Mis­sion (St. John’s). Long story. Hope­fully happy end­ing coming.

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