Dad’s Porsche: Too hot to drive
The weather here on the homefront has been reminiscent of a scene from the iconic coming-of-age classic, The Sandlot. If you didn’t grow up with it like I did, The Sandlot follows the exploits of a band of kids in 1960s Southern California who play pickup baseball every day. . . on a sand lot. Being summertime, it could get quite hot. One day, in those largely pre-A/C days of the mid 20th-century, it’s so hot that all the boys can do is sit in front of a fan and try not to move. Their solution is eventually to go to the municipal pool (a scene that I must admit, has not aged well).
As I sat on my screened porch this past weekend, under a fan, trying not to move, I wondered: is it ever too hot to drive? Those who live in the interior parts of Australia, the American Southwest, and other desert climes will have to forgive me my ignorance born of a more temperate upbringing. I understand that the car will function (thanks to modern miracles like glycol cooling). A/C will even make the experience in the cabin tolerable.
What I’m talking about is more elemental than simply function. When every surface in the environment radiates like it is freshly emerged from a kiln, going for a pleasure drive feels extravagant (and not in a good way). I find no joy in adding heat to excess. And even if I would not be providing locomotion myself, the heat still feels like it demands rest, not motion.
So, the 911 sits beneath its cover. Patiently waiting for the heat wave to pass. Waiting for another opportunity when it is possible to do civilized things like stand outside and talk to a neighbor without both feeling the imperative to run for cover and replenish fluids. Or for the chance to walk from the door to the driveway and have it be just a walk, not an existential journey at the extremes of thermodynamics.
Put otherwise: if my kids can’t play outside, then neither can I.
