Beat the Summer Heat

So summer is officially upon us and already we're beginning to bake. I just love the interviews with people that are often shown on TV, they stand drenched in sweat with a bottle of water (often half-full) complaining about the heat and wishing that it were winter already. On the flip side, if you see these same folks in the winter they will be bundled up with only their eyes visible and a cup of coffee (again.... half full) steaming as they complain about the cold and wish for the heat of summer. You just can't make some people happy I guess. But still, we are reaching near record temperatures along the eastern seaboard and we haven't even made it through to the dog-days of August as yet.

Having lived in DC for the majority of my life, I know how wild the weather can get. It goes from extremely hot to extremely cold. The years that I spent at the University of Maryland taught me that all too well. You hiked from one end of campus to the other with your bags and your books weighing you down slowly sweating away the pounds. With limited time and transport to shuttle you around campus at times, it became almost a necessity to walk fast in the summer heat and winter cold in order to avoid missing class.

As such it also became an indavertant necessity to come up with ways to stay cool. Everyone has their methods, but I thought I'd share some of mine with you. One of the easiest and most obvious is to stay hydrated. Drinking water by the bottle full is a good way to make sure that you replace the liquids you'll sweat off. Some people swear by cold soda. At one time I would have agreed with them but the fact is that soda actually serves to dehydrate you even more. you can drink it continuously but it won't help you over the long run. That and the fact that you're ingesting large amounts of sugar which is completely counter if you're attempting to workout and lose weight!

So how else to stay cool? The consumption of ice cream is definitely appealing as well but as with soda, you end up with an abundance of sugar in the system. The side effect of this is that at least you have the energy to continue bounding from one place to another. As a college student it was quite easy to resort to rather.... unique methods of staying cool. At times it must have seemed a bit strange but when you're stuck out in the summer heat looking to stay cool you will do almost anything. One of the popular methods was to buy a drink from the dining hall and then once it was empty, pour the ice into our caps so that it would melt and drip cold ice over our heads.

Another method which was rather childish I grant you, but still loads of fun (and effective in cooling you off) was to run through the sprinklers on campus and allow the water to evaporate as you walk along. The key to using this method successfully is ensuring that you do it with enough time to dry out because no matter what, it's no fun sitting soaked to the bone in an air conditioned classroom. Even in the height of summer it's possible to catch a cold!

Common sense is probably the wisest course of action and should dictate the best way for you to stay cool. Wearing long pants and a heavy sweater is probably not the wisest course of action but to each his own. I suppose we have yet to find a better method of staying cool than making a journey to the beach and staying cool in the surf. There is something to be said of going to the beach. I think Kennedy said it best when he said that since we are supposed to have come from the ocean, it is only natural that we would wish to return there. I'm inclined to agree....