I think this is the beginning of the apocalypse. At least, I imagine that it might feel a bit like this. The heat is unbearable, just like last week but now with an added symptom of world-endliness: extreme winds. I made the mistake today of asking Kane to accompany me to the City Museum. It's right in the CBD and it's one of the many "tourist" attractions in this city that we've never bothered to attend.
We have Marc and Alana's car, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad since we'd be in the air conditioned car on the way there, a quick stint in the open to get into the museum, then we'd be exploring the undoubtedly air conditioned facilities for a couple hours, then repeat backwards. The assumption that this would be tolerable may have been correct if it were, say 95° outside, maybe even 105° with a breeze. This assumption was incorrect with 115° temperatures and body-slamming, bird-inhibiting, volcano-blast-like winds.
Second mistake: parking the car about 3 blocks from the museum. Seemingly an innocuous choice, but again, in the conditions, nearly fatal. Getting into the museum wasn't too bad since we caught the free tram from the car. The museum was not air conditioned as far as I could tell, but it was relatively cool since it's the old Treasury building; a stone bunker from the 1800's (mental note: probably not a bad place to be during an actual apocalypse). The place was nice but really nothing terribly special.
As we left to head back to the car we were accosted by continual bombarement of head-on, fire-hot wind. Kane's hat blew off. Dirt was lodged into my eyes, nose, ears, etc, etc. Airborn leaves, sand, and other debris pelted us vigorously on our three block journey back to the car. We couldn't really speak for fear of opening our mouths and having a bird or plastic bag blow in. I felt utterly helpless.
It took, quite honestly, about seven minutes to trudge from the museum to the car and as we pried open the locks and melted into a smaller, more personal oven, we both started sweating. The massive winds had kept any previous sweat instantly evaporated before we could detect it. But now that we were in the car we were both completely drenched. Walking for seven minutes in this weather was equivalent to riding a bike up a hill for hours. I rarely can understand how someone can die of exposure. It's not hard to imagine on a day like this.
Amongst all this, I had a variety of thoughts, most of which included, "Dear Lord, get me to the car, get me to the car now", but some of which included things like, "How can those pigeons be fighting over a hamburger bun when it's this hot outside?", and "At what temperature does metal start to melt?". Actually the person I felt most sorry for on this fine day, was the pretty asian woman stepping out of the fancy car in her wedding dress. This miserable day happened to be the one she and her mate chose to remember for the rest of their lives. I think that's guaranteed. I commented to Kane that I would personally rather have monsoon rain on my wedding day than heat/wind like this*.
On our way home one of the traffic lights was off, which made me start to fear the power going out like last Friday's heat wave madness. And that's how my brain stumbled onto the whole apocalypse thing - what if the power went out, then the water? What the heck would we do? I live on the 14th floor in a huge city with millions of people, not exactly a situation where you can make it too long without a visit to the grocery store. City people effectively have no survival skills outside the confines of our urban environments, which is a bit odd and a bit scary.
But since the world was not ending, we proceeded to arrive safely back at our apartment, worship the air conditioning, take multiple showers to cool down (and get the dust off), and continue with our internet-based, happy lives. This extreme heat did inspire me to do something I had never done before: put ice in my orange juice. They always offer ice in your OJ on planes, and I'm like, "Uh, no, the juice is already cold, why do I want to water it down?". But today was good cause for change. I still don't know why they offer the ice in your milk on the plane though, why would I ever want to water down my milk? That's just gross.
To be fair, the rest of this past week has had particularly fine weather; it's been sunny and warm (you might have considered it to be hot, but certainly not life-threateningly so) with generally no awful surprises. Today was just another freak spike in temperature, a fad that I hope is rapidly going out of style here in Melbourne.
*Note to the wedding gods: For my hypothetical wedding in the distant future, I would technically prefer to have perfect sunny 80° with a light breeze, not either of the aforementioned heinous weather conditions.
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