You love this, do you?

Thursday 7/2/26

The heat is miserable. You can't do anything in it. It's like you can't live in it. Today is supposed to be hotter. Do the people who go on about summer and how they wish it was time and again throughout the rest of the year like this? This is fun to them? Preferable? You can't walk a block without sweating.

That feels nice? Something to look forward to? The ironic thing about summer is there can be more days that people have to stay indoors than there are in winter. I mean with government warnings. "Stay inside, people." I'm talking Boston now. Anecdotally it feels worse to me in recent years. I don't have the temperature data or anything. Going by my memories and of course my stairs sense I think it's getting worse over time.

Who knows when I'll be back in the Monument again. Sunday at the earliest. It isn't looking great for next week either. As with the snow days in the winter, I'm derailed. De-staired. It's frustrating. I haven't felt like there's been a good, clear stretch of weeks without a closure for a long time. I'm talking multiple months. Closures in March, closures in May, closures in June, closures in July. Closures before that.

Just after 9:30 yesterday morning I saw that the temperature was in the low eighties, and, wouldn't you know, I raced to get ready to head to the Monument, because it technically could have been open as that heat index was under 87 degrees. Then I checked the site and saw that it was closed. They shut it down in advance, which makes sense. Weren't going to open it for an hour, because come 11 AM that heat index was probably going to be over 87 degrees and stay there for the next few days.

There was a World Cup watch party in Downtown Crossing of all places last night, which is pretty funny. Come sit in Downtown Crossing--that depressing part of Boston you don't go unless it's the only place a given store is--in the 95 degree heat outside the convenience store. That must have been awful. The idea of voluntarily sitting in Downtown Crossing is inherently sketchy to begin with for any reason. What kind of person would have done this last night? Why wouldn't the city have such an event in the Common instead? Right at the base of the hill where there's that big stretch of grass.

Nonetheless, I waited until it got hot enough where I thought it'd be oppressive to be outside at all, because, as I said, I wanted to push myself, stair-wise, and then headed for City Hall. The air itself felt like something obstructive. You know how in Romancing the Stone Michael Douglas's character has that machete and he's hacking away at vegetation in the jungle to forge a path? That's how the air feels when it gets this hot. Like you have to clear it out of the way in order to move forward.

How did it go on the stairs? Not awesomely. I did 3000 stairs, but had to take two breaks to do that. I was wilting. Not super steady on my feet at times. Had to shake my head to clear out the heat fog and tell myself to focus so I didn't fall down. I was sweating through my shirt before I even got there.

A city employee approached me and asked how many years I'd been doing this and tried to guess, putting it at two or three. I guess that's good--when you're so committed to running stairs that you appear as a fixture to people at what are your back-up stairs that you primarily use when your main stairs are closed. He also could have been remembering me from COVID, when these stairs became my main stairs for a year-and-a-half or two years. Whatever it was.

I'm tired of coming back in clothes that are just so disgusting. You can't hang them up, even if you had the space and a normal living situation, which I don't. They belong in a bucket. Or strip in the basement, put them in the machine, and walk upstairs wearing nothing? Probably inadvisable. I end up throwing them in the tub until I get a plastic bag and carry them downstairs.

But this is the best time of the year, right? Do the people who say that go outside much? I think they're people who like to go to a beach and sit there. Do nothing else but sit on their asses at a place that has more of a breeze. Not move a muscle. Close to literally. They're able to sit there and not think, too, which is the key for sitting in one spot for people in this world. Have no thoughts as you do so. Paste brain. A smear of paste in the head.

I can't do that. Even if I was in a life position with the means and the normalcy of situation. A house, a family, money, a car, a beach sticker.

I think I've been underselling the impact the heat has to myself when it comes to working out and stairs. It feels like nothing should impact me that much if I'm where I should be in my fitness, but maybe that's incorrect. Does the heat really have that much sway, though? Like it completely alters what you're capable of? I feel like that doesn't reflect well on me, but maybe I'm being too hard on myself. 3000 stairs shouldn't be any kind of a struggle for me at City Hall. On a normal day, it isn't, yesterday it's a two-break undertaking.

As I've said, I'm having a hard time, too, getting a read on where I'm at fitness-wise. My sense is I haven't done well for some time--the last time I was decent-ish was back in September in my view, before the government shutdown (as I was saying about closures; that one was, what, a month-and-a-half?). The Monument finally opened again in November, I had to get up to speed, then it started closing because of snow, then it started closing because of heat. But even in September I didn't feel like I was where I should have been in some regards.

But maybe I should also accept--or be aware of, anyway--that this is the season of distortion. The heat--and it can just be the regular summer air, too--makes it harder to get a read on how well you are or aren't doing. So then you just need to stay at it and trust the process of getting out there and doing it.