Yeah, it's hot. Head in to the office at 6 in the mornings, it's 80-90 degrees. I plan my day so I can leave a bit early in the afternoons, so not as much traffic and less stop and go...as it's been 102-111 in the afternoons. I just make sure I get a good dose of cold water before heading home...I know I've got an ice cold brew waiting on me.

 

11:30 PM 91 with a heat index of 106 in St. Louis. At 3 AM 87 with a heat index of 96.

At 11:30 PM in Rolla Missouri (100 miles SW) it was 85 and a heat index of 87.
In Branson it was 83 with a heat index of 85. In Memphis is was 87 with a heat index of 89. In Oklahomo City it was 87 with a heat index of 89.

At 3 AM in west Texas areas it was in the low 70's and high 60's.

We have a pollution bubble over St. Louis that never allows us to cool off at night and it even breaks up storms that restart on the other side of the river.

The worser places I have ever been are New Orleans and Houston, often in the later afternoon a big old bad looking menacingly dark storm will slide in and dump about 2 inches of rain in 20 minutes. The clouds disappear and out comes the sun back to the mid and upper 90's and instant steam bath. In an hour you'd never know it even rained.

 

As hot as it is, I'll still take it over that cold chit in January.

Heat Index over 100 today....

I'll be the first to admit though, we don't do a whole lot of riding in the afternoon when it's this hot.

 

Lots of water and the old Grin & Bear It.....

If you really want to ride, you just do it.....

 

Yeah I grew up there until I was 18. Still go back often to visit family. Those summers sucked. I can remember sitting outside at 3 or 4 in the morning and it still just miserably hot. The humidity traps the heat or something and it will not cool down! I miss a lot about Missouri for sure, but living here in the desert, it can get pretty hot, but it's nice and dry, and it gets really cool at night. Cold even! That's the best part about living in a desert IMO.

 

Couple weeks ago we're running through Ohio for the day, 90+ and high humidity. We started first thing in the morning and rode all day, pull into Mad River HD for a break, look around etc. I actually felt like I was drunk, totally exhausted and wiped out. We were stopping a lot for water breaks too. It never seemed that bad a couple years ago, now the heat gets to me more. Won't stop me from riding in it though.

 

Let me tell you one of those "When I was a boy stories".

No walking 80 miles to school in daily blizzards and fighting Indians and Wrestling bears story either.

My family moved to St. Louis in the late 50's from extreme northern Iowa (4 miles from the Minnesota border).

I did not know what an A/C is, never even had a clue. I couldn't sleep at first and part of it was the heat for sure but most of it was all the noise from peoples A/C units droning in unison endlessly and us having only a fan. Having to learn how to sleep with all that noise going on..... WT?

How the heck did people survive all this before A/C?

A few years back we had a storm knock out power for a week in St. Louis (some more so). It was 97 during the days, I thought I was going to die. Seriously. At one point I remeber thinking this is really serious and if they don't get our power back on soon I really think I might die? I mean it would only drop down to low 90's and after midnight it might dive into the high 80's so there was no relief at all. About that time we brought home a truck with a generator for powering an arc welder and my neighbors were lined up with extension cords and look on their faces I'll never forget.
I was a mini-utility company for 3 days. Then it rained one night and all those cords got wet and the damn generator blew up. 4 hours later the power came on.

No power, I took lots of rides and had people lined up like a County Fair ride wanting to go, too. No stores were open, no ATM's worked, no ice available, no food survived, not even a fast food joint to get a meal....nothing..... munch on dry cereal, chips, and peanut butter sandwiches with your choice of tap water or warm soda. Go find a hotel? Why? The few that had generator power? $300 a night or more and booked full. We had to travel well over 200 miles one-way to find a motel vacancy.
Let's go to Home Depot and buy a generator? Would be nice if they were open and had power....so I could pay with a card wouldn't it?

People in Alabama found out the hard way this spring as did many others around the country with wide area outages

It could have been worse. I had just done laundry before the storm came, so I had a good supply of clean drawers.

Here's my tip:

Always do the wash and never put it off, anything could happen anytime and having clean underwear on hand is the least appreciated comfort in life. With clean skimpies you can survive anything a lot easier, trust me.

 

Hasn't even got hot yet! August is when it really get "sweaty" around here. Going to be nice with all the flooding and standing waer. Probably will be able to "saddle up" the mosquitoes then!

 

sun screen and a place to go....as long as you keep moving.
Gonna be kinda warm in South Carolina today but I'll be riding here in a few minutes most of the rest of the day....Its winters with a snowmobile suite on and frost on my goggles riding in sleet and snow that gets me. I'll take hot summers any day.

 

My bud and I were house sitting for my kids in southern Missouri a few weeks ago. We did about 1500 miles of backroads and the temps were also in the 90's....it was awful-but we had to ride the great roads there.