You Californians stay put in your gun-grabbing, liberty-bashing, People's Republic of Political Correctness. Give my disregards to Governor Moonbeam. And that goes double for you effete and epicene residents of such Eastern states as the Commonwealth of Taxachusetts. Isn't that where Elizabeth 'Fauxcahontas' Warren spouts her nonsense?<\/span><\/p>\n Yesterday afternoon I was out and about in my Jeep Wrangler. The onboard thermometer reported the outside temperature as 116 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale.<\/span><\/p>\n Malcolm Pollack inquires, "Meanwhile, how do you manage in such heat? Do you just stay indoors? I suppose it's like living in Minneapolis in the winter."<\/span><\/p>\n It is no problem at all. We love the desert and deserts are typically hot in the summer. But there is often a 30 degree differential between the high and the low. 'Surely' it is better to live in a place where it is dry and hot in the afternoon but cool in the mornings rather in a flat and boring Eastern or Midwestern place where it is a humid 90 around the clock. Surely. <\/em>(Might there be a bit of geographical chauvinism in play here?)<\/span><\/p>\n Do we just stay indoors? Of course not. This morning around 5:30 I hiked down to the swimming pool where I swam and did water aerobics for about an hour, chatting up the ladies and satisfying my social needs for the day. Then I went into the hot tub (sic!) for 15 minutes where I did stretching exercises. Then back into the pool for a cool-down, followed by a shower and a walk home. Other days I ride my mountain bike to the pool, swim, then go for a good ride while wet: with the soaked bandanna around my neck I'm as cool as a cucumber.<\/span><\/p>\n This afternoon I will go out around 3:30 to do some pro bono<\/em> chess coaching at a local library for all comers, young and old. (I'm a strong coffee-house player; highest USCF rating in the 1700s.) Getting into a locked hot car that has been in the sun for an hour or two takes some getting used to, but one finds that steering a car requires less contact with the steering wheel than you might think.<\/span><\/p>\n From 1991 to 2009 I drove a 1988 Jeep Cherokee out here with no A.C. I'm not lying! I'm frugal. (Bought it in Ohio at T-giving in '87.) One summer I drove in one shot from Bishop, California in the High Sierra across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts to Phoenix. Stopping for gas in Blythe, California, just shy of the Colorado River and the Arizona border the temp. was 115. You drive open-windowed with an ice-cold wet bandanna around your neck. The only other motorists with their windows down were Mexicans. I felt a certain 'solidarity' with them. Does that make me a racist? Am I guilty of 'cultural appropriation'?<\/span><\/p>\n Tomorrow morning I pick up a guy at 5:30 and we head East into the desert for a little target practice, arriving at my favorite spot at 6. After expending 200-300 rounds between us, we head back around 8.<\/span><\/p>\n So no, we don't stay indoors.<\/span><\/p>\n I would say that Arizona is absolutely the best place to live year-round in the U.S. for all sorts of reasons. <\/span><\/p>\n There's a rattlesnake-infested wilderness right outside my door. Up for a hike? We leave in the dark, commence hiking at first light, and are done around ten A. M.<\/span><\/p>\n