It feels like 111 degrees according to my iPhone. I am perspiring…and I almost never perspire. I went to Campus Lake and the Baby Ducks and Baby Geese ran to meet me. I am a regular there. As I took some additional photos of Carbondale…I heard a man screaming at the top of his lungs. There was so much profanity that it was difficult to discern his complaint. A young mother with her little children looked afraid…as did the kids. Hot weather produces additional anger issues. We have road construction on every side. I think it must be the fruits of the new Infrastructure Bill passed with bi-partisan support. As I passed them, the hot construction workers were laying on some concrete that had the shade of a tree overhead. I remembered summers in Eldorado.

‘How did you sleep…Billy B.,’ Neva J. asked? ‘About an hour…I think…my sheet is wet with sweat,’ Billy B. moaned. ‘Did you open your bedroom window two inches…as Demetrius instructed and let the fan that is on exhaust in the kitchen window…pull in the cool night air,’ Neva J. said with a wry smile? ‘It did not get below 82 degrees outside and the pitiful amount of air that can seep in through a two-inch crack…felt like a furnace,’ Billy B. remarked as he wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Chet is coming over and he assures me that he has the answer to the heat wave,’ said Billy B. wearily.

‘Good morning Neva J….my you are looking lovely this morning,’ said the always complimentary, Chet. ‘What is your answer to the heat wave,’ said the perspiring Neva J.? ‘Think cool thoughts,’ Chet replied with a wide smile on his bespectacled face. ‘Knock it off…Chet…you said that you have something special to tell me about beating the heat wave…now spill the beans, Billy B. demanded! ”Hold your horses…my friend…it will be my pleasure to share with you my secret, Chet laughed. ‘I have manufactured a container of ice…50 pounds thereof…and a high-speed fan that blows the cool air off of the melting ice…,’ Chet said. ‘As you sit in front of the Ice Fan Cooler…you will be transported to Alaska…and thus will need a winter coat,’ Chet continued confidently. ‘I have sprinkled a bit of LSD on the chipped ice…and the cooling results are amazing,’ Chet grinned.

‘I feel like that I am really in Alaska,’ said Jane. ‘I do not see any psychedelic colors or shapes or feel like I am on a bad trip, Jane continued. ‘There is a sign for Ketchikan, Alaska…We are disembarking from a Cruise Ship and this is as real as the wonderful Lochs and Bagles that I enjoyed this morning on the ship, said a happy Daryl. ‘You got me…the ice machine and higher-powered fan is a Time Machine that I developed with Dr. Smith from Lost In Space…we are in 2005. and we are in Ketchikan, laughed Chet.

‘What about Eldorado and our lives in the 60s,’ asked Neva J.? ”We will return when fall arrives and the heat wave is over,’ said Chet.