I know how some of you like to whine about the heat and humidity, as if you live in Lake Tahoe or something and this kind of weather comes as a total shock.
Stop deluding yourself. This is Baltimore, hon. Hell's Waiting Room in the summertime. You have to suck it up and deal with it.
OK, here's what you do to beat the heat: Stay inside, grab the remote and click on Ice Road Truckers, a reality series on The History Channel that follows six lunatics as they drive their big 18-wheelers over "ice roads" carved on frozen lakes, hauling supplies to remote diamond mines near the Arctic Circle in Canada's Northwest Territories.
Believe me, five minutes of watching these guys barrel over the frozen landscape in temperatures that plunge to minus 60, and you'll be reaching for a down jacket and mittens.
In fact, this is the kind of show that could have Al Gore thinking, "Hmm, maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing with this global warming stuff. ... "
Ice-road trucking, according to the show's Web site, is "one of the world's most dangerous jobs." Which might be an understatement.
Here, for instance, are just a few of the things that can go wrong once your 60-ton rig sets off from the town of Yellowknife, Canada -- not exactly a garden spot like, um, Baltimore, from the looks of it -- for the 350-mile-long ice road:
You can skid off the road, jackknife and crash.
Another rig can plow into yours because the driver fell asleep after driving for three days straight, even though he was gobbling amphetamines like they were Tic-Tacs.
Your rig can break down and you can die of exposure in a blizzard. You can be eaten by a polar bear, which would probably be easier on you than dying alone of frostbite.
Oh, did I mention the Big Kahuna of ice-road trucking nightmares? Having your rig plunge through the ice and sink to the bottom -- with you still in it.
And you have the nerve to complain that it's a little sticky outside?
You really are a wuss, you know that?
Anyway, the series follows six truckers with different personalities who are either incredibly brave or incredibly insane, depending on your point of view.
All six talk about the buckets of adrenaline the job produces -- hearing the ice crack under your tires is a terrifying sound that can't be drowned out no matter how loud you blare "Freebird" on the classic rock station.
What terrifying sound are you worried about -- the hum of the air-conditioner going silent?
Stop griping and pay your BGE bill and maybe that won't happen.
Apparently the lure of cold, hard cash -- an ice-road trucker averages $2,000 a run and the lakes are frozen over just two months of the year -- is enough for these men to beat back their fears and give it a go.
But the truth is, I'd be bolting for the unemployment office if you offered me that job.
The ice-road trucker travels some of the bleakest terrain on Earth, in weather so cold that steel wrenches turn crystalline and shatter, driving a rig the size of a small building over ice that could collapse any minute.
Meanwhile, what are you grousing about today? Did someone set the thermostat at 75 degrees instead of 72?
Your lawn's getting a little brown from the heat?
You really need to get over yourself, you know that?
kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com