It's Not the Heat . . .

Well, okay, that's not true. If you live in Alvin, Texas, it is the heat. But it's the humidity, too. Put them together and you have some interesting running conditions.

When you go outside in the morning around 7:30, you can kid yourself along for a few seconds. After all, it's only 80º. How bad can it be? So you start out, and before you've gone a block the humidity has wrapped itself around you like a succubus. It inhales your breath. It adds 20 pounds to each shoe. The t-shirt that had lain lightly on your shoulders flaps around you like a wet shroud.

Since Alvin is only a few miles from the Gulf, you'd think there'd be clouds. You'd be wrong. It's like the sky was imported from Death Valley

You'd think there'd be a soft sea breeze, too. Once again, you'd be wrong. The only breeze is the one you create for yourself as you jog. At the speed I jog, that's almost no breeze at all.

After ten minutes, you start to wonder why you started out in the first place.

After twenty minutes, you hope you remembered to wear the visor with your name and the emergency phone numbers written on it.

After thirty minutes, you begin to think about the G2 that's waiting in the refrigerator, and you hope you live long enough to open a bottle and slug it down.

After forty minutes, you stagger into the driveway, take off the t-shirt, wring it out, and pinch yourself to make sure you've really survived another day.

For some reason you can't stop thinking about tomorrow. Damn Fleetwood Mac.