Tonight, as I write this masterpiece of a blog, this timeless, epic wonder that will hold true against such historical literature as The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Tempest, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Shore Thing, there is a meteorological event happening right now in the Valley of the Sun. A wall of dust spreads across the city, engulfing all the tiny inhabitants of the sprawling metropolis known as Phoenix and her siblings (Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, Mesa, etc.) like an act of hatred from an enraged, Egyptian king risen from the dead who punishes his fellow desert dwellers. Or like the movie The Mummy. This cloud of dust will clog your air vents, get your car dirty, get dust in your eyes! And it is welcomed, because it is weather, other than the breezeless, blistering heat that plagues us daily. It’s called a Haboob. Funny, because when I was a kid, we called them dust storms. Sometime in the past six years I’ve been away, people had to get fancy with their terminology.
Phoenix Haboob
Mummy Haboob
Here’s a few examples of what it looks like from my point of view, how the dust fades the intense brightness of the sun.
Not only does Phoenix produce Universal Studio-esque dust storms, but it also raises the temperature in your car to over 120 degrees.
Feast your eyes!
Ambiguous substance found on backseat.
I know what you’re thinking: David had a really good time in the back seat of the ol’ Jeep Cherokee. Well, you’d be wrong, because I never have a good time.
…Ever.
Unfortunately, a can of Fix-A-Flat exploded in the back of my car, sending gobs of sticky foam onto the windows, back seat and ceiling.
I read the warning labels on the can (after the matter, of course), and it said DO NOT store in areas that reach 120 degrees. Which means that it reached over 120 degrees inside my car. This had to have happened to other people, and it has! I Googled “fix-a-flat exploded in my car,” and quite a few hits came up.
What to do about that mess?
Yahoo! Answers was useless. Everyone’s advice was to use air fresheners. Thanks.
I went to the Fix-A-Flat website to see if they had advice on how to clean it up. Of course they had no words of wisdom on this, probably because people would not buy their products if they knew there was a chance the can would exlpode. However, under the FAQs on their website, they did say where the best place was to store the can. Apparently not visible in the back of the car in direct rays of the aggressive Arizona sun.
I did find good advice from a forum on Autopia. I didn’t have to call the Fix-A-Flat company. The internet already did it for me. Thanks, internet!
What I ended up using was Meguiar’s surface cleaner for the plastic in the car, and a carpet cleaner for the upholstery with a whole lot of elbow grease. I still haven’t got the viscous goo completely off the windows, but will try using the Softscrub Bathroom cleanser that was advised on Autopia.
It’s amazing how much my body has forgot the heat. It really makes me miss the comfortable temperatures of Seattle. Here, I sweat just standing. I sweat sleeping.
Why Phoenix Heat Sucks
- Anywhere I go, I have to blast the A/C (therefore, burn more fuel)
- I have to shower twice a day
- Things melt on my dashboard
- The community is a ghost town because everyone is hiding inside.
- My Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite chocolate bar melted in my brother’s garage. (Which, as it turns out, is just poetic imagery of the dying legacy of Han Solo.)
Otherwise, the people here are pretty nice. Nicer than I remember. And there are a lot of beautiful girls, and the heat forces them to wear less clothing. That’s a plus. And I get to take pictures like this.
David's Musings 