The Humidifier
My Nephew Jason was here painting his wonderful Otomi mural on our garden wall during the hottest two days of the San Diego summer. Now, Jason has lived his entire life in Las Vegas with its Uber-hot summer weather. His business is a garage door company, so he is often out with his installers and repair crew in the heat of the Las Vegas day. And then, to top it all off, he runs for exercise and says that he likes to run at noon when there’s absolutely no one around. He admits that he only runs 1.5-2 miles, but he says he likes toughening himself up for his work by running at the hottest time of the day. This was all used to explain why he was OK doing his mural wall art work in temperatures that were reaching up to 100 degrees. Jason scoffed since he was used to 112 degrees, which he says is the favorite temperature registering on his truck’s thermometer day-in and day-out in Vegas. In the morning on Tuesday, I helped Jason get the pneumatic lift mechanism tweaked to maximize his access to the wall to be painted.
That was harder than you might think. To begin with, this lift, which was a smallish electric version that reached up and out thirty feet, had approximately a dozen controls including the ability to control it from the ground or from within the platform bucket. The equipment rental guy who delivered it gave us cursory instructions, but there is no way to learn how to drive and operate this sort of heavy equipment other than by doing it. Then there is the location of the wall to be painted. I had the benefit of some experience with the tight spot between the house and garage in which we were working because it was through this narrow gap that I got to watch the nursery crew inject and install the Strawberry Tree with its 72” x 72” root box. I’m not sure how much that tree weighed, but I suspect it was somewhere between one and two tons. The forklift that was used had a long articulated arm that was not dissimilar to the one on the pneumatic lift we had to use for the mural project. The forklift was even bigger than the lift, so I watched and learned how slowly and carefully the operator wiggled the machinery in tight to the narrow gap between these two tall palm trees at the corner of the garage and the combination of the house, the new railing heading down our hill to our utility rooms and the large Cereus cactus with its multiple upward sweeping arms that reach up to twenty feet. This was going to be tricky.
Jason and I spent time wiggling the various controls, six inches at a time, testing the small increments of the machine’s mobility in all its directions and axes. Just figuring out how the machine would move was the first job, and then figuring out the limits of how much we could combine the movements to get us where we needed to go. Up a foot, twist the arm to the right two feet, back down 6 inches, now extend the arm between two of the cactus arms. What a trip, and all with Jason in the bucket with his boxful of spray-paints while I stood on the ground next to the machine control panel trying to make sure I kept Jason safe and didn’t smash too much of the house or landscape. To whatever extent I couldn’t get the lift close enough to the mural wall, I knew Jason would be on a sixteen foot extension ladder to get to those spots.
I consider the ladder on that steep hillside too dangerous for most of the mural. In addition, I know that while the ladder may seem simpler, there are twenty cans of spray-paint and a number of cardboard stencils that have to be juggled up and down and up and down and up and down that ladder. That is not a winning program under ideal weather conditions, but it is a real losing program in 100 degree heat, even for a sturdy Las Vegan. So we worked the pneumatic lift with every angle and twist we could conjure for everything higher than ten feet. The bottom portion of the mural was not only more accessible by ladder, it was actually more easily handled with the ladder since the pneumatic lift didn’t do a great job getting lower than grade level on the driveway and sidewalk from which we were working.
By the end of the first day, with 80% of the mural done, the upper part, Jason was a sweaty mess and had gone through all his clothes. While he claimed he under-packed, the truth was that it was simply stinking hot. The surprise for Jason was that this was not the dry heat he had acclimated to in Las Vegas. This was San Diego humid heat. I actually heard Jason say that old truism that it wasn’t the heat, it was the humidity. He was wearing a new red bandana under his hat as a cape to keep the sun off his neck. While it may have done that, he also succeeded in tie-dying his t-shirt red. In fact, even after Kim tossed a load of wash in for him, he determined that the humidity of the day had ruined his t-shirts and he needed to go out to the store to buy some new ones to wear for the evening of festivities.
Jason is a man after my own heart, he starts strong and likes to finish early, which is exactly what he did. By midday the second day, the masterpiece was completed and all that was left was to move the lift back away for the viewing public to be able to enjoy Jason’s magnum opus. Then we could all stand back and admire the dramatic and colorful mural. It was Miller Time, but only after Jason found his way to the t-shirt store and the beer store.
We hosted my sister Kathy and hubby Bennett as well as Jason’s cousin Alex and his family of Natalie and son, Charlie. Since Kathy and Bennett are architects and Alex is an artist himself, everyone could appreciate the artistry of the mural and the indigenous connection it represented. All were rightly impressed and all could imagine the added harshness of accomplishing such greatness during such difficult weather. It was the sort of weather that just wouldn’t quit, so we all adjourned to the air conditioned house for dinner in the dinning room. That was the first time we have not followed strict social distancing protocols (even though we did use masks as much as practical) and while Kim and I know we tested negative this week, who knows about everyone else (Charlie had started school this week, so we had all elements at play).
Jason left early this morning for his drive back across the thankfully dry Mojave Desert. Meanwhile, we still enjoyed our lingering humidity and mostly stayed indoors as much as possible and reminded ourselves that our cactus and succulent garden bears witness to the fact that dry is more common than the humidifier we have lived in this week. We are anxious to get back to our dryer, cooler normal.