The other day, I was out on my bicycle on a sweltering spring day. This happens now and then in Southern California - the other weekend it was 25°C on Friday, 38 on Saturday, and 25 again on Sunday. It's very confusing. You should see the game we play with our comforter. Just as we fold it away and heave a sigh for the passing of winter, the temperature drops again and we wake up shivering at night. Out the comforter comes, and two nights later, we're throwing it off, sweaty and grouchy. Now we plan to just leave it on the floor until August.
Of course, it would be the hot day that found me outside, cycling on the gravel trails of the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area. I was pushing fairly hard, but something was wrong and for a while, I couldn't work out what. Then, I realised: I wasn't sweating.
Sadly, I'm a sweater. Not a sheep-based upper garment, but a person who begins sprinkling from the scalp the moment the temperature goes above 30°C. I've inherited it from my grandmother, who is famous for always asking for the fan to be turned on just as everybody is turning blue. However, exercising in 38°C would make even a tortoise reach for a headband, so I stopped cycling in a hurry.
The skin on my arms and legs was blotched and blazing, with all the capillaries jammed wide open, trying to dump as much heat as they could. I remembered a trick the ranger of the Joshua Tree National park told us-when it's dry, lick your arm to check if you've been losing moisture. My skin tasted as if I'd taken a salt cellar to it: I'd been sweating profusely without passing a single drop. I carry two litres of water in a hydration pack when I go out. That day, I ran out in an hour, and was still thirsty when I got home.
Frightening dryness
Nobody warns you of the frightening dryness in Southern California. The full-page newspaper weather report doesn't print the humidity. On some days, rehydration, whether of the skin or the body, feels like a fight to stay alive. There are nights we wake up feeling as if somebody has taken a flame-thrower to our torsos and nasal passages. And last winter, the static was so bad that we developed a phobia of touching anything, and curled into balls in the centre of the living room.
Once, I sat at my computer and the static cracked out so loudly that my wife heard it in the next room. The computer went off instantly, and for several terrifying minutes, refused to come back on.
There are other things they don't tell you about Southern California. But those are nice things. That it rains at the end of the year. That the winter is cold enough to need to put on the heater in your home. That it has a stunning wild flower season in the spring. That, just half an hour from the heart of Los Angeles, you can hike by babbling brooks that are among pine forests, 8,000 feet up in the mountains. That there are proper wildernesses in the centres of many LA towns in which you can, in theory, be attacked by bears or mountain lions. That there are plays, concerts and art exhibitions in plenty.
In short, that Los Angeles isn't nearly as dry, in a figurative sense, as they make it out to be. As for the literal dryness, I never thought I'd ever say this in my life: "Trust me on the moisturiser".
Good grief, I'll be pushing sunscreen next.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
