I don’t know what Wisconsin did to piss off Mother Nature, but the ol’ gal is really letting us have it lately. On top of an intensifying drought, this week we’ve been plagued with smoke and haze so thick, at one point our air quality was the worst in the nation.
What’s next: a plague of locusts?!
(Knock on wood. I’d better not give her any ideas.)
Actually, what’s next is humidity. Today’s dewpoint is hovering around 74°, which translates to very muggy conditions. Actual temp at the moment is 86°, but it feels like 94°.
So this is what humidity feels like!
Because I tend to obsess over things easily—I know, this is probably a shock to most of you—I bookmarked AirNow and found myself hitting refresh every hour to track our air quality. When it crossed the 300 threshold and reached the Hazardous level, I flew into a mad panic, tearing open the front door and racing down the street, startling the neighbors while screaming at the top of my lungs, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
J/K. But how funny would that have been?
Here’s what it looked like on Lake Mendota on Tuesday, with downtown Madison in the background.
Now, I’ve heard a lot of people saying nasty things about Canada, placing the blame on our neighbors to the north, as if this were all some diabolical Canuck plot to set half their country on fire in order to smoke out the pesky U.S. I refuse to stoop to that level. After all, Canada gave us Rush, the egg carton, Trivial Pursuit, poutine, and Howie Mandel. All good things in my book! Sure, there have been some missteps, like Nickelback and Justin Bieber. But pobody’s nerfect.
The real culprit, of course, is climate change. How much hotter does the planet have to get before people are willing to make the sacrifices needed to combat this mounting crisis? I’m the world’s most optimistic person (Wynne Leon is a close second), but even I fear it’ll happen too late or not at all.
I’m willing to do my part. Volkswagen is reviving the classic Microbus in 2024 and coming out with this nifty version called the VW ID.Buzz. Buzz instead of Bus because it’s electric.
#clever.
I’ve lusted after a VW Bus all my adult life. One that offsets my carbon footprint and can carry surfboards on its roof is a dream come true, never mind the fact that I am not a surfer, have no desire to ever take up surfing, and the Midwest is about as far from an ocean as you can get. Just the fact that it can is enough for me!
This won’t be happening any time soon. My Kona has many years and thousands and thousands of miles left, but when the time comes, I’ll be manifesting the shit out of owning one of these. I’m so confident, I’ll go ahead and put it out there right now for the whole world to see:
My next vehicle will be a VW ID. Buzz. Mark my words.
In the meantime I’ll just muddle through, hoping the air quality improves. It was so bad yesterday, they cancelled the concert in the park we’d been planning on attending. Not that it would have been very pleasant when the air is so thick you can practically chew it.
Are you affected by the Canadian wildfire smoke? What’s your favorite export from the Great White North? What will you be driving next (besides your partner crazy)?
Mark My Words 
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