Running on your shadow

Growing up north of the tropics, you get used to the sun being always to the south, never too high, and you can orient yourself by it. You always have a shadow, and it's always to the north. But here in the tropics, where you are between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, the sun actually passes directly over head, twice a year. This happened recently, and I found myself running, at noon, with the sun perfectly above me, so that I was running right on my negligible shadow. I stopped and found that it was mostly covered by my shoes.

Now it is slightly to the north, so that your shadow falls to the south. I found that gym, which is good enough that both Jennifer and I have been going regularly, and ran there and back today. I always try, when in a hot place, to run in the middle of the day, to accustom myself to the heat the rest of the time. But when it's 118 in the shade--and there is no shade--and the sun is right overhead and feels like it's x-raying you, and the sand is so hot you feel the waves of radiant heat coming up to cook you like a pizza in a brick oven, there's no getting used to it.

Hot enough to fry a motherboard

Little lapse in the entries, due to the heat having cooked first my laptop, then Jennifer's, neither of which was quite three years old. I went to Italy for 10 days to see friends and get out of Niamey, and bought another MacBook in Rome at the brand new Apple Store, the first in continental Europe. The hottest season is theoretically over--the season of Hot, Humid and Rainy is starting now--and the highs these days are a temperate 115-118.

Our co-written parenting book, working-titled Father-baby Bonding (we're trying to think up something catchier) is done and accepted by the publishers, due out Spring 2008.

Here on the blog, I'll be catching up on our travels and travails over the coming week, and adding pictures on the Mac photo page.