Hilton Head Island: ”feels like’ and ‘heat index; The Final Set; and two poems

I continue not to be doing much of interest these days.  

The can of spray paint for the bow sprit is now not due until Monday and the heat is serious.   I read.  Presently a book, WICKED RIVER, about the Mississippi River before it was tamed by the Corp of Engineers.  I was born and lived and went to college beside the Mississippi and am from the quite well written book learning much that I did not know.  I listen to music.  I workout.  But this is a pause.  Odd that I who have always had enough time, still have enough to pause when my remaining time is short.  Perhaps that is because I have lived so that I do not regret in my old age what I did not dare to do when I was younger.  Before the paint comes.  Before Carol and I make our now customary escape from the heat in August.  This year we fly to Oregon on August 4 where we will rent a car and Carol will drive us slowly down the coast to San Diego.  While I lived in Oakland, California, for a year, bought my first boat and taught myself to sail there, I never travelled much north of the Bay area, so the Oregon and Northern California coast will be new to both of us.  And it might well be my last visit to San Diego where much of importance in my adult life took place.  I am looking forward to the trip.

I look at several weather apps each day, among them Apple Weather.  This shows among other things the forecast temperature by the hour and the ‘feels like’ temperature.  I thought ‘feels like’ and ‘heat index’ are the same, but our local TV news often gives ‘heat index’ figures ten or more degrees higher than the ‘feels like’ in the Apple app.  So I goggled and found that in summer the two should be the same.  In winter ‘feels like’ includes wind chill and so may be different.  However right now at nearly 8 PM, the Apple app shows a ‘feels like’ of 87F and the National Weather Service station at the Hilton Head Airport shows a heat index of 102F.  A dramatic and serious difference which I do not understand.  So be advised to be skeptical of the Apple app ‘feels like’.

Carol and I just watched CHRIS AND MARTINA:  THE FINAL SET on Netflix and it exceeded our expectations.  Great rivals on the court who gave up a budding friendship in the effort of each to become the number one women’s tennis player and regained it years later when both had cancer.  A very human and touching story about far more than tennis told without sentimentality.  I highly recommend it.