France, fans and heat-wave...

My home-town region of Morzine has been sweltering under the recent heat wave and had to contend with temperatures in the 90's. With a fair percentage of humidity, it has caused much discomfort and, often, when I speak to friends and relatives, I ask them: “Do you guys use fans to keep yourself a tad cooler?”

They generally answer by the negative, saying that the stores “must be” out of them (they haven't checked, I bet) and that last year's summer was so raining and cool anyway that this consideration alone wouldn't have justified purchasing one single fan, and keeping it at home “just in case!”

I can draw an interesting parallel between my former Alpine stomping grounds and Park City. When we got to Park City three decades ago, conventional wisdom was you didn't need air conditioning in this cool, high altitude place. Well, in 2009, we finally installed A/C when we re-did our heating system in our previous home, and while we only used it between one and two week per summer, everyday we had it on was worth much more than the little extra money we paid for installing it.

We made sure we'd have it too, when we built our current home, and couldn't imagine life without it. So the morale of this story is very simple. If you live in the French Alps, make sure to buy a few fans today (I checked on-line, they're plenty of them available from $40 and up), put them aside and enjoy them to their fullest blowing capacity during the guaranteed, upcoming heat-wave!