One of the very basic, es- sential human needs is the unstoppable urge to complain about the weather. It comes right after drink, solid food that goes with whatever you’re drinking, and a warm place at night. As a barber, I learned that there are two questions that will usually keep a customer happily rattling on for ten or fifteen minutes while you concentrate on your work. Number one is, “How do ya like this weather?” If that fails, try, “Do you have any health problems you’d like to tell me about?” In Mazatlán, people who live here start to complain about the heat around Easter time and keep it up until Thanksgiving (for you Canadians, I mean late November). Then it becomes the temporada de frio and everyone gripes about how cold it is the rest of the year. Meanwhile the tourists are wearing shorts, gownless evening straps and less, thawing out on the beach, basking in what they mistakenly believe to be perfectly warm sunshine. If you want to appear wise and knowledgeable about such things, here’s a hip new expression you can lay on everybody. “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” You see, in

this town, even my Swiss Army knife is rusting, right down to where it says “stainless steel.” Dried ginseng that would bust a tooth goes limp in a matter of days. My chrome instrument stand looks like it was shipwrecked many years ago and finally washed ashore. It’s no wonder the pulmonias are made out of fiberglass. Now in the Great Northwest, the humidity usually hovers around ninety some percent, so that when it’s not actively raining it’s still drizzling, but it’s also chilly so the sheer tonnage of water in the air does not compare to Mazatlan’s brand of heat and humidity. Still, I figure a little rust is a small price to pay for a climate like we enjoy down here. When I describe winters back home, or worse yet, winters in Canada, people often shake their heads in disbelief and say, “Why would any one live there?” Good question. Anyhow, now that we are in the midst of summer, glorious summer when we are resigned to another temporada de calor playing the role of steamed vegetables in a pressure cooker here in Paradise, Sinaloa, let me offer another handy little phrase for breaking the ice: “Hot enough for you?”