THE CANADIAN PRESS
Peter Dyakowski
CFL.ca
The year is getting older. There is a nip in the air, the leaves are falling from the trees, and it’s pitch black outside when I wake up in the morning. Week 18 of the season seems like the perfect time for me to be writing the ninth of my “weekly” blogs. I don’t think that anybody at CFL.ca knew what a terrific procrastinator I was when they approached me to write these things. Needless to say, I don’t expect to be invited back next year. Still, I have been busy thinking up things to write about in 2011 just in case the CFL.ca crew think they can succeed where so many teachers have failed in getting me to hand in my homework on time.
At any rate, it is far too early to be thinking about all that since we have plenty of football left to play this season and each game is getting more important than the last. With the road trip out to Cow Town upon us this week I would like to call attention to the often overlooked plight of the more “powerfully built” gentlemen amongst us.
For many, travelling is a fun and exciting experience. The sights and sounds of buses, trains, ships, and planes delight young and old alike. People jostle for windows seats so they can see a new landscape unfold beneath them, relax and recline in their chairs while reading, or nap the hours away while dreaming of the adventures in store for them at their far-away destinations. More often, the people I travel with play poker, drink over-priced beer, and ask the flight attendants for their phone numbers, but you get the idea. Most people have a jolly time in transit.
On the other hand I, along with teammates such as Jordan Matechuk, George Hudson, most of the rest of the o-line, Matt Kirk, and probably D-Bo have a much different experience. Having a superior level of body mass to the average passenger, we generate much more heat. As finely tuned machines, we are hair-triggered and always ready for action. Maintaining such massive amounts of muscle on permanent high-alert burns a lot of calories. With a lower surface area to volume ratio compared to other punier passengers we are unable to dissipate this extra heat as easily. Consequently, we need a cooler surrounding environment in order to avoid overheating and possible death, or at least out-of-control sweating. Given such considerations, travelling becomes an issue.
We spend the hours trapped in a little metal tube, more like a furnace to us than anything else, staring out longingly at the ice crystals forming on the other side of the window. Can you imagine sitting on a plane at 35,000 feet and the torture of having to endure searing, unrelenting heat like a condemned soul in the fiery pits of Hell while looking through a double pane of plexiglass at a -40C paradise on the other side? Whether we are on a bus, a train, or an aeroplane, no matter the season nor the location, it is certain to be way too hot.
We exist in a tyranny of little old ladies and under-dressed sissy men who make shrill demands for ever higher thermostat settings that equally cold-blooded flight attendants and bus drivers are only too happy to fulfil. None of these temperature tyrants ever stop to think of the burden they are placing on their fellow travellers.
A man who is too cold can always put on an overcoat while a lady can draw her shawl around her more tightly and maybe put on a thicker bonnet. But what can a man who is too hot do? Take off his jacket? Certainly. Take of his vest? Of course. Undo his cuffs? Naturally. Untie his bow-tie? If he must. Unbutton the upper buttons on his shirt? Yes, as long as there are no ladies present. And then what? Am I to take off my shirt on the plane in an effort to survive? At what point in my disrobing will the Air Marshall decide that enough is enough and arrest me? Imagine my shame when we are forced to land in Moose Jaw and I am taken off the aeroplane in naught but my undies and a pair of handcuffs! Yet this is what is implicitly demanded of me and my fellow men of ample build by those who stoke the furnaces.
Are our fellow travellers so monstrous that they would have Jordan Matechuk die in the aisle from heat-stroke rather than go to the trouble of putting a blanket over their laps? I should hope not. It is my sincere belief in the fundamental decency of my fellow human beings that leads me to conclude that so many of them must simply not have thought out the implications of their heat-lust. I hope this blog post generates a larger conversation in our society about what is an appropriate thermostat setting for a public space*. Just like public smoking bylaws turned environments once choked with smoke into pleasant places where people could breathe freely, I hope that one day I can ride a train or sit on a plane without the need to receive an IV afterwards.
In the meantime, I am afraid that I will once again have to take off my shirt to survive a torturous bus ride to Pearson Airport and stuff my pants with ice cubes to make it through the flight alive.
*The author would like to note that an appropriate thermostat setting for a public space is one which does not exceed 14C (about 57F).
