The van service I use for the Phoenix trips -- about an hour and a half on I10, plus another half hour footling around airport and surface streets -- has a fleet of fifteen-seater Ford vans. The older ones with the bench seats have fairly effective air conditioning, at least once they get going and as long as one isn't sitting at the very back. Some years ago they introduced fancy new vans with individual seats, which were far less comfortable and had cooling ineffective enough to be fairly miserable in the Arizona summer. Those gradually disappeared, while the old ones kept on keeping on. This year there are new vans again, slightly more comfortable than the old new vans, and I was curious to see if the cooling problem had been solved. As I discovered yesterday, it hasn't, and I was very glad to get the old bench-seat model on the way back today. I don't know why the problem of cooling a medium-sized vehicle in hundred-degree conditions has come un-solved in the last ten years or so -- maybe something to do with ozone-friendliness -- but I wish someone would solve it again.
One of these days I'll try to provide actual content that isn't whining about the heat, but summer just hit with a wallop and I'm not much looking forward to the next four months or so.
One of these days I'll try to provide actual content that isn't whining about the heat, but summer just hit with a wallop and I'm not much looking forward to the next four months or so.
