Bracken spraying Jeff in the face with water. (Jeff likes it.)

Happily dripping wet.

Bracken asking Jeff to put a cold bottle with ice in it on his neck.

Bracken coming over to do it to me next.

The wet-hair spike.

Meet my new best friend. Fan.

I know the title of this post sounds a bit dramatic, but there was much celebrating at the end of the day on Saturday and exclaims of: “We made it through the day!” While the temperature might read in the upper nineties, let me just say it can feel much hotter out on the concrete all day. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones a bit intimidated by the weather forecast, because parts of market looked deserted, as quite a few vendors stayed home.

I wondered about a battery powered fan (or a solar fan, wouldn’t that be cool?) and Jeff looked for one at a few stores last week to no avail. On Saturday morning Bracken and I went to my self-defense class. Afterwards, I had a feeling to go into REI just down the street. I’m so glad I did because I asked someone there if they had a battery powered fan and they did! They called it a tent fan it was twenty dollars very well spent, I must say.

Bracken and I were so excited to surprise Jeff with it when we came back to market. That fan was my best friend that day. Jeff’s best friend was ice, which he put regularly in his hat. He also wore a neck cooler (and jokingly called himself a wet neck instead of a redneck) and had a water sprayer near at hand. We drank lots of ice water. Another vendor walked around sharing slices of watermelon.

I ended up using the fan whenever I was in the booth because Jeff said he was plenty cool, and what a difference it made! (I should also mention, since there is no cover across the front, that the fan blades are made out of foam.) I was so enthusiastic about the fan, I was telling everyone about it. If I would have been selling those fans that day, I probably could have sold a ton of them.