As some of you may remember, one of the readers of The Pond is Simon. Simon's job has taken him to the Middle East repeatedly, and he's scheduled to be in Bahrain soon... like in time for the race!

If, indeed, that happens (he's not sure it will), he's graciously volunteered to be F1 UPDATE!'s on-the-spot color commentator.

For now, however, I've received a missive from Simon regarding the weather in those parts. I've left the letter unedited, save for some formatting and the like.

Take it away, Simon! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bahrain will be cool now – however July and August sees temperatures hit 50oC+ (editor's note: 122 degrees F), and with it being surrounded by water – it’s somewhat suffocating.

Bahrain is linked directly to Saudi by a causeway and the nastiest desert in Saudi is known as the ‘Empty Quarter’ (go-figure lol). Anyway, the Middle East all have these bizarre working laws that state that no one is allowed to work outside if the temp hit 50oC or above. The funny thing is that all labor is from places like Pakistan and Bangladesh and these Arabs still want their houses building and the road cleaning etc so the official temperatures never exceed 48oC.

This is a fat lie as I have seen temperatures recorded at 62oC (editor's note: 140 degrees F)(sheer pain I can tell you). I even had an argument with the BBC’s weather people and they said they can only show the official government figures from a host nation.

I met two US Army Rangers in Riyadh and they were telling me that the Empty Quarter is unofficially the hottest place on earth and they train there all the time for that very reason – I asked ‘what about Death Valley?’. They said, that where we train to acclimatize for here.

This is typical of the bizarre nature of the Middle East and their ways.
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editor's note: When I was attending graduate school in Minnesota, I lived through experiencing wind chills of -110 degrees F. Five months later, the temperature was +105 degrees F. and humid as all get-out. But I don't even want to think what 140 degrees feels like.

Thanks for the report, Simon!!!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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