The clock on my dashboard reads 4:55 am as I pull into the parking lot. My Jeep doesn’t have an air temperature readout, but I don’t need one to know that it is well below freezing. Thousands of snowflakes flicker through the twin beams of my headlights, driven across the flat, midwestern landscape by a gusty north wind. The parking lot hasn’t been plowed since yesterday and there are only faint indentations in the thick blanket of snow to hint at the tracks of previous departures and arrivals. I weave my way between the hulking snowbanks and still forms of snow-covered cars, towards a patch of relative darkness, away from the bright pools of light being cast down from the hazy, indistinct pole-mounted fixtures glowing in the storm above. Once there, I cautiously brake to a stop, the deeply frozen snow crunching beneath my tires. I put the gearshift in park and the throaty roar of the straight-six engine diminishes to a low-pitch rumble, leaving the blower fan that is pulling hot air off the engine as the loudest sound...

The case of beer feels ice cold against my leg in the relentless heat of the Phoenix Spring afternoon—even through the thick brown paper of the bag it’s in. We are hurrying across the brilliantly shining sun-exposed parking lot through the shimmering air rising from the pavement, moving quickly from the relative comfort of the AC-filled interior of my Jeep to the protection of the double glass doors now just 20 feet away. My fellow flight instructor, Nolan, exhales loudly through pursed lips in an attempt to blow some cool air across his face. I know this doesn’t actually work, but he’s only been out here for two months now—arriving just as the calendar went from “winter” to “don’t go outside during daylight hours”—and hasn’t figured that out yet...

The boat moves the through the hot, still air, the breeze caressing the plastic deck and gently flapping the bow-mounted flag generated by nothing more than our movement over the water. Our boat and the passing scenery bake under a fireball of a sun pinned in a trackless blue sky that is marred by nothing more than a confused upside down half-moon that isn’t sure if it should accelerate or slow down its orbit to once again find the night...

I arrived in the city and was now stepping off the train into the glare of the midafternoon of a Southern Hemisphere’s Summer day. The normal bustle of Sydney was dulled by the heat as people struggled through the hot, stifling air, making their way from one air-conditioned space to the next and relying on patches of shade to traverse the spaces in between. Fortunately my walk from the train station at Circular Quay was short, but by the time I stepped into the cool and shaded atrium of the hotel’s lobby, the fabric of my shirt, pinned to my back by my heavy backpack full of camera and travel gear, was drenched with sweat...

The door to the briefing room creaks open, and I look up from the computer I am working at and check my watch. Way too little time has passed for my student to have already completed the oral exam portion of his checkride, so something must have happened. I’ve been flight instructing for about 800 hours now, and while I am confident in my ability to teach students, I am still slightly intimidated by some of the examiners. Mike, a long-time Designated Pilot Examiner rolls his chair into the doorway and crooks his finger at me before rolling back out of view. I close the spreadsheet I’ve been entering flight times into and walk into the next room, closing the door behind me, and then lean against its cool surface once it has shut...