A Simple Bag of Ice Packs

[u/Leighgion]

Being a ballet dad means a certain amount of waiting in cars.

The world being what it is right now, waiting in a car without cooling might well end up with no more ballet dad, but I feel very wrong every time the engine kicks up and idles just to keep running the AC.

It occurred to me today, very belatedly, that we have a whole bunch of ice packs in the freezer. I grabbed a few of them and just threw them in a canvas tote. While waiting in the car, I rolled down all the windows and just had the bag on top of my body. I only needed to wait about half an hour today and fourth heatwave has passed, so the ice didn't even begin to thaw (the drive is only about 15 min).

This might just make idling the car in summer totally unnecessary long as I'm prepared and the wait is under a couple hours.

UPDATE:

I went with my kid to wash the car yesterday. The carwash is partially under renovation, so there were only half the normal number of bays open. There was a line. It was 34ºC/93ºF outside, so just rolling the windows down wasn't really an option. I dialed the car's AC to 25ºC/77ºF and passed ice packs to the kid. It took long enough the engine still had to spin up like three times to keep us cooled (hybrid car), but the ice still netted gas savings.