In Illinois a bat flew into an outdoor hot tub. The owner slammed down the lid, trapping it inside. Animal Control to the rescue. Bat was tested and it came back positive for rabies. The good news is that nobody was exposed. The bad news - well, there really wasn’t any. This had a happy ending. Except for the bat.
So…add this to your list of worries - hot tub lung.
Hot Tub Lung? Yup, it turns out that inhaling the bacteria that grows in hot tubs where the water is not maintained with the right balance of bacteria killing chemicals has a name. Bacteria loves to grow in nice warm hot tub water, which is why the chemicals are necessary to kill them. When the bubbles in the water reach the surface and pop, they can release the bacteria. You snort them into your lungs and - voila - cough, fever, fatigue and shortness of breath are sure to follow.
The good news is that this is a fairly rare infection. But it’s always good to be aware of these things - in case you run out of things to worry about.
Here a group of true jacuzzi nuts who carried the parts for a spa to the top of Mont-Blanc in France (the highest mountain in the Alps!), set it up, filled it with snow, heated it, and climbed in for the photo-op of a lifetime. Talk about a view - this was at the top of a 15,771 foot snow covered mountain. And this was no amateur weekend hike. It was an enormous undertaking involving lots of people willing to make the hike in the middle of the night carrying 45 pound packs. They did a great job of documenting everything on their website, where you can see photos and read about the entire expedition (they have an English translation). This group has done other extreme hot tubbing, but unless you read French or run it through Google or translator you’ll just have to be content looking at the pictures because the Mont-Blanc jacuzzi is the only one in English.
The short story: Don Talley in Longview, Texas, is trying a new marketing idea. He wanted to keep customers occupied while they waited in a car line to drive through his Beer Barn. To keep his customers entertained he installed a hot tub and staffed it with - what else - attractive women. There is not any nudity here, just pretty ladies who are being paid to sit in the hot tub and flirt with the men. The guys waiting in line have someone to talk to and the women are earning a living. Everybody wins. Sure, there are some people who don’t like it, but you won’t see anything in Don’s hot tub that you can’t see any day of the week at your local swimming pool. No nudes, sex, XXX-rated action or other hanky-panky. Just good clean fun coupled with a very innovative marketing idea. Go Don! You are our hero.
Here is the video of Don’s new marketing idea. Works for me. Let’s go get some beer.
We’ve already written about the possibility of a high wind blowing off your hot tub cover, and now you can add an extra element of danger to that issue. A new fad in urban living is rooftop terraces. What better place for a hot tub then the view from many stories up? Check your liability insurance, though, because at least one family in Fort Worth, Texas, has had to chase after their hot tub cover when it blew off their 3 story rooftop terrace and landed in the city street below. Fortunately, no one was hit, but something the size and weight of a hot tub cover could definitely do damage to property and life.
This might be the world’s largest, and also filthiest, hot tub. At the London Zoo pigmy hippos lounge in a huge “hot tub”. That’s what the zoo keeps call it, but it’s nothing that would appeal to us. It looks like the attendants make no attempt to balance the chemicals in the water to keep algae growth down, and for heaven’s sake, they don’t even have any water jets. But it’s perfect for these guys and unlike some folks who visit to use our hot tub, these guests wouldn’t be wearing a bathing suit. Of course, they wouldn’t fit in my tub either.