One foot in the absurd. One foot in the real.

I'm Alex. I'm a mechanical engineer and product developer in Boulder, Colorado. I fell for sauna at University College Dublin, where I went every day after training. These days I go at a gym in Boulder, where clothes are required. I support this policy, and so do the other people on the bench.

Clothes, though. In a room like that, most people wear whatever they just worked out in. A hot room deserves better, and frankly so does the person next to you. So I drafted a pattern for a short that only goes to the sauna: a linen shell, a cotton liner, and a hidden pocket on the liner for a cold pack, if you want one.

Why a cold pack? I'll be straight with you. I can't tell you it helps. I can tell you it's cold, and that people have been quietly bringing cold things into hot rooms for a while now and feeling a bit strange about it. So the design rule came first: it has to read as shorts from three feet away.

I ran one informal experiment. I took a bare cold pack into a room at about 200°, and it was warm in about 15 minutes. That's the entire body of evidence. It isn't a study. It's one person with a pack. It told me the pocket needs insulation, which is why there's wool felt and reflective film in the plan. The goal is a full round of about 15 to 20 minutes, and we'll find out together, with the numbers posted, good or bad.

So why a Local?

Because this product is hard to discuss with a straight face. People laugh first, including the people who do it. Fine. Sitting in a hot room is a strange thing to take seriously, and I take it seriously. Tending a fire really is a skill. There really is etiquette. Somebody really is hogging the ladle.

I helped leave a scroll of 28 "laws of man" with younger scholars. One foot in the absurd, one foot in the real. I own a hat that says "Law Zero: Proceed accordingly." That law is now Article 0 of the Bylaws, and it remains the only advice I'm confident about.

The Local is a joke. It isn't a labor organization, and it isn't making fun of the people who belong to one. The joke is on me, and on a hot room being treated with the gravity of a trade. The shorts are real, or will be, and I'd like you to be able to hold me to that.

Proceed accordingly,
Alex