Bryce Alderson Blog: Dealing with a heatwave

In his latest blog for Goal.com, the 18-year-old rookie writes about dealing with hot weather in normally temperate Vancouver, and making the Whitecaps bench in an MLS match.

We had a bit of a heatwave here in Vancouver recently, and it's been a absolute disaster for players trying to keep their apartments cool. With the windows that we have in this building, you can't install full-sized air conditioners, so we have to try other ways to cool down.

I've tried opening the windows, keeping the doors open, and so on, but it just wasn't happening. The other night, I had my fridge and freezer open, windows open, fans going, took a cold shower... just to try to get a bit of cool air flowing through the place and get some sleep! No such luck, though, and I'm sure my hydro bill won't be much fun to deal with, either.If you remember, in one of my previous blogs I mentioned the washer and dryer being inside my apartment and causing some havoc on the day I moved in. Well, they've added some more frustration on hot days like we've had here recently, because as soon as you turn the dryer on, the apartment is just like a sauna. I'd let laundry pile up, dreading the fact that I'd have to use the big appliances at some point and add more heat to my place.

Coming from Southern Ontario, it's a bit strange that not too many people in Vancouver have air conditioning. It's apparently really rare for residential areas to have A/C here, because we only have about a month out of the year where it's truly warm enough to even bother with it.

Maybe they should rethink that policy.

On to soccer matters, I made the bench last week against Dallas, which was nice (aside from the result, of course).

It was good to be a part of the first team again, as I was on the bench earlier this year against Edmonton in the Canadian Championship. I was a little bit fortunate because some of the regular first team players were away on international duty or injured last week, but it's still good to be a part of the game day process and walk in with the other players rather than watching the game from the suite.
Lately I've been able to get into a routine again after travelling a lot with the residency team and the youth national team over the past few months. It's good to be in Vancouver permanently and training every day, rather than living out of a bag and playing games without any training.

Hopefully the routine will help me continue to develop and my time with the first team will be more frequent in the future.