Paramus, N.J. – Sweat wasn’t just trickling down my forehead. Perspiration was pouring over my face, arms and legs, soaking my shirt and shorts. Any moisture that escaped past my ankles without dripping to the ground flowed freely beneath my “wicking” Coolmax socks and ended up in minipuddles in the soles of my Nikes.

No wonder. I was pushing around a lawnmower in near-lethal conditions. The thermometer outside my sister’s house in this residential Jersey neighborhood right out of a Soprano’s episode read 102 degrees. The humidity was way up there, too, and the Wednesday noon air was dead calm. Only a quarter-acre left to mow, though, and I’d be home-free.

Unfortunately, I already was woozy from the heat and muscling that Toro mower up and down the steep slope of the unshaded front yard. Consuming copious quantities of bottled water brought only momentary relief. But, I had promised my sister Pat the evening before when she picked me up at Newark Liberty Airport that I would cut her lawn, and I aimed to follow through with my pledge.

It was my first full day Back East since mid-February. Last time here I was shoveling two feet of snow. Forty-eight hours prior to my arrival, Pat explained, temperatures were in the mid-60s and residents were complaining about the inordinate amount of rain – three weeks into June, 10 inches had already fallen. Now cloudless skies were showcasing the region’s first heat wave of the summer.

Pat and her husband Larry both left for work before 8 a.m., when the mercury already was cresting 80. I thought I had been alone in the house all morning, doing laundry and paper work, checking my e-mail and fantasizing about a foray to the always-cooler Jersey shore. But after about two hours of mowing, when I had finished trimming the narrow strip of grass leading to the backyard, my 17-year-old nephew Mike appeared on the porch.

“What are you doing?” he asked incredulously, adding, “Don’t you know that’s my job?” I lied and told him I was having fun.

“You’re crazy!” Mike shouted with a heady dose of teen bravado, fueled perhaps by a morning spent playing violent video games. Then he explained in a more serious tone that his dad would be upset when he returned from his job as a middle school principal and learned I had mowed the lawn.

“I get paid to do it,” Mike said.

“Don’t worry,” I answered, “I’ll tell your dad you cut it.”

Mike stood there shaking his head and protesting in his shiny gym shorts and sleeveless T-shirt. “You’re making me very uncomfortable doing that, Uncle Richie,” he said in the most earnest voice a 17-year-old could muster.

So I stopped mowing, turned over the reins of the Toro to my nephew and retreated inside to within inches of a fan set on high. My clothes were drenched and sweat pooled around me on the living room carpet. A pulse check indicated my heart rate was soaring, and my brow felt feverish. After rehydrating, showering and changing into dry garb, I collapsed into a lounge chair, still sweating, only to be awakened by my niece Chrissy who drove me to an air-conditioned bookstore for a much-needed respite from the afternoon’s swelter.

Did Mike save me from heatstroke or worse? Even though I grew up in Jersey, I’m no longer acclimated to the Northeast’s blistering summer weather, conditions that can literally kill. Out of a need for self-preservation, my cardio-respiratory system may have been ready to shut down.

Three days later, when temperatures had plummeted 20 degrees and a heavenly breeze punctuated the morning air, I went for a 30-minute run on the undulating back roads of Blairstown, a hamlet near the Pennsylvania border where my brother Dave and his family reside. The effort tired me, but not nearly as much as two hours manhandling a lawnmower. Plus, my pulse registered lower when I finished.

Cold can sting, but high heat hurts. A lot. After more than two decades living on the blessedly mild Oregon Coast, I almost relearned that lesson the hard way.

Richard Fencsak is co-owner of Bikes and Beyond. His column appears the second and fourth Thursday of each month in The Daily Astorian.