Photos: Beating the Heat in Mattituck

Whether you were at work or not, you had to have experienced just a little bit of sweaty misery during Wednesday's heat wave on the North Fork.

Some, like Elizabeth Jaeger, 17-month-old Gary Jaeger III, and Gary Jaeger Sr. and his wife, Toni, found relief from the 90+ degree heat in the waters of Peconic Bay at beach. Elizabeth said she came from her home in New Jersey to visit  family members, who are originally from Queens and have been summering in Mattituck for 20 years.

"And any day is a good day to get out of Jersey," joked Gary Sr.

Mike Huey, the former athletic director of , took his granddaughter Skylar, 4, to Veterans Memorial Beach at 9 a.m. They spent the entire morning cooling off then decided to hit the playground before going home.

"I used to take my daughter here and now I'm taking her daughter," he said.

For those stuck back in the working world on Wednesday, life was just a little bit more uncomfortable at places like Lou's Service Station in Mattituck, a repair shop which lacks air conditioning but "isn't that bad" in the heat, said mechanic Teddy Griffin.

"It's sure beats the cold," he said, water bottle in-hand. "It's just how it goes. When you have no spring, everything feels hot after a long winter."

Over at , cook Hilmar Salazar was soaked in sweat as the temperature rose in the kitchen and got worse as the orders came in.

"I'm used to it, but this really is too hot," said Salazar, 20. "I can handle it, though."

During long stretches of heat in the dog days of summer, opens its doors as a cooling center for those without air conditioning who need relief. But they did not on Wednesday simply because the weather will cool off soon.

Dr. Lawrence Schiff, chairman of emergency medicine at in Greenport, said that hospital workers treated only a few cases of heat exhaustion on Wednesday. He recommended on days like these — and no doubt we will be seeing more — that people stay in air conditioning as much as possible and to "hydrate, hydrate, hydrate."

"That's always the most important thing," he said.