WARNER ROBINS -- Harold Sickles is 69, but it was as a young man he learned the hard way to be careful when the temperatures are soaring.

Sickles was 40 and living in Florida when he had a heat stroke while gardening. He told his son he didn’t feel right, and the next thing he knew he woke up in a sheriff’s patrol car.

Since then, he said, he has been much more careful about being outside in hot weather.

“Watch your intake of fluids, and when you are tired, don’t overexert yourself,” he said.

He was among about 80 seniors at the Wellston Center in Warner Robins on Friday watching the movie “Secretariat.” The movie is a quarterly program put on by the Warner Robins Senior Activity Center across the street. The temperature outside was 103 degrees.

Later it rose to 106 degrees. In Macon, that broke the previous record of 103 degrees set in 1931, according to the National Weather Service.

The elderly are considered most at risk during extreme heat, but after the movie finished, the seniors didn’t seem overly concerned. All who spoke said they had a simple method for beating the heat.

“I stay home in the air conditioning,” said Alice Blazewicz, 82, of Bonaire.

Her friend, 70-year-old Doreen Newlin, said she has become more careful about the heat as she has gotten older.

“Just take your time when you do stuff and stay inside as much as you can,” she said. “The only time I go out is to take my dog out.”

Willie Bell McKowan, who will turn 64 in a couple of weeks, lives in an small single-wide mobile home in the North Davis Drive area of Warner Robins.

She has two small window air-conditioning units, which she said don’t keep the home very cool. She was sweating as she spoke in her home Friday and is concerned about making it through the summer.

“It’s not as comfortable as I wish it could be,” she said. “I need some help.”

At the Macon-Bibb Senior Center, seniors are kept inside the air-conditioned building if it gets too hot outside.

In fact, the center’s Fourth of July party was moved indoors Thursday due to the extreme heat, director Dona Moore said.

“We did everything we were going to do outside -- even the watermelon seed spitting contest,” she said.

Center staff also inform seniors of ways to stay cool, signs to look for as warnings of overheating and who to alert if they have any complications.

“The heat can be especially dangerous for seniors,” Moore said.

The weather forecast calls for highs of 104 in Macon on Saturday and 103 on Sunday. In Warner Robins, the high is forecast at 103 both days.