yucky bike stories!

[wavyarms]

I biked home from a very nice dinner in Cambridge today with 2h20, ethicsgradient, cute_fuzzy_evil, and stenz, and since it was a little earlier than when I biked home yesterday from a very nice dinner in Cambridge with heatmhub, I decided to take the bike path instead of Mass Ave.

So, it's nice not to have cars, and all. But my god, it was bug soup. Don't get me wrong - I have no bites, they just collide with you. I'm sure everyone who has done a little biking is familiar with the sensation of having a bug bounce off your arm. Certainly I put up with my share when I biked across the country. My most vivid memory is watching the head of one of my friends snap back as if she'd run into a small bird, when it was really just an over-caffeinated fly. And I've had my experiences with the occasional cloud of gnats. But this was really quite a different experience - probably because it was dark (no lights for bugs to congregate around) and extremely woodsy - no streets, tons of trees and bushes, far more bug-friendly environment. Things were pinging off all parts of me at a rate of more than one per second. One rather large beetle decided to hide right in the gear-shift on my handlebars for a while, though by the time I got to a lit intersection and found a twig he had buggered off. I had kind of thought that I had seen it all w/ regards to insect collisions. I mean, there was one day on the bike trip where I was, as usual, all greased up from sunscreen, and I passed through a cloud of gnats, and about two hundred of them stuck to my legs to meet a greasy end. But today was a new and impressive chapter.

I guess Mass Ave. has its perks.

Comments

[mixedborder.livejournal.com]

I swallowed some kind of little bug the other day. Didn't realize until I tasted it going down. Tasted bad.

I saw fireflies winking along the bike path to Alewife last night!

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

ew. ew. ew. ew. ew.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Hey, I did cut it!

[ethicsgradient.livejournal.com]

ew. ew. ew. ew. ew.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

This does not mitigate the ew.

[ex-a517dogg70.livejournal.com]

I swallowed a bumblebee at a soccer game once. I opened my mouth to yell at someone during a corner kick and a bee flew in my mouth. I swallowed reflexively and felt it buzzing around in my stomach for like 20 seconds.

Didn't give up a goal, though!

[laobscuridad.livejournal.com]

In preschool a fly flew up my nose.   I forgot about it until I found it in my tissue that evening when I blew my nose.
True story.

[heatmhub.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ugh. Had not before thought about that aspect of using a bike as a main means of transport. You need a helmet with a face shield for night riding.