New Old Sensation

I ride to work most days, even though people here think highs in the 60's and 70's is cold! 20 years ago while living in Austin Texas I rode to work 30 miles each way each day (starting at 6am) when the low was 10 and the high was 32. With a wind chill factor far south of 0 degrees, that's what I call cold (I know some of you have been through worse though!)

My ride to work is a whopping 3 miles, barely enough time to get the motor warm. For lunch, I sometimes take a ride out west where the traffic is minimal (by LA standards). The area I ride actually has natural greenery, and reminds me a little bit of Austin's Hill Country (only with bigger hills). If I don't have to turn around and go back to work, my ride eventually meanders toward the Pacific, and it's amazing to see such vastly different and wonderful scenery together- ocean, trees, hills, mountains, small pastures (sometimes with real COWS:surprise:!) and other non-city-like settings. Gotta love it.

Yesterday I had a great lunch ride, went back to work, eventually returned home to find a bug splattered on my helmet. Now I have had this helmet (a Shoei GT-Air in matte black) for just over a month, and it has almost 1000 miles on it. This is the first time I had to clean it of anything bug related - no gnats, no flies, not a thing till now.

I thought about how on a given day in Texas, I'd probably put an end to several hundred (maybe thousand) gnats, dozens of mosquitoes, and many other assorted flying menaces. The front of the bike would be covered, the front of my riding gear would be mostly covered, and my helmet faceshield would be pretty covered (in some cases, so much so that I'd ride the last few miles home with it up!). So here in the land of moderate temperatures, in about 34-35 day my dead bug evidence count starts and ends at 1 total. I cleaned what I think was a beetle's innards off the forehead area of my helmet, and actually missed this part of the post-ride ritual. It was always an excuse to spend some more time out in the garage with the bike.

I guess you could say for a moment I felt like a kid again - memories of my early days riding, when everything was new and exciting. The Beetle cleaned up easy enough, but memories it reminded me of will not fade so soon.

- the Borg

Good story !
I miss the Ocean views I saw when riding along the PCH back in the mid 80's when I was in the Navy in San Diego.
Luckily we have a Lot of very scenic roads twisty hilly roads to ride here in WNY and riding along Lake Erie offers some great views too.
But we do get quite a few bugs here in certain areas too.

Cool story. Thanks for sharing.

Not too many years ago, I had rides like this poor fellow: (though I've no pictures of my own to share)


I've since upgraded to wearing modular helmets for most of my miles.

Bug guts:
Reminds me of the Lorena Bobbit joke about throwing the evidence out the window while driving...

Ah, the splattering of the pestering flying hoard! One of my standard rides involves a 100 mile ride (there and back) along lake Superiors Whitefish bay. The population of said hoard has forced me to stop to clear away the hair like coating preventing frontal vision, sometimes two times if the sun drops below the horizon. The haired over leathers, to say nothing of making Redbone to look like the second coming of cousin IT, I can understand why the Harley guys spend so much time in the local watering holes! Even if they cannot feel the bugs they still have to clean all that mess up in the morning.
The old sensation luckily doesn't happen every time I ride but just enough to be a PITA.