Scary Situation
Today as I was riding home from work I had a little scare. Not the usual scares I have while riding… cars turning left in front of me or merging right into my lane. No, this was something different, something I hadn’t expected, something that turned out to be just as dangerous as a car. Because things are so dangerous out there, I wear a full face, flip-up Nolan helmet (want to protect my beautiful chin), and I always wear sunglasses as backup during the day.
So there I was doing about 35mph with my visor opened about half an inch when something smacked the lip of my visor and bounced off. Being that it’s spring with lots of bugs in the air, I wasn’t really surprised. So I continued on. Then I felt something move in my hair. Oh great. So with cars in the front and back of me and no good place to turn off I did the only thing I could do, I flipped up my visor. Instead of watching the bug get blown out of my helmet I felt the thing dig into my head with a vengeance. Ok, now what? What I saw next made my decision easier. As I peered through my sunglasses I noticed a familiar silhouette move in front of my left eye. Oh crap. A very angry wasp was just a fraction of an inch from my eye.
As an experienced rider I’m used to making split second decisions, but this wasp right in front of my eyeball made my decision more urgent for some reason. Without a lot of thought on my part I dove into the first patch of open shoulder I could get to… right into a patch of gravel. Surprisingly I kept the bike upright and came to a stop. I quickly unlatched my helmet, yanked it off and ripped the glasses from my face. I sat there, shaken, trying to comprehend what just happened. Wow. I was pretty lucky not to have been stung and I was just as lucky that I didn’t panic and dump my bike. After a minute calming down, I put my gear back on and headed home. Not exactly a good end to my day, but things could have been a whole lot worse.
The moral of this story: keep your visors down and sunglasses on.