Had to spit out a grasshopper!

[MtnBikerChk]

Eeeeewwwwwww!!!!!

[Jolt]

Yuck!!!

[kenyonchris]

Yuch. I have had flies in my mouth on the road bike but it is the spiderwebs and spiders on the mountain bike that creep me out. I hate riding first.

[beancounterbeth]

Last weekend we went to HHH. We stayed at a hotel in Lawton since all the hotels in Wichita Falls, TX were booked. When we got back to our room after watching some races and eating dinner it was around 9:30 at night. That is when we found that our hotel had been taken over by crickets. They were all over the parking lot and you couldn't help but hear them crunching under the tires as we ran over them.

It got worse....Much Worse! When we got in our room the crickets were in our room as well. Not 1 or 2 but a bunch of them. Since there weren't any rooms available in Lawton or Wichita Falls we were stuck with our cricket infested room. The hotel came in and sprayed and I ended up sleeping wrapped up in the sheet like a burrito. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep at the most before we had to get up and drive to WF for the HHH ride on Saturday morning. At about 11:30 on Friday night I was on the verge of tears trying to figure out if I should just go sleep in my car or stay in the room.

[salsabike]

Beth, don't leave us there! Did the HHH go okay in spite of the repellent cricket room?

[Eden]

Hey in some cultures that would have been a tasty snack

We went riding in up a mt pass that was swarming with butterflies once. Up was not so bad - not too hard to avoid hitting them - got cute overload with having butterflies cruising my slipstream, getting rides on my handlebars, etc

On the way down..... we really did try to limit butterfly carnage.... At the gate (the road was close to cars - very cool) I actually had to remove a live (and incredibly undamaged) butterfly from the inside of my helmet!

[beancounterbeth]

HHH was great. Thanks for asking. That was our first time there and we had a blast! Already have rooms booked in WF for next year.

I did my first 100K and my husband did the full 100 miles in 4 Hr 23 minutes.

Oh, and the weather was definately not hotter than hell. It was beautiful!

With the lack of sleep I woke up with bags under my eyes and feeling like I was running on empty but once I get there the adrenalin (sp) kicked in and everything went great.

[salsabike]

I love these stories. Glad you survived the crickets and had a successful ride--and that you can stay closer next year.

Eden, you didn't happen to get any pictures of the butterfly thing, did you?

We once--this has nothing to do with bikes--were driving through Idaho on a rock hunting trip. A buck ran into our windshield and shattered it with his antlers (he then kept right on going--he was okay). We stopped at a motel 50 yards up the highway. The room was full of gnats. I mean FULL. Gazillions. We went to the front desk to ask for another room, and she said, "Oh, yeah...there's been a hatch on the river." Defeated, and a little creeped out (why does that sound like the start of a bad sci fi movie? "There's been a HATCH on the river"), we went back to our gnat filled room and tried to sleep with our mouths shut all night.

[tctrek]

Yikes I hate bugs!

[Tuckervill]

I guess this is not the time to tell about the time, sleeping in the 1905 Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, when I was awakened by a giant cockroach falling from "somewhere" slap! on to my cheek, right beside my mouth.

Karen

[ClockworkOrange]

I just love hearing all your anecdotes.

Frequently I moan about not being able to buy certain things in the UK that you guys have in the US.

BUT................we only have incey wincey spiders, that's enough for me!

Just remembered, sorry going off Topic slightly, noticed this tiny little spider in the garden

Then the wonders of digital cameras using macro

I should have made out he was the size of a dinner plate!


Clock

[wackyjacky1]

I guess this is not the time to tell about the time, sleeping in the 1905 Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, when I was awakened by a giant cockroach falling from "somewhere" slap! on to my cheek, right beside my mouth.

Karen

You just described my worst nightmare. I freakin' HATE roaches.

[salsabike]

I stayed in a poor little apartment in Kyoto in the summer of '86 for about ten days. It had absolutely HUGE Asian roaches, the kind they have at the Seattle Zoo because they're so impressively enormous--3 to 4 inches long, I guess. I made a deal with myself: As long as I didn't wake up with one on my face, I could take it. I used to hear one of the guys thundering through the apartment in the middle of the night going after them with his tennis racket.

We slept on futons on the floor, so the possibility of a close encounter was pretty real. However, I never did wake up with one on my face, so I managed...I guess if I had, I would have found a way to manage that too. But glad I didn't have to. I guess he was saving himself for Tuckervill.

[cylegoddess]

You all should come out here, to Australia. We get LOTS of really friendly flies.
Swarms of them.
And unlike Cali flies, they dont stop when you shoo them away.In fact, Ive had to run down streets and hide inside to get away from them.

But seriously, its ok compared to swooping, psycho magpies that are about to breed and nest, ALL ALONG THE COMMUTING BIKE TRAILS - and attack us poor cycling folks, by swooping down and at your face , sides of face, back of neck and back. The least worst, just scare the crap out of you, by suddenly hitting your back( they are BIG - the size of parrots) when you least expect it.

[crazycanuck]

Oooh how I love to be a human winshield washer whilst walking down the road. The flies are so bad here in Western Australia that if you get below fly speed, you're covered.

Mtn biking uphill is sooo much fun in the summer..Flies, pea gravel, dust, heat..what more could you ask for.

Summer, please come soon