Yeah, I came as close to coming off the bike as I ever did. I'm amazed - I had my head ducked to the tank, back end was all over the place, feet off the pegs... I have no idea how I hung on. Sounded like a shotgun went off in my helmet.
I pulled over, hopped off, and basically collapsed on the side of the road. I think I laid there for 20 minutes. I probably had a mild concussion. Hard enough impact for me to have to buy a new frickin' helmet, anyway.
Luckily you have a good constitution ... It could have been more serious.
The saddest part of the story that you could not sue this little bastard ...
Well, I can hear the cicadas while I am typing this in my home office here in Washington, DC. I can hear them above the drone of the air conditioners of my neighbors. The cicadas are all over the place, but not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe by the sensationalist news media. It's kind of like the snowstorms-of-the-century that always turn out to be duds.
It's fascinating how the cicadas appear in some places and not in others. On my block, which consists of two appartment buildings and about a dozen single family homes, you can only see a few cicadas. Two blocks down, on the sidewalk, it's crunchedy-crunch from all the live and dead cicadas. I guess they like large manicured lawns with big trees on or near them that have been relatively undisturbed for 17+ years. Yeuck! I get goosebumps just thinking about them.
When I walk the dog in Rock Creek Park, the cicadas make a very loud droning noise. It's nothing like the soothing gentle humming of crickets (cigales) in the South of France or here in DC during the non-cicada years. When I walk in the woods, I hardly see any cicadas. But if you look up into the trees, there are something like half a dozen cicadas hanging on to the bottom of each leaf, laying their eggs for the next cycle of horror. Yeuck!
Finally, it seems like there are a whole bunch of different kinds of these buggers. Obviously we have your average crickets, which make a soothing hum and come every year (cigales in French, which my dictionary translates as cicada, even though they're definitely not the same thing). Then there are the 17-year cicadas, which are ugly, noisy, and disgusting. From my childhood in France, I remember the annetons, which were relatively large buggers that came out every couple of years. But I don't recall them being nearly as nasty as the 17-year cicadas here.
The most screwed up thing just happened to me. I'm sitting at my desk, reading the New York Times online, as I do every morning when I can. I'm starting to read an article about the cicadas, Welcome to Cicadaville, which quotes from a satiric website: "What do cicadas eat? Human children are the primary source of nutrition for cicadas." Then I feel something tickling my neck. I brush it off and a giant cicada plops on my desk. Ack!
Needless to say, it took me about ten minutes to get my heart rate back down. Brrrrr. The hair on my back is still standing up.
Comments
Originally posted by murbot
Yeah, I came as close to coming off the bike as I ever did. I'm amazed - I had my head ducked to the tank, back end was all over the place, feet off the pegs... I have no idea how I hung on. Sounded like a shotgun went off in my helmet.
I pulled over, hopped off, and basically collapsed on the side of the road. I think I laid there for 20 minutes. I probably had a mild concussion. Hard enough impact for me to have to buy a new frickin' helmet, anyway.
Luckily you have a good constitution ... It could have been more serious.
The saddest part of the story that you could not sue this little bastard ...
It's fascinating how the cicadas appear in some places and not in others. On my block, which consists of two appartment buildings and about a dozen single family homes, you can only see a few cicadas. Two blocks down, on the sidewalk, it's crunchedy-crunch from all the live and dead cicadas. I guess they like large manicured lawns with big trees on or near them that have been relatively undisturbed for 17+ years. Yeuck! I get goosebumps just thinking about them.
When I walk the dog in Rock Creek Park, the cicadas make a very loud droning noise. It's nothing like the soothing gentle humming of crickets (cigales) in the South of France or here in DC during the non-cicada years. When I walk in the woods, I hardly see any cicadas. But if you look up into the trees, there are something like half a dozen cicadas hanging on to the bottom of each leaf, laying their eggs for the next cycle of horror. Yeuck!
Finally, it seems like there are a whole bunch of different kinds of these buggers. Obviously we have your average crickets, which make a soothing hum and come every year (cigales in French, which my dictionary translates as cicada, even though they're definitely not the same thing). Then there are the 17-year cicadas, which are ugly, noisy, and disgusting. From my childhood in France, I remember the annetons, which were relatively large buggers that came out every couple of years. But I don't recall them being nearly as nasty as the 17-year cicadas here.
Can we get an entomologist in here to explain?
Escher
Originally posted by Giaguara
man becomes ill after gurging on cicadas.
Tsk, tsk. What people will not do...
The most screwed up thing just happened to me. I'm sitting at my desk, reading the New York Times online, as I do every morning when I can. I'm starting to read an article about the cicadas, Welcome to Cicadaville, which quotes from a satiric website: "What do cicadas eat? Human children are the primary source of nutrition for cicadas." Then I feel something tickling my neck. I brush it off and a giant cicada plops on my desk. Ack!
Needless to say, it took me about ten minutes to get my heart rate back down. Brrrrr. The hair on my back is still standing up.
Escher