The Sting of the Road

LAWRENCE, Kansas—I woke up blind in one eye in a hotel far from home, wondering what my unexpected affliction would mean for our continuing journey through the Midwest.

Ice takes down the swelling somewhat

Adding to the uncertainty was the grim fact that my knees had been crippled from overuse, so it took a good two minutes of excruciatingly painful hobbling in pitch-dark, unfamiliar surroundings before I was able to get to a mirror to assess the damage to my eyesight. Swaying unsteadily back and forth in front of the bathroom mirror, the full extent of the horror came slowly into focus—the bad eye was ensconced behind grossly swollen rolls of eyelid tissue. The skin had puffed up to the point of translucency, and the lids were wedged together so tightly that my eyelashes were invisible. A slight crust had taken hold in the outer corner. It was worse than I thought, though not unexpected.

Just 24 hours earlier, my traveling companion and I had watched the sun rise over the Switchgrass Mountain Bike Trail just north of Wilson, Kansas. The trail was recently listed as an IMBA Epic, and we were anxious to try some new trails in someplace other than Utah or Colorado. Admittedly, our initial expectations for the trail were way off. The photos we had seen showed ribbons of smooth singletrack trail cutting through calm Kansas grasslands. In reality, however, the trail moves in and out of extremely rugged sections of Dakota Sandstone formations, so the riding was tedious and slow. We had also been warned of an abundance of ticks on the trails, so we had slathered ourselves with a thick layer of DEET before our ride. The chemical smell drowned out the pleasant pastoral odors of Kansas farmland that had soothed us along our previous daylong journey.

Kansas prairie riding!

After riding and walking through a few of the more-gnarly sections, the initial trail panic subsided. We relaxed a bit and began to settle in to the rhythm of the trail, which is a labyrinth of tight switchbacks, rocky descents, rock-armored ascents and ribbons of satisfying smoothness. During one short period of carefree riding—a serpentine section of smooth dirt that descended toward the lake below—I was suddenly jarred out of my zen-like riding stupor by a sharp smack to the corner of my face. I was overwhelmed by a frantic, angry buzzing, accompanied by the alarming sensation of exoskeletal legs clawing at the corner of my right eye.

"Good God!" my mind shrieked, "what kind of hellish tragedy is this?"

I struggled to maintain my concentration to keep the bike on the trail as I wound quickly through the terrain. As I grappled to reason what had happened, it suddenly became obvious that some giant bug had flown into the tight space between my sunglasses and face, and now it was struggling to escape!

The volume of the buzzing and the size of the creature's legs clawing at my tender face flesh made me first believe that I had been assaulted by a giant prairie grasshopper, and that the worse thing that could happen would be that the corner of my eye and the side of my face would be covered with an abundance of tobacco juice and maybe a small yellow stain of bug guts.

But then the stinging began.

After feeling the fourth one, which was dangerously close to the corner of my eye, I let out an audible howl—one that Caroline would later tell me was so loud and girlish that she though she was hearing a bikini-clad tween tipping over on a jet ski in the lake below. With the bike still descending out of control, I grabbed the brakes hard and skidded to a stop in an uncontrolled blind panic. Thankfully I did not go over the bars. I ripped my sunglasses off of my face and saw a dark object fall to the ground at my feet. A sensation of prickly fire gripped the right side of my face.

Sucker stung me three times in one spot and drew blood

"Sweet stinging Jesus!" I screamed as Caroline rode up with a look of concern. "What the fuck is that!" I pointed at the ground at the giant black mass wriggling in the dirt below.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed. "Is your eye bleeding?"

I put my glasses back on to take a look at my attacker just as Caroline's words registered in my head. I jerked the glasses back off and pointed the side of my face at her nose.

"Am I bleeding?"

"A little bit. What is that thing?"

I put my glasses back on, tipped the bug over with the toe of my shoe and gasped. It was a bumble bee!

But it wasn't just any bumble bee. It was a giant Kansas prairie bumble bee with a body as big as my thumb and a three-inch wingspan from tip to tip. The top of its body was a fuzzy dandelion yellow, but underneath it was as black and as evil as the yawning chasm of Tartarus. Its giant stinger flicked in and out of its abdomen sheath as it lay on its back on the trail in its death throes.

"Holy fuck! I hope I don't go anaphylactic," I whimpered, remembering a couple of episodes as a youngster when I was rushed to the hospital after bee stings for a quick dose of Benadryl to keep my throat from swelling shut.

On the other hand, you've gotta die somewhere, so after I ceased my senseless sniveling, we decided to keep riding and see what happens. A few miles later my face started to throb. My eye started feeling funky, so we diverted our course back to the trailhead.

Who doesn't love turtles?

Around a corner, I skidded again to a halt when I saw the gaily-painted boulder with legs crawling down the center of the trail.

"Lucky turtle!" I shouted, as Caroline skidded into the back of my bike. The corners of her mouth betrayed her annoyance until she saw what I was pointing at just in front of my tire.

The critter withdrew its arms, legs and head tightly into its shell and refused to reemerge for a photo op. Finally I picked up the little guy and gently placed him off the trail. Even that act of kindness couldn't coax him out of his shell.

Having recently read about turtle behavior, I have no doubt that the little bugger crawled right back out onto the trail a few minutes after we left and began crawling along its original heading. I hope the other riders on the trail were as kind as we were.

Time is running out to paint this egg!

Back in Wilson after the ride, I placed some ice on my eye and was able to banish the small amount of swelling. Wilson is the Czechoslovakian capital of Kansas, so on our way out of town I stopped to photograph Kansas's largest Czechoslovakian egg, which is supposed to be festively painted for the community's Czechoslovakian Festival on July 27. Judging from the fact that the only paint on the egg so far was an improvised smiley face made of spray paint, and that weeds had grown up around the vehicle owned by the original procurer of the community egg, I'm betting that the painting plan is never going to hatch.

That night at the hotel, as I drifted off for the first full-night of sweet slumber that I had had for three days, I felt as if all my troubles would drift away. Little did I realize that I would wake up blind. But sitting here looking like the English Patient far away from home with an ice-bag draped over my face, I realize that bumble bees and bad luck are a part of the life. If it were not so, we wouldn't have ever had the Blues, and I never would have started playing the harmonica. Whatever that means.

The road is like that sometimes. But it sure is fun nevertheless.

See you on down the road.