I knew going into Friday that a ride wouldn’t be in the works. So, between rainy morning errands and an afternoon spent finally cleaning our garage, having junk hauled away, and taking tires to the recycling center, I headed to the Sylvan Preserve to hike, er walk a few miles with my camera.
The rain of the early morning was giving way to cracks of sunlight, and intense humidity. That meant that the mosquitos were going to be out in force. I have three cans of OFF! bug spray, two of which are full, one of which has barely anything in it. Which can do you think was in my car? You are correct. And with that, I struggled to shake the last remnants of N, N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide from the can before starting out, carefully avoiding the spent bright yellow condom laying in the secluded parking lot.
Right from the start, the humidity was intense and the bugs were brutal. The tiny bit of OFF! that I rationed over the various parts of my too big body was not nearly enough; stopping for a photo was met with swarming dive bombing bloodthirsty pests.
Despite the insect attacks, I lumbered on and got a good shot of a Monarch Butterly. Ma Nature allows me one or two butterfly shots a year, Friday was one of them. Thanks.
As I continued on, battling insects and getting a few shots here and there, I heard the sound of a crowd of kids. Not just kids; teenagers. Oh brother.
Apparently, there was some sort of youth cult river float thing happening and they pulled off at one of the small landings in the preserve for some reason. You really don’t know what being a pedo-creep might feel like until you’re a chubby man covered in sweat, holding a camera, appearing out of the woods and walking past a large group of teenage girls in swimsuits and sports bras. It was pretty humiliating. I just put my head down and quickly walked by them, trying not to make contact with their puzzled and disgusted eyes. I was this close to actually yelling out “I KNOW THIS LOOKS REALLY BAD, BUT I SWEAR I’M JUST HERE TAKING PICTURES OF FLOWERS AND BUGS!! AND THAT USED CONDOM IN THE PARKING LOT ISN’T MINE EITHER, SO EVERYONE JUST FUCKING RELAX!!”
After that awkward encounter, I was eager to end the hike quickly. But not before taking a not creepy at all photo of two bugs having sex on a flower. Well, I think that’s what they were doing, they might have just been playfully mounting each other as bugs are want to do.
All too soon I was back in the car and on my way back home to clean out our the garage for the first time in 2 years. Not long after I started Wifey and B arrived back from WPA. After exchanging hugs and kisses it was back to work in the intense heat of the garage.
It wasn’t the best of days but I accomplished a few things:
1. For only being out for a short time I got some OK photos.
2. I was able to briefly experience life as someone looking like a pedo forest creeper.
3. I have a clean garage for the first time in 2 years.
There is some threat of thunderstorms today but I think I’ll have time to sneak in a quick ride.
Later.