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I quietly thanked Oakley this morning (producers of my favorite cycling sunglasses).  Check this out…

While riding my bicycle in to work today, it was FREEZING.  The wind was whipping around at about 18 mph and I think the temperature was trending at 50 degrees.  I’m fairly certain the wind chill was somewhere around 45, and since I was dressed in a vest/wind breaker, it felt really cold!  But it wasn’t the wind or the cold I was thanking Oakley for.  The sunglasses tint the shining sun nicely and shield my eyeballs from the wind really well, but it was the small pack of gnats I rode through that made me think what a great product Oakley made for me.

Thank you Oakley!

This knotted up, buzzing in tight formation, community of gnats doing that thing gnats do, on the calm side of a tree, was a strange and curious thing to see.  I guess they grouped there because they could, and by sheer volume made themselves known because they created this odd-looking dark shadow where no shadow could be.  The sun was shining from the East (as it often does) and the wind was blowing from the Southwest at 17 to 20 mph.  Naturally I am heading South (bother) against the wind.  My feet are putting some very strong pressure on the pedals to move me forward at 18 mph against this wind, and up ahead is something I had never seen.  It looked like that smoke monster from the television show “Lost” and I could not figure out what it was.  Going around it to the left would put me halfway into the right lane of traffic – not acceptable – and going around to the right would have me curb jumping onto lawn which would certainly cause my own personal wreck – been there, done that – so I went right through it.  And realized immediately what it was.  They were up my nose, sticking to the sweat on my brow, attaching themselves to the little hairs on my arm…..they were gnats.  And a whole group of ’em to boot!

Little, tiny, flying bugs, rotating around in the relative calm beside that big ol’ tree.  I had no idea this could happen.  And I bet nobody driving a car knows about this either!

Anyway, I quietly thanked Oakley this morning for making this most excellent model of sunglasses available to me.  They made ’em, I bought ’em, thank you very much.

The end.