The other day I was riding to work. Pumping along. Nice and fast. I needed extra cooling, so I was riding with my mouth open. And then it happened.
This post is aiming to be a rant you see, and I feel that I need to write it in my best ranty style. It seems to me that rants should be a little disjointed, have short sentences, and beat on one or two points for no apparent reason. Anyway, back to the rantage…
So, I’m doing the right thing. The right thing! Riding to work! Exercise! Oh, did I mention the bad thing that happened yet? I guess not. A flying insect of some form (I’m not sure if it was a bee, wasp, or some strange American killer flying monster) flew into my mouth. My mouth! That thing I had open for extra cooling! Oh the humanity! Then, not surprisingly, it found that being in my mouth scared the shit out of it. I could have told it that would happen if it had asked, but no it didn’t. My mouth!
And then it stung me on the inside of my upper lip.
I figure that sentence deserves a paragraph to itself, it’s kind of the punch line after all.
I’ve never been stung before. Let alone in my mouth. My mouth! I was at the top of a hill, leading into a tunnel. I had to keep riding for a minute or so until it was safe to stop. Did I mention that this was after I had been stung. In the mouth? By a flying insect? My mouth! Anyway, I ended up pulling over at the Microsoft car park, and pulling the stinger out of the inside of my lip (that’s part of my mouth by the way). No help from any Microsoft employees of course. They were busy all planning the destruction of Google, and throwing chairs or something. I walked my bike to somewhere more obvious from the road, rang Catherine, and asked for rescue.
All the time I was thinking: my mouth! My mouth!
I’m running out of rant here. Sorry. I got to work in the end, having been rescued by Catherine and the boys. It took a few hours for the pain to mostly stop. Ice and anti-hystamines seemed to help. I was swollen for a day or so afterwards, and Matthew was convinced I was going to die. All the time I thought to myself: my mouth!
Oh, a little more rant. And then one of the guys from work has the hide to send me this cartoon this morning:
So, to summarise. I was riding to work, and got stung for the first time every by an insect. It was in my mouth and hurt a lot. Does this crap happen to other people, or just me?