Mike Pooped a Bee!

It is 3 days since Turkey Day and I’ve had enough Turkey! How about you? This is also the last day-off before returning to that thing called work, ugh… Today was a magnificent day here in the land of lost wages. So, we thought we’d take a tour around the Lake for the umpteenth-million time. Actually, it was a great day. The local lake ranger Nazi bitches weren’t on post today. Only the nice, courteous, young up-and-comers were there. No doubt because the old guard had seniority, thereby making the young bucks pay their government dues by working a holiday weekend.

In all my days and miles of riding a bike I witnessed something today that is no doubt a first. Mike got stung by a bee today. Well, not stung as in the usual sense. You know, on the arm, leg or torso. No, Mike got stung smack dab in the middle of his tongue! He said he felt something fly into his mouth and immediately closed the old throat sphincter so as not to swallow the unwelcome little pest. Upon, expectorating the remains, he noticed a funny taste and a stinging sensation on his tongue. That wasn’t all bad of course, except for the fact that he had fallen behind and had to ride a good mile before any one of us could help him out. To make matters worse, the little stinger, left behind by the since half-digested culprit, was stuck smack dab in the middle of his tongue and certainly not easy to get to. Since Mike’s wife Lisa was there for emotional support, we drafted her as chief surgeon, or maybe she self-appointed; I got to the accident scene a little after the discovery. Anyway, we all claimed no medical knowledge whatsoever dealing with tongue bee stings. As I fumbled around in my seat bag for my miniature Swiss Army knife tweezers, Lisa performed the most amazing combat field surgery I’ve ever witnessed. With the finesse that only females have using their finger nails, she snapped up that sucker with precision. Be gone pesky little stinger, be gone! Mike was now the prize winner and recipient of a nice swollen welt. Dr. Mozam, me, jumped in with a little expert medical advice and prescribed multiple washings and flushing using the medicinal wonders of Gatorade. Since Mike had no better ideas, he followed Dr. Mozam’s advice and recovered nicely for the rest of the ride.

Drama, it’s just part of life. And…it can be very interesting sometimes. Just when we thought we’d seen enough from our bee sting experience, we had a rather nice encounter on our way out of the lake on the Boulder City side. It appeared that the Bighorn Sheep community spread the word that the GV peleton was coming through and the call went out for all to cheer us on as we made our way up the hill and through town. I quickly, and quite professionally I might ad, whipped out the ‘ole camera and got some really good shots (all of which you can see here and some of which you can see in this Blog entry). As I was snapping away, Sig (Siegfried) said, “hey, I hope they don’t turn on us and ram the bikes.” Suddenly, I got that, “I’m on the wrong side of the lion’s cage door at the zoo” feeling. So, with that thought in mind we inched our way past the herd and made our way quietly up the rest of the climb.



I can’t remember when I had a more interesting day, especially on the bike.