Hiking (aka eating bugs)

I love hiking - communing with nature, being with my wife, getting exercise (I can earn almost an entire day's worth of extra calories on a 3-4 hour hike, which allows me to have a fast-food shake or decaf/mocha/cappa-frappa/caramel/vanilla bean/double espresso latte), seeing nature in all its glory - what's not to like? I'll tell you: bugs. Yes, I understand, bugs are part of nature, but seriously, am I the most interesting thing in the forest? You'd think so, the way they swarm all over me. Both my wife and I sprayed ourselves quite liberally with enough insect repellent before the hike to easily kill Mothra (age check). She's not getting bothered at all, but I killed about 200 mosquitoes within the first 5 minutes of our hike. 200 mosquitoes doesn't sound like a lot until you realize you've inhaled easily the same amount. Sure, they're protein, but how many would you have to eat to even get 1 gram of protein? I mean, have you ever seen a fat bat? Didn't think so. Re-applying the insect repellent didn't seem to help, but at least I got to apply more toxic chemicals to my skin. Yay, me.

I'm not sure anyone really knows how many insects exist. But I don't think I'm being too conservative when I estimate that number at 7,342,803,777,144. I'm sure you're thinking I'm exaggerating, but it's even worse: that's PER person. If you consider their life, it's no wonder they're so annoying; they're born, they eat, annoy humans (sometimes that's also eating), create more bugs (sometimes THAT includes humans as well - yuck), then repeat until death. You can't tell me they're not an alien race, bent on humanity's destruction. They suck. Literally. They suck your blood, burrow under your skin, lay eggs, bite you, sting you - some of them even VOMIT into you.  That's right, it's not bad enough that the little bastards suck your blood - no, some of them actually THROW UP into you. Those kinds are basically the frat boys of the insect world, going from frat party (human) to frat party (next human), drinking and throwing up. You're like a walking "kegger" to them. Yum.

However, the ones that really bother me are those that dive-bomb your head, repeatedly, sounding like mini B-52's. They seem intent on getting inside your ear, or really, any cranial orifice, I presume so they can burrow into your brain and eat it. That's right - zombie bugs. But they're not the kind of zombies we're used to from Hollywood, the kind you could outrun while in a wheelchair as they lurch about. No, these FLY and are so fast you can't even see them, let alone outrun them. They're supersonic zombie bugs. And there's BILLIONS of them. BILLIONS. You can't outrun that, you can only flail awkwardly and repeatedly as they laugh at you (other hikers, even though similarly pestered, will also laugh at you). I can imagine their little insect huddles: "Hey, look - humans! Let's go have some fun. Let's split up - you 450 million, you go for the ears, you 600 million, take the eyes, and the rest of us will try to go up their noses and mate. Okay, let's synchronize watches. Crap! We don't have watches!! Just go - DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!!"

So why do I continue to hike? For all the reasons I listed initially, and then, there's this. This. This isn't something you find laying on your couch, tweeting, texting or facebooking (or even blogging). This has no equal in the electronic world. This is nature. This is priceless. This is beauty. Peace.