Buggered!

I've heard of this before but never had it happen to me until the day I decided to evacuate from hurricane Irma.

The attack of the bugs!

The picture didn't capture how awful the situation looked. All those black blobs are bug clusters. The windshield looks dirty, but close up these are black opaque bugs stuck all over the windshield.

I could barely see out of my windshield. I couldn't pull over, I had to keep going, going, going. I was traversing country roads, but I had just  crossed over an interstate that was parked with bumper to bumper cars in Georgia. I had no news, while driving, but when I parked that night I found out Savannah was evacuating and I was a scant 75 miles west after driving northward out of Florida all day long until it was too dark and I was too tired. Of course I was intermittently stuck in traffic, even on country roads. Once I crossed out of Florida into Georgia, I had to start looking for gas. RV's are thirsty beasts.

Stopping for gas, I was lucky to get in pretty quickly to a pump, but a pickup truck towing a long large travel trailer pulled into the station in a panic, and he blocked up the gas station traffic something awful. He didn't want to wait his turn and this caused a big mess that took a long time to clear. No one could exit or enter thanks to his fiasco. Ironically I was second in line to exit when he whipped into the station, not waiting his turn nearly colliding with the car in front of me.

The car in front hit the brakes hard then eventually managed to very slowly pull out past the travel trailer and into the highway. That left me about an inch to clear the travel trailer on one side and a sturdy unyielding sign post on the other side. The trailer was at a bizarre angle blocking all of the entrance lane and half of the exit lane. I didn't think I could exit, but I moved my rig at a snail's pace expecting to hit either the post or the travel trailer. That is after getting out of my rig to fold in my mirrors. My mirrors are manual and I can't reach either one without exiting the rig. A serious design flaw. Well, I can reach the driver mirror, if I unhook my seat belt, roll the window down and hang over the edge of the window half way out the window. My feet can't reach the pedals this way, so I have to be parked.

Once my mirrors cleared the trailer and sign post, I had to get out of  my rig again to fix them back to where they were useful because my next maneuver would land me on the crowded highway with no time to stop and fiddle with the mirrors. That is if I could make the sharp turn using half a lane.

If the pickup truck would move 6 inches, it would be heavenly, but he had strangely exited his truck in spite of all the chaos he had created. Maybe he ran off to go hide? I don't know, but his impatience really snarled things up as cars behind him on the highway couldn't turn into the station and cars behind me couldn't get around either of us to exit the station.

Amazing. All was working smoothly then this guy has to clog up the system in the worst way.

I didn't want to bang up my rig or bang up his trailer. But my mind thought up very naughty things,  like accidentally beating on his trailer with a hammer as I inched past it. I did not do this,  and told myself BAD GIRL for thinking up such foolishness! But actually I didn't think of it on my own.

I was reminded of a story someone once told me about parking their little car neatly between the lines when suddenly a towering SUV whipped into the spot next to them, hogging over the line into their space in such a way they couldn't get their door open enough to get out. The SUV driver took off walking for the store ignoring their pleas for help. The person trapped told me they happened to have their tool box sitting in the passenger seat so they reached out the window and banged on the SUV with a hefty hammer until they had made a big ugly dent down the side of it just enough so they could open their door and squeeze out. Holy cow! That is wicked indeed.

I did manage to exit the gas station without hitting the trailer or the big hefty sign post. Then I hit the attack of the bugs! Bugs bugs bugs just slammed into me committing suicide all over my windshield, my bumper, my grill, my overhead overhang. At a four way stop in the country, I glanced to my right and there was a dark black shadow. It was this massive swarm of bugs. I wanted to snap a picture but cars were waiting for me to take my turn and go, so I drove away.

When I did finally park for the evening, I was exhausted and it was too dark to do anything about them.  Next I learned about a change in course in Irma. I had to get up at sunrise to travel again. I snapped this picture of the bugs before I cleaned the windshield. There wasn't time to clean the rest of the bugs off the rig.

I scrubbed the windshield as best I could with plain vinegar, and a half hour later, there will still bug residue on the windshield, but I could see better. It was time to make tracks fast. It's difficult for me to reach the windshield, but I did have a window scrubby with a short handle.

My first stop, my chosen hidy hole, wasn't going to work out after all. It's a good thing I got up and left, I learned later a tree fell right where I was parked, plus power and water was knocked out.