love bugs are in the air...

and all over my car. the turnpike was pretty miserable with them. miserable. i made the mistake of thinking my windshield wipers might help remove some of them, but pretty much all it did was make the situation worse. so from the first service plaza on the turnpike to yeehaw junction, my visibility was nil.

all the motorists bonded at the two gas stations in yeehaw junction. a friendly lady gave up her windshield scraper to me (her husband was already using one) and offered me some tips on getting the bugs off. (use lots of water, which helped).

it's demoralizing though to get a clear view only to get a few seconds further down the road and have a bunch more bugs splatter their way onto the window.

i don't think they were as bad on the way back. i stopped in okeechobee for gas and the things were all over the gas station. ugh. now that i'm back in orlando, i notice the cars around here do not have the lovely love bug look that i'm currently sporting.

as i was entering orlando, i heard on the radio some talk about the urban legends surrounding love bugs. the one i was familiar with was that UF had engineered them to control the mosquito population but that things got out of hand. a myth i hadn't heard was that the love bug season can predict what we can expect during hurricane season. i hope, like the UF rumor, that that's false. otherwise we are in for it.

my friend's husband is from michigan and he had never experienced love bugs before. he was convinced he'd been bit by one until my friend explained that they don't bite. they just sort of fly and drift around. and don't dodge cars. can you imagine if they did bite? they could take over the world.

and apparently i have 48 hours to get the love bugs cleaned off my car before they damage the paint. something about the acid in their bodies.

all i need is a good pressure cleaner and chisel and i'll be set.