7 August 2011
Safety is paramount when I ride. I have good kit. My suit has body armour, my Daytona boots are excellent for touring, plus gloves and a first rate helmet.
It takes some time to get ready each day but I don’t ride without it.
My helmet is a flip front style but when riding the chin bar is in the down/locked position. I do like however to feel the wind in my face so ride with the visor up as much as possible. This is possible when wearing sunglasses at speeds up to about 60 mph. Any more than this and the wind forces the visor down anyway.
I was enjoying riding through Poland yesterday morning and at a gentle touring pace which allowed me ride with the visor up. Next things I felt a sharp pain near my left eye. A bee or wasp had missed everything and slammed right into my face. It felt like I copped a sting also.
You learn to take things like this in your stride and it’s not the first time I’ve felt the force of a bug in the face. Over the next 10 minutes the pain of the sting faded and I continued enjoying the Polish countryside. I could still feel a little pain at the end of the day and was surprised there was little evidence of my bee/wasp encounter.
When I woke up this morning though the incident was clear and this is how it looked at our first riding break mid morning.
No I wasn’t in a fist fight with Kalahari George
It continued to swell during the day and here’s how it looked after dinner tonight.
Getting worse but still no punch-ups involved
Getting worse
Hopefully the swelling will start to go down overnight.
Update: I hadn’t really planned for anything like this on my Turkey motorcycle tour. I’m not a pretty sight at the best of times and this certainly is not a good look! Even though it looks pretty average it was not painful. Not much I could do except cross my fingers that things would improve for tomorrows ride.
Here’s how it looked in the morning.
Cut me Mick!
Even worse. Will I or won’t I ride today?
You will have to wait for the next instalment to find out.
