I think I now know what it's like

A LAST-MINUTE errand by, who else but my grade schoolers, had us motoring to the city center to buy stuff at Master's Square instead of going home straight from work. Night has fallen when we already started our way back home.

And like what Hagbayon described here, the eight-kilometer stretch from Magsaysay to Grandview became an extraordinary sight, and a tough drive onboard my Honda Wave underbone. Swarms of layug-layug -- I'm not sure if how they should properly be called in English: flying ants or termites or something else that a local entomologist would surely know -- bombarded our path and made the journey quite difficult.

This annual ritual between summer and the onset of rainy days is nothing new. For instance, the Bowling Green, Ohio timeline reported the following in August 1899:

Thunder and lightning warn Bowling Green residents of an approaching storm, but the dark clouds produce not rain but insects. Says the Sentinel: "They were everywhere. Myriads of them fell on the streets about the electric lights and the sidewalks were almost slippery from them. . . . They appear to be a cross between a katydid and a cricket. They are smaller than a cricket and have wings large enough to apparently fly any distance."

But back to my travails early this evening. My helmet and Lynn's are not equipped with a visor, but it was dark and we did not have any other option but to plod on. So you can just imagine what used to be a 15-minute drive becoming 20, slowed down by endless streams of flying insects hitting you all over like hail of bullets. The challenge is to make sure they don't hit you in the eye.

Then, there's also the tickling discomfort when the bugs get caught in your helmet and start to move towards the ears, towards your neck and then your nape. It can get so irritating that you are tempted to drive using one hand, and use the other to shoo them away. But the relief is fleeting, as others would get eventually get caught in those crevices and restart the whole cycle over again. At least until the trip is over and you've finally reached home.

And then the naughty thought struck me: after the ordeal, I think I now know what it's like to have dangerous, unprotected sex.