Hi ... thought I would relay my experience from the weekend.

My fiance and I are trying to get the mileage/saddle time in for our first century next month. We did a metric last year but this year we are going to do "The Flattest Century in the East"... so we're at the point where we're progressively upping the mileage each weekend.

This Saturday gone we decided to ride from Hartford Conn ( where we live ), up to Granville Mass and back, to complete what looked like 60 miles on the map ( turned out to be 5 miles shy so we will have to add something on next weekend ) ...

We were cruising along at a good clip through some rolling farmland, and had seen plenty of bugs flying out of the scrub on the side of the road ... so when one hit me at 20ish mph I was not too surprised, even when it hit me hard enough, right on my right brow that it managed to get behind my glasses ... I'm still not entirely sure how it managed that! But as I was reaching up to take off my glasses to let it out (It was buzzing around against my shut eye) it stung me right on my eye lid. I have envisioned this scenario ( well not on the eye exactly ) quite a few times and convinced myself that I would remain calm and slowly come to a precisely controlled stop on the side of the road... in reality I freaked out, lost all rational thought and with only my left hand on the handlebar I swerved into the center of the road. My fiance behind me was screaming at me and a horn blaring at me made me quickly realise my predicament and I swerved back onto the side of the road as a lady in a Honda Element swerved out onto the other side of the road to miss me.

I am pretty lucky that there was no traffic coming the other way, that the bug didn't sting me a fraction of a second later, and that the driver of the Honda was paying attention and had good reflexes ... just pretty lucky in general.

I must add that the Honda driver came back to see if we were alright and offered the use of her place in case I was allergic ( I'm not ) .. and gave directions on how to get there, letting us know that our mobile phones wouldn't work out there. I was well impressed with her, a lot of people would have cursed the idiot cyclist and kept going.

Anyone have advice for someone in this scenario?

Cheers
Damo