: Seeing things?

By: g | No Comments » |

I’ve seen lost of things when I’ve been out riding – some of the best have been at night. One night a wombat entered the singletrack at full pelt about five metres in front of me, and we sprinted along together for about 100 metres, until he got bored with racing and left the track.

I’ve seen a possum that just had enough colour not be classed as albino, there have been roos and wallabies impersonating Scud missiles and diving across the track in front of me. I’ve watched a dingo watching me from the side of the track – I left after chickening out first.

And what about that big black cat – surely I didn’t see the infamous black panther??

Tawny Frogmouths (something like an owl) regularly keep me company on the firetrail, flying along just a few metres above and in front of me. It looks really cool to watch this happening to a mate – everything’s black, but your light picks out a patch of trail, a rider hammering along, and just above his head, “his” bird.

In daylight there’s been rare red tailed black cockatoos – once there must have been over 100 of the more common yellow tailed black cockatoos, lots of parrots, magpies, currawongs and smaller birds.

But the weirdest thing has to be cicadas. “Cicadas? Aren’t they those noisy insects we hear on hot summer days? They’re not weird.”

Yup, good old Oz cicadas – double drummers, greengrocers, black princes, yellow mondays, etc. For those of you from OS or wetter parts of Australia, NSW is one of several states in the grip of a drought, and we seem to heading into a long dry summer. Until this week’s drizzle, my area’s only seen one day of rain in months, other areas have had less for longer. Bushfires continue to rage, having already destroyed quite a few houses, and summer hasn’t even officially started. But the dry hot weather seems to have brought out the cicadas in their millions. I haven’t seen or heard as many cicadas since I was a kid – and way back then we were in the midst of a drought as well.

Anyway, why did they weird me out? They’re common throughout summer, and have never been weird or scary. This ride was different. I could only see them occasionally in the dark, but I could still hear them, and what a strange cacophony they made. Cicadas don’t fly very well, so I could hear the noises of their bumbling through the bush, crashing into leaves and branches, dropping, getting up and flying off again (hey, I ride like that!). Then I’d hear them as I rode towards stands of trees that had survived the last fires, stereo, quadraphonic, then a hypnotic groove of 5.1 surround sound, as one by one they found the rhythm, finally hitting a note which causes eardrums to rattle. Later, their high pitched metallic buzzing made me think something was loose on my bike.

It wasn’t all noise from the cicadas. Oh no. All through the singletrack, my helmet light was picking up constantly falling droplets – what the…? Bloody hell, it’s cicada piss! It seemed the singletrack was the local cicada pissoir, and I was riding in the middle of it. Bleuurgh.

But weirdest of all was the final bit of singletrack. I thought I could hear cicada wings flapping, and the sound was following me – it seemed very close to my ear. Eeek! Maybe it’s on my helmet. Stop and check – nope, all clear, but I can still hear the noise, this time it’s behind me, now in front, this weird flapping and rustling sound. I look and see nothing, but the sounds continue. The trees are covered with cicada shells, and I come to the conclusion that the noise must be fresh hatched cicadas drying their wings.

I had to come to that conclusion, because the only other logical conclusion was that a whole bunch of cicadas have been watching Alfred Hitchock’s “The Birds”. You know the scene – cicadas surrounding the hapless rider, silently menacing, watching, threateningly rustling wings before the final horrific attack.

The rustling continues all the way through this stretch of track, above, below, beside, around me, but always there, always shifting and always freaky. By the end of the ride, I’m feeling decidedly weird, and keep thinking of this ride as the “cicada ride” – cicadas having made such a powerful impact to the experience of the whole ride.

Aah, you’ve gotta love riding, always something new, so often something special.

The Fat Hippy

 

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