So...I can say now that I take pictures for a living. A fairly safe job, right? What could go wrong? Of course, I do take most of my pictures out in nature and among the wild life. There are scary things out there. I could get struck by lightning. There's lions, tigers and bears! Oh my! What about venomous snakes? So there are some risks to what I do, but I never thought this would happen. So I'm on Big Talbot Island. There's a great state park with a beach full of driftwood that faces east. So I thought it might be cool to try to grab some shots of the sunrise with the driftwood on the beach. Problem was the park doesn't open till sunrise and I need to be on the beach before that happens. It's also a bit of a hike and when I scouted it out the day before I was attacked by horseflies on the path to get to the beach. But there is a bike trail that runs through the park. So I came up with the plan to park at a small lot at a boat ramp down the street and jump on the bike path and ride to the park, cut into the park and ride quickly through the horsefly infested trail to get to the beach. The thing I hate most about riding the bike on trails first thing in the morning before anyone is out there is the very high possibility of riding through tons of spider webs. Nothing tragic, just annoying.
But recently I posted a picture of a banana spider and did a little research on them and their webs. Their webbing is actually the strongest substance known to man. I can just imagine riding through one of those huge webs and it just wrapping me up like a giant cocoon. Plus I had seen several of the spiders the day before. So I'm on high alert watching for these as I ride in near darkness. From the boat ramp I have to take this long boardwalk to get to the park. It had rained the night before, so the boardwalk is wet.
Along the boardwalk are these signs indicating the surface is slippery. I thought to myself, there's no way you're gonna slip as long as you keep riding straight. So no issues. I made it to the beach in time with no real issues.
On my way back shorty after I get back on the boardwalk, out of the corner of my eye I see this giant web with a banana spider in it up to my left. It was so high that I had no chance of going through it. But since I saw it last minute, I freaked and turned real quick and BAM!, the tires slipped right out from under me and I immediately slammed down to the deck. That damn spider got me! I had my camera on a harness on my chest, my tripod in a bag hanging over my shoulder and a backpack on my back with several lenses and other camera gear. I ended up landing on the tripod. No harm done, but when I got home, I realized the camera snapped the main photo above when I slammed to the surface. You can see my handle bars and front wheel are totally twisted out of alignment...kinda funny. So don't worry about the lions, tigers, bears, alligators and snakes. It's those damn spiders that'll getcha!
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