The morning commute

If you think you have a nice drive to work, you’ve got nothing on mine. Instead of road rage from other drivers, I have to worry about a host of non-human hazards- sunning monitor lizards, herds of wild pigs, elephants, guars (rhymes with “shower;” a type of hoofed animal the size of a bison), porcupines . . . So far I have encountered pigs and porcupine, though neither time was I driving. There are also smaller objects to avoid whilst driving. When ele are in the area, they drag bamboo across the road and their poop is so large it is quite a speed bump for the motorbikes! (To combat this, whenever we are out with the truck we make a point of flattening the ele poop. This also allows us to keep track of new poop and therefore more ele in the area.)
One of the biggest challenges of driving for me is not driving stick shift, driving a bike in general, the hills, the curves, the bumpy bridges . . . nope. It’s the butterflies. But they’re so pretty, you say. I would not disagree- I see more amazing butterflies on a daily basis than any other insect/animal (though the stick insects around Baan Ling are pretty sweet). They come in all sizes and colors- from fingernail-sized brown ones to larger iridescent ones that catch the sunlight quite nicely. There are flocks of medium-sized white ones that fly down the roads. The issue is this: a bike moves a whole lot faster than the PKWS butterflies. They also congregate around the ele poop on the road. Which means you drive right into them. And as soft and cuddly as they look in pictures and real life, a butterfly to the eye at 50 km/hr is not a happy situation. After learning this first-hand while riding passenger, I decided I would always drive with my helmet visor down . . . but then I got a big one between my visor and my face that needed to flop for several seconds before finding its way out.
On a working day a shift is either 5am-12pm or 12pm-7pm, so at some point you bike in the dark. This introduces bats as a non-human hazard. While bats hunt with echolocation and therefore don’t need our headlights to “see” their prey, moths are attracted to headlights, so bats often fly directly ahead of us. Which means you can get a bat to the face (or the handlebars, as was the case with Omnoi and me last week). Another good reason to keep your visor down.