![6 Things Nobody Tells You About Owning a Motorcycle]()
Go to craigslist and search for motorcycles. You'll see people advertising their bikes as "garage kept." It makes sense: Less weather, less random molestation, better bike. Right? This is a lie. What you are seeing is a front perpetrated by motorcycle owners. People that have ridden before know what is really being said here: No spiders.
Due to necessity, I have to park my bike outside. Often under a tree. For seven months of the year. In Austin, Texas.
This is a picture of my helmet hanging on the handle bar of my bike.
In the few hours I spent visiting my parents, a bird built a nest in the helmet.
This means rain, heat, sun and humidity. These four elements combine together like a horrific Voltron to produce billions of giant, inexplicably hostile bugs. Not the cute, harmless kind; the kind that appear to be sporting prison tattoos. And their yard -- the place where they mingle, fight, maneuver and plot -- is my motorcycle. All the little nooks and crannies are like a pre-built insect metropolis, just waiting to be populated by creepy little pedestrians. My general morning ritual consists of a quick dusting for the visible spider webs, egg sacks and booby traps placed by the crawling terrors that -- but you can never get them all. If there's one thing spiders know, it is patience: They hide in their hidden crevices, waiting for you to get on the street when they can emerge and feast upon your jiggly bits unimpeded.
Getty "Surprise! I'm going to eat your FACE!"
Like all rational beings, I once had a fear of spiders. But the first time one dangles in front of your face from the inside of your helmet, you make a decision: Overcome your fear, kill the part of your brain that feels emotions, and calmly guide your bike to the side of the road, or obey literally every instinct in your body to swat, scream and flail, and become modern art on the highway.
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