We’ve hit that part of the summer here in northern Illinois where the grasshoppers come out in abundance. While they are literally everywhere right now - I had coffee with one this morning, his name was Dennis - you’d think that they would choose primarily to stay, you know, in the grass.

This is not the case.

No, despite their name, these green-hued hoppers really seem to enjoy sunning themselves out on the warmth of the asphalt. This is troubling enough when one is traveling along in a car - the crunch of exoskeletons under the wheels and the smack of hopper bodies against the grill is cringe-inducing at best.

Troubling enough, but riding through batches of grasshoppers on a recumbent trike is a different matter entirely. The key here is height, which is to say that you are only a few inches above the pavement upon which they sit.

Understandably, the grasshoppers are startled by the trike as it approaches, and that triggers their flight response - quite literally. As you approach the grasshoppers will use their one defense - leaping into the sky - to escape the sudden danger. According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, this is an attempt to startle potential predators:

when detected, many species attempt to startle the predator with a brilliantly-coloured wing-flash while jumping and (if adult) launching themselves into the air, usually flying for only a short distance.

This is exactly what happens - as you roll up on them they leap into the air, arcing off to one direction or another, wings out with a flash of color that is quite lovely - you can easily mistake them for a butterfly if you don’t see them before the leap.

It’s lovely, of course, until they hit you.

And they _do_ hit you. On my Catrike Expedition I sit such that my head and chest seem to be at a height just below the apex of their leap. I am never so glad to be a person who wears glasses as I am in these moments.

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Since they are an unavoidable part of nature’s tableau during the mid-summer, I’ve tried to adapt and develop an approach towards dealing with them. What this looks like in practice is watching for them as I’m going down the road - distinguishing them from small bits of debris or even changes in color in the tar and chip at a distance makes that somewhat challenging - and then I try to maneuver so that I don’t ride over top of them - e.g. so that the trajectory of my travel wouldn't have the trike seat travel directly over them if they stayed in place. Because they don’t stay in place.

The logic to this is that they will then at least not be directly in front of me as they start their leap. This does mean that I’m engaged in a bit of erratic slalom activity as I go down the road, and I’m sure there are fellow travelers who see me do this and wonder "why does he drink before he goes out to ride his trike?"...

(To be clear for those who might worry: this is all within my lane of travel - I’m not veering all over the road, and I forgo and risk hopper-strike instead if there are cars around me).

Does this work?

...Honestly, I have no idea. I can pretty much guarantee that each time I start to think "yeah, I’ve got this figured out now" it is followed by a "thwack" as a grasshopper smacks into my forehead. Or my chest. Or my face.

These are typically very brief encounters - the "thwack" occurs, and then the hopper is gone. But on a couple of very rare occasions the arc of the insect’s pounce ended with it landing on my chest.

Then it’s just you and the grasshopper, staring each other down. In these instances I did what any red-blooded American male would do:

I let out a high-pitched shriek and yelled "get off, get off, get off" while flailing wildly at my chest.