bees...

nah, yellow jackets... tons of them. we started the wednesday night ride in hopes of doing something a little different than the usual. freshen it up a bit. all was well until we headed towards the canal. we were all a little leary as we always come back with some poison ivy. i started to head into a section that was overgrown a bit and was hesitant. in my mind i went through this trail section as i'd been here before remembering that the overgrown section wasn't very long. as i broke into the trail i felt this sharp burning sensation on my ankle... my mind started racing what is that, i kept feeling it again and again, thorn bushes, no... it finally hit me, bees! i was being stung. it felt like somebody was taking a hot cigar with a sharp needle inside and was pushing it into my leg. as the realization hit me, i heard sara screaming. tony and i were inside the trail. we weren't being stung anymore. however john and sara got the worst of it. they ran 50 yards away from the trail dropping their bikes trying to get away from the swarm. as they were running tony and i were trying to figure out how to get out of there. i couldn't believe how much the stings burned. we ended up having to walk through the thick weeds to get out... spider webs, glass bottles, sticker bushes and the fear of more bees. we made it out. tony and i had been stung 3 times, sara 12 times and john 9 times. buzz kill being a total understatement. when all was done we headed back to the cars laughing about the incident. thinking about how it must have looked. i'm glad we can all look back and laugh.
we weren't sure what they were, someone mentioned they looked like honeybees, no way, they were too aggressive. my guess was yellow jackets as they look similar. i read up on it when i got home. yellow jackets they were.
jill was stung out at the mesa just a few weeks ago going over a log, 15 times. they swarmed her as well. we need to nuke these things bad.