I was listening to NPR yesterday, and heard this story about bird strikes at airports in the U.S: Pinpointing Airports With High Rate Of Bird Strikes.

Bad News: Number of bird strikes is up. Good news: Damage done by birds is down.

Bad news of good news: they don't know why. The population of large birds, who do the most damage to planes, has increased, as has the amount of air traffic. Large birds, as in Canadian Geese.

Most aircraft, particularly large planes, are able to (for lack of a better term) "ingest" the bird and no harm is done… if the bird is small enough. A larger poop-spewing Canadian goose, on the other hand, will leave a bit more damage.

Needless to say, I've never liked Canadian geese. They honk loudly and make you depressed in the fall, because when you see them you know they're peace-ing out to a warmer climate while you're stuck in the frozen tundra. Also, if you've ever played on a grass field near a lake, then you probably understand my reasoning: GOOSE TURDS. Canadian geese leave these nasty slick green poops all over the place and consequently you come home and find your shoes covered in goose doo.

Additionally, they're MEAN mofos. Female geese have been known to attack humans, and I'm always afraid the ones at our barn might decide to challenge Cass to a game of chicken (or would it be goose?) when we walk by.

Now, according to this website, anti-goose techniques include scarecrows (yeah, sure, like those ever work), guard dogs (Stella the barn dog is not allowed to chase wild animals), propane exploders and pyrotechnics (which, as an added benefit, scare horses too!), toy water craft and helicopters (hmm…), and lasers.

I think a trip to Toys-R-Us might be in order!

Yesterday's ride — relatively uneventful. Nice scenery, short hills, good weather.

I ended up messing up my directions and going down Glen Mill instead of the subdivision to the east of it, so needless to say I probably won't make that mistake again… a bit too much traffic for my tastes, not to mention the road is pretty cut up in spots. Still, I ended up doing a bit over 17 miles (MMR mileage is wrong). Pretty good, although at this point in time I'd like to be hitting at least 20 regularly, but I'd rather keep them short and frequent rather than long and once a week.

All I've got to say is thank goodness the MS Ride is in June this year and not May… because if it was, I probably would have to relegate myself to doing the 30 mile route. Let's see, a little more than a month and a half to whip myself into shape to do the metric century — doable, I hope. It's not like I've been sedentary all winter, I've been riding Cass a lot, so my cardiovascular fitness should be a little higher than couch potato level.

So! First ride of the season was last (last) Sunday, as I was away in Utah visiting my parents for the past week. I'm having a bit of an issue plotting out routes that won't destroy my knees with steep hills, which means much of North Arlington, McLean, and Potomac (all which have great biking) are out for a few weeks. Similarly, I've decided that I need to be cautious of where in South Arlington I go, because the drivers there are generally not as mindful as the ones above Route 50 are. DC is limited to weekends, and I've found the risk of getting doored goes up by about 60%. Plus that whole biker getting run over by a garbage truck last year… yeah.

That being said, I think I'm going to actually have to relegate myself to using some of the bike trails until I'm strong enough to tackle the leg 'n lung burners near the barn in Potomac. (Probably might want to stay off River Road if I don't want to get humiliated by the local racers that train there, too. )

Anyway, I managed to plot out a route that worked pretty well — fairly low traffic, not too too many turns, and I only got lost disoriented once. Not a killer workout, but good enough to get the legs workin' again. (And remind me I need to clean my chain.) I think I got around 14-15 miles on my cyclometer thanks to some missed turns, but hey, who cares… I went biking!