Remember That One Time...the Bat and Sunglasses Story

I can't believe I never wrote about this after it happened. When I wrote the 2013 Racing Statistics post and mentioned that I lost a pair of sunglasses to a bat, Bethany commented to ask about it.  It's quite the story.
Last year, Kelly and I rode our bikes on Wednesdays after work almost every week at Paul Douglas Forest Preserve.  One evening kind of late in the summer, I decided to head out for a solo lap.  The sun was starting to set, but there was still plenty of light left and it takes me less than 30 minutes to do a lap.
The lap started out fine and I was cruising along. The last part of the loop goes through an area with trees lining the path and has a few hills.  Since the sun was already low in the sky, this part of the ride was a little dark so I moved my sunglasses to the top of my helmet. I could still see fine so I wasn't worried.
As I am cruising up a hill probably doing somewhere around 13-15 mph, I see something flying up ahead.  In less than a second, I realize that it is a bat and that I am going to collide with it.  So I tuck my head down so it wouldn't hit my face. I don't know exactly what happened next but I do know the bat hit my leg and my sunglasses fall off the top of my helmet.  I am scared of bats and I have been for a long time.  They just freak me out. And I am convinced I will get rabies from them.  So my heart was beating about 250 beats per minute. I rode the rest of that loop really fast.
I was wearing some cheap, free sunglasses so there was no way I was going back to the place of the bat incident to get those sunglasses. RIP sunglasses.