Doug Losing Weight

There’s a place out by the Great Salt Lake, it’s east of Saltair, and I know it as the “Temple of the Birds”.

It’s a concrete structure that has been there forever, and it’s covered in all kinds of graffiti, and is a favorite among many photographers in the Salt Lake area.  It’s a great location.  When you get tired of the building, you can shoot in the burned out remains of an old trolley car that sits right next to it.

I agreed to meet a couple of my friends out there on Saturday morning to do a shoot – they wanted to learn more about lighting on location, so that’s where we decided to do it.

Britanny, Alec (my daughter and our model for the shoot) and I pulled up and found the gate to be shut and locked.  No problem, we’ll just climb it.  I got out of the car and walked across the road to access what we were up against, and I walked into what felt like a puff of powdered sugar.  It was almost imperceptible except for the burning sensation around my hairline and my ears.

I had walked into a cloud of “no-see-ums”.  I don’t know what they really are – but I do know they are vicious.  They are some kind of gnat that is roughly the size of a pinhead, and made entirely of teeth.  Iv’e run into them before, I got a dozen of them in my helmet once when I was riding my motorcycle in this same area – it was painful then – it was worse now…

Soon they had worked their way through my hair and my entire scalp was being eaten.  The girls were under attack too, so we ran for the car.

They were in the car too – well to be fair, they probably rode in on my head!  I’m smashing my head with my hands trying to get the little buggers to stop eating me.  How could such tiny things cause so much pain?

Finally I just decided that I’d let them eat their fill, and then fly away.  I took about 20 minutes for the little guys to fill up.  We moved down the shoreline to another location for our shoot – my mind was soon preoccupied with lighting and technical issues – but later I realized, when I washed my hair, just how painful this was going to be.  Here I am on Monday and the tops of my ears and most of my head is so tender to the touch I just can’t believe it.

Here’s the connection.  On the weekends (well the last two at least) I eat all food that is not good for me like those no-see-ums ate my scalp.  Ferociously attacking anything thing that is sweet, salty, or fried.  I lay in bed at night and can’t sleep as my stomach struggles to finish digesting what I’ve done to it that morning/afternoon/evening/night and I think of those no-see-ums, seeing me as a giant food source and attacking and feeding on all they can.  Gorging themselves on the available food while it’s available.

On the weekends I’ve been just like them.  All teeth, no brain.

I hope they had a hard time sleeping that night too.