If any of you have had the (mis)pleasure of riding with me, you have probably heard me laughing callously at everyone else's stories of poison oak contamination. I have even been known to claim that "I must be immune, as I have been riding here for years and never had a reaction!"
What a fool am I.
About two days after the CCCX race at Ft. Ord (Sunday, May 2nd), I noticed what appeared to be a series of mysterious bug bites along my left shin. I flippantly attributed this to 'mosquito bites', and thought nothing more of it.
As the weekend approached, I noted that these bug bites were actually becoming progressively more itchy as time passed. In fact, they appeared to be slowly growing in size, which is unusual for either mosquito or spider bites. Still, I thought nothing of it, and started scratching away at them.
Monday rolls around. I'm at work. I notice an itchy patch of skin on my right forearm, with a few small bumps in the area. Hmm. That didn't used to be there. A bit later, I notice something eerily similar on my right bicep. This is now starting to cause some concern.
That evening, I call my friend Mike who has had some legendary run-ins with poison oak and the scars to prove it. I ask "What do the initial symptoms of an poison oak outbreak look like?"
"Well, it starts out looking and feeling like just a bunch of mosquito bites," he says.
I reply, "That's really funny."
Fifteen minutes later, I am at Walgreens in the first aid aisle. I grab two containers of Tecnu, and two tubes of Cortisone cream.
Ugh.