Thanks for the pointer, now my morning is shot as I dig through old diaries and photos rather than doing something productive.

It's just a sample size of one, but by the time I got rid of my car, which I'd had through the twenty aughts, I no longer had to memorize which gas stations actually changed the windshield fluid.

Maybe that's why some people have more bugs: they're coming out of the windshield fluid tanks at dodgy petrol shops whose cleaner buckets are all full of rainwater. :-)

For context, I drove from Bloomington, Indiana to the Bay Area twice. First time a more northern route via Colorado, the second time a southern route through the ABQ area with a stopover at the Flamingo in Vegas, since at the time they had a valet and REALLY reasonable rooms, but I wouldn't repeat that even if they kept those amenities -- driving within Las Vegas was the scariest experience of my life. Just trying to turn right out of a gas station near the strip after having taken my tank up to full was nerve wracking.

I felt safer on the 101 where I could let people overtake me and put the cruise control at 10 above the speed limit and listen to the audiobooks I had burned onto five MP3 CDs in a 5 disc changer.

But very rarely did I encounter that stereotypical "SPLAT" of a bug, let alone so many I had to clean the windshield... the issue was more dust and grime.

I sometimes wonder how long it would take insects to evolve an instinct to avoid places that smell of gasoline (if many of those who don't detect it get squashed on a windshield). Of course I'm not denying the decrease in insect populations, which has been observed independently in many ways.