Cicadas! Did We Just Become Characters in a Horror Movie?

When we visited Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on Sunday to see the birthplace of role-playing games we also got an unexpected encounter with wildlife: Cicadas. Cicadas were out in force in the leafy old small town.

We first noticed something different when we parked an climbed out of the car. There was a warbling sound filling the air. "Sounds like a car alarm a block or two away," one of the group quipped. "Sounds like multiple car alarms at the same time," another said. "Wait, no, it's cicadas," we all realized moments later. The four of us adults had all heard cicadas before, though not in many years. And the tone of their sound was slightly different from what I, at least, remember from 37-ish years ago.



One of the group spotted a cicada in the tree next to us. We all whipped out our phones to start taking pictures. Then we saw another in the tree. And another. Then another in the grass. Then they got bold enough to start flying around us. They started landing on our shirts, our heads, our legs.

Horror Movie Tropes

This encounter with nature happened at the time we were trying to visit the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum and realized it was closed for another 45 minutes. Visiting Gary Gygax's old house, where he lived when he co-created roleplaying games, D&D, and TSR, was also on our agenda. And it was just a few blocks away, meaning we could walk. Except half the group's phones weren't working right for some reason. One showed our location and claimed to have signal but couldn't load any data (i.e., it had "fake bars"), another showed our location as 40 miles away. At this point my brother-in-law and I quipped that we were clearly characters in a horror movie as we were hitting nearly every horror movie trope:

1. We arrived in an area with an unexpected threat— hordes of cicadas.


2. We initially misread the signs of threat, thinking it was something mundane— in this case, the sound of a car alarm.


3. Having noticed the threat we then greatly underestimated its magnitude, deeming it more a cute curiosity than something threatening.


4. We then decided to walk— walk— deeper into the threat zone.


5. And then our cell phones mysteriously stopped working.

#5 is an amusing trope of modern horror movies. Nearly all horror movies ever would be spoiled if the characters just had cell phones. They could call for help, look up information, and communicate with each other even if they are split up.

Classic horror movies didn't have to deal with this suspense-killing reality because there were no cell phones— or they weren't common yet. By the late 90s and early 00s most adults had cell phones, but movie makers often didn't acknowledge their existence since they'd destroy the plot. That's when "Why does nobody in this movie have a cellphone?" started to become a trope.

By the 2010s moviemakers generally had to acknowledge that phones existed and could help protagonists make short work of mysteries— so then they'd come up with sometimes-flimsy reasons why cell phones stopped working. That's a related trope, "Suddenly cellphones stop working." And occasionally they still revert to the older trope of "Surprisingly nobody here owns a cellphone" because they (the writers) are that lazy.

Keep reading: We continue headlong into more cicadas!

Aspire to Another Year?

Recently I passed my 8th anniversary of owning an American Express Hilton credit card. Four years ago I upgraded it to Aspire, the top dog of 3 Hilton cards from Amex. Every 12 months since then I've carefully weighed whether or not to renew it as it comes with a hefty annual fee (AF) of $450. And now it's increased to a whopping $550. I've paid special attention to tallying my score this year to determine if this card's worth keeping another 12 month with its new, higher fee.

Lots of Points, Lots of Costs

Over the past 12 months I spent $13,300 on this card and earned 144,000 Hilton Honors points. I value Hilton points at $0.005 each, for a value of $720.

Earning over $700 in points is a lot. That's great win, right? Not so much. The fees eat up a lot of the score. First there's the $450 AF. That brings the net score down to $270. Then there's the opportunity cost of the no-AF 2% cash-back card I could have used instead. 2% of $13.3k is $266. Net out that and the AF and my win shrinks to just $4. Four dollars. Net-net, those points are worth practically nothing!

Fortunately this card is about more than the points and fees.

Airline Credits, Hilton Credits, and More

You'd expect a card that comes with a huge AF like $450 would offer more benefits than just some hotel points. And you'd be right. This card is the top-tier offering in the Hilton/American Express partnership. It offers a number of travel oriented perks.

When I first upgraded to this card I remarked that I was "going big." Ironically I decided to "go big" with this costly travel card just before the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Hilton and Amex took care of us cardholders, though, making it worth our while with other benefits while Covid had most of us grounded. I've kept the card since then as benefits such as airline credits and hotel free nights have become valuable again.

Over the past 12 months I've really gone to town with this card's credits. I've nabbed $150 in airline credits, $450 in Hilton hotel credits, and $40 in other miscellaneous credits. This is all cash. Oh, and I earned a Free Night Certificate that I made worth over $1,000 with a magnificent stay at the Waldorf Astoria beach resort in Los Cabos, Mexico last month.

These benefits push my total net win on the card to a staggering $1,644. It's well more than the net win of $758 I scored last year. And that's over and above paying back the $450 AF and $250 opportunity cost.

The Benefits, They Are a-Changing

If I could see my way to another $1,600 net win, over even a $1k net win next year, this card would be an easy pick to play again. I don't see making that kind of score again, though. Late last year Amex announced changes to the benefits offered on this card. Some of the changes are improvements; most are not, at least for me. Though over this year of transition I did manage to score some "best of both worlds" combinations. That's how I got to $1,644 net. For the coming 12 months it looks like this:

• The AF rises to $550. That's what I pay to play. How much I earn after that depends.


• The airline credit is now $50 per quarter instead of $250 per year. This is not only lower overall but is "couponed". It's harder to use up $50 parceled out per quarter than $200 anytime during the year. I risk leaving money on the table because of this.


• The Hilton resort credit is now $200/half year instead of $250/year. This is an increase overall ($400 vs. $250) but also suffers from the challenge of couponing. While I could often manage one resort stay a year, doing two a year in different 6 month periods to maximize this benefit doesn't fit my travel pattern.


• There's also another Free Night Certificate. Making that worth over $1,000 this past time was an outlier for me. With my normal travel patterns I often only make it worth $300.


• There are other benefits such as a Clear membership reimbursement I don't plan to use. The TSA PreCheck lanes I use at my home airport are right next to the Clear lanes, and I don't see them saving me an appreciable amount of time.

My forecast for the next year is that between these benefits and the points I'm not going to significantly out-earn the newly raised $550 AF. Thus I've chosen to close this card.

Closing One, Hunting for an Upgrade on Another

Part of my calculus in choosing to close this card is that I already own another Amex Hilton card. It's their basic, no-annual-fee card. It pays far fewer benefits— but there's no fee. If I didn't already have a copy of this card I'd have downgraded my other card to it. I figure it's worth keeping to stay in the game with Amex and Hilton. The card I'd really like, though, is Amex's mid-grade Hilton card, the Hilton Surpass. I could've downgraded the big card directly to it but I'm hoping that by canceling the big dog I might soon see an upgrade on the little card to switch the middle card. I always have multiple plays running simultaneously in the credit card game!

Cicadas, part 2

As we walked through a leafy residential neighborhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on Sunday we saw— and heard— cicadas. These insects only come out once every 17 years (or 13; see below), and it had been more than 2x17 years since since we adults in the group had experienced their swarm.

At first we saw just a few cicadas in a tree next to us. As we lingered for a few minutes looking at them, the cicadas seemed to get more bold around us. They started flying around us, bumping into us, and even landing on our clothes and skin. One landed on my brother-in-law's shoulder, for example:

Watch on YouTube

Bugs bouncing off and landing on our bodies was disorienting at first. I mean, the natural response when an insect buzzes around your face or lands on your skin is to swat it away. But the cicadas were kind of mellow. They weren't trying to bite us; it's like they were just resting. Or maybe exploring. Or maybe looking for a ride. Plus, swatting at them was kind of... ick... because they're so big they'd make a big splat if we squished them. 🤢

As we walked toward the house where roleplaying games and D&D were created the cicadas got thicker. Here's a quick video showing the swarm growing around us:

Watch on YouTube

Prior to this spot my brother-in-law and I were already joking that we were exercising every horror movie trope, walking into danger with a swarm about to devour us. In the video you can hear me joking that I can practically hear the scary horror movie soundtrack rising around us. ...And BTW, the sound you actually hear in the video is the drone of literally thousands, maybe literally tens of thousands, of cicadas around us. 😨

Cicada Facts

If you're wondering why we're seeing cicadas in 2024 when you saw them last year or a few years ago, the reason is that there are a number of different regional broods that emerge in different years. There are a number of articles and diagrams about this you can find online. Here's a map I found in an Encyclopaedia Britannica article:



A similar chart is in this article on Vox.com from May 2024.

We're in southern Wisconsin, in the dark brown region of this map. The area is part of Brood XIII, which was predicted to emerge this year (2024). You can see from the map coloring and legend that other broods emerge in different years. Most broods are on a 17 year cycle, though a few emerge every 13 years.

Curiously the map shows a square in the very southeastern corner of Wisconsin with no cicada brood. That aligns to our observations as that's where my sister and her family live, and there are no cicadas in their town or nearby towns.