The Radavist

Cyclotourists, bikepackers, and other backcountry travelers love shaving down their gear to just the bare essentials, splitting toothbrushes in half, or rationing the squares of toilet paper with every wipe. But, when it comes to personal hygiene, I feel like I owe it to myself to splurge a little, given how much I put my body through day-in and day-out whilst on a long, multi-day journey.

It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of the lack of information around the topic of personal female hygiene and bikepacking. As I’ve been approached by more women with different questions on the subject over the years, I began to realize that there’s a need for this kind of information sharing, and that actually, there’s no distinctive guidance out there to help.

So, I want to share my knowledge and experience with the hope that it will help other riders better understand what female hygiene on a bike looks like. There’s no universal solution for everyone, and I can only speak from the anatomy that I know about, but perhaps you’ll find good tips and advice to integrate into future trips based on your needs.

“Native lands, the places where California Indian tribes had interacted closely with the landscape for generations, were designated as unpopulated ‘wilderness’ areas to conform to Euro-American notions of idealized, pristine conditions that supposedly existed before contact. This assertion was, in part, built upon the idea that Native peoples were not and had not interacted in any meaningful way with significant portions of California. These systematic attempts to attack the very existence of California Indians were a means by which white settlers set out to exterminate, control, and dominate the land, flora, and fauna of Native California.” Baldy 2

I’m here to share my journey toward a better understanding of the context of our public lands with the hope that it will inspire you to learn more as well. As a young bike tourist, I was shocked at the manner in which people were engaging with our public lands and held many ableist and entitled views about enjoying such places.  Originally enraged by the almost being killed by rental RVs on the road, I later became enthralled with the vignettes plastered on their sides. As I started to dig into some reading about the origins of wilderness areas and the terrible atrocities committed that created them, I became starkly aware of how little I understood of our county’s history and the formation of our public lands.  Much of the writing I was able to find disproportionately deals with our National Park system which is almost unanimously managed as wilderness areas which isn’t something that we encounter much as cyclists, especially if you are trying to ride off-road. Nonetheless, the park system became the archetype for how we manage public lands and thus is important for understanding the rest of our non-NPS lands and our broader definitions of “nature” and “wilderness.”

With my partner Cari’s birthday always falling on the Summer Solstice, it’s usually up to her to decide how we spend the longest day of the year. This year, with temps in the 90s here in Santa Fe, we were excited to get out on the river in our Alpacka rafts with our friends Doom and Lizzy from Four Corners Guides, where we spent our Solstice evening on the San Miguel river…