“Hey Stinky, can you pass me the yellow bag?” Though I’m not overly excited about my new nickname, I understand where it comes from.

During my first biking weeks in Canada and Montana I was quite good on the personal hygiene front. I washed myself daily in creeks and made sure my clothes were washed about once in 3 days. However, as days became shorter there was less time to wash clothes. Furthermore, there were more days with rain and snow and clothes wouldn’t dry on the bike, so it made no sense to wash them. On those same rainy and snowy days, washing myself seemed like a too cold chore to do, and more and more often I thought: “I’ll get to the washing tomorrow, what’s another day...”

However, now I’m sharing my tent with someone who very subtle (:)), made me aware that I should try to smell a bit better. Currently we’re in a desert climate, in which the days are nice and warm, the nights are below zero. Sunrise and sunset are roughly around 7. The temperature changes to shorts-and-T-shirt degrees around 10 am and changes back to cold after 5.30 pm with the need for 2 jackets around 7.30. Usually we bike past 5.30, which means the morning is the best time for washing.

So how does washing work? Imagine you are sleeping in the wilderness at around 10.000 feet near a little stream that you heard gently flowing last night but is silent now in the morning. When you stick your head out of the tent to investigate, you figure out it’s frozen over. In fact, the whole world seems a little frozen. You decide to give it some time, and by the time the sun gets over the mountains and trees to your tent, you feel a little warmer. You stick your head out again, and it seems ok now to leave the sleeping bag. When you’re in the sun, you can walk around in a T-shirt, but the part of you that gets the shadow is still cold. So the jacket stays on. After breakfast, the world warms up a bit more, and it’s time to wash. By now, you can stand around quite comfortably without too many clothes. So that’s when I walk to the stream, kick a hole in the ice, wash the upper body first, put some more clothes on there, then the lower body. Ah, it feels good to be clean again. I also wash my clothes. I know they will dry quick, because in this dry air even cotton things seem to dry within the hour. Around me, the creek is slowly melting too, the ice that is covering the water cracks and breaks at parts.

As we pack the bike to get going, Leigh says to me: “Hey Annette, can you pass me the yellow bag?” I like my new name quite a bit better. Cleaning mission accomplished..