Girls, it ain't pretty or especially hygenic, but you put the Chamois Butt'r on in the porty potty and do you best to wipe your hands off with TP or carry some moist toilettes. I'm not proud of these things, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Thankfully, we had a couple of actual bathrooms at RAIN so you could actually wash up. Frankly, I do all sorts of gross things in the name of biking that I never dreamt of doing before. My mother would die if I told her.

Listen to lil10up about the Texas heat and know the signs of heat exhaustion. Stop riding if you start to feel faint, dizzy, sick to your stomach, get a bad headache, etc. That kind of stuff should not be taken lightly. No ride is worth a trip to the hospital. One of the reasons I was really hesitant to do the Ride Across Indiana this past Saturday was based on what happened last year. Temps were close to 100 with high humitity and lots of people got really sick. I only got serious about doing it when I saw the weather forecast calling for temps in the low 80s. I'm a delicate flower you know!

As for the ice, it hasn't irritated my skin, and I've only had to do it a time or two on crazy hot days. When I'm that hot, I'm not sure I really cared about anything other than getting cool. I prefer just dumping water over my head and neck though.

On a side note, we had a rest stop during RAIN with popsicles that were the bomb. They so hit the spot.