ROAM, a good format for velomobile promotion.

 Crossing the Mississippi in the Twin Cities
 (Photo made by Benji)

On the Dutch fora, there was a suggestion to copy the ROAM format to a EURO (European Rollover). Sounds like a great idea to me to promote the velomobile. What made ROAM such a succes? There are more factors of course, but I think that discipline was very important for most riders. During ROAM we had the iron discipline of a time schedule. Without this schedule and without the psychological support of other riders and the support people, I would surely have taken more rest days. The downside was that it was difficult to make daily blog posts, photo and vido uploads. Not that I think there should have been shorter trips or more days of rest! (although true days of rest instead of the "rolling stops" through Minneapolis and Chicago would have been very good for recuperation and some massage of sore muscles).
Especially regarding the video material, it would have been great to have someone with us that is good at editing the daily flow of material from all riders.  A sort of ROAM journal. I was forced to make short clips and dump the most appealing raw on YouTube, because I simply did not have time (IF the facilities had been there at the campgrounds AND if the wifi hadn't crashed continuously because of all ROAMers uploading at the same time) to make something nice out of it.

Reception at the European Embassy in Washington DC
left-to-right: American ambassador, European
ambassador and our beloved
ROAM captain: Josef Janning

Hopefully a documentary can be made with all the material. A professional has shown interest in doing this. That would be super, because the impact will last longer. Even raw uploads was difficult. I have not even one fourth of all material of interest uploaded until now. I think it's a shame. I can obviously work much better at home behind the powerful video editing software on my iMac, but that would be too late. Fun for the riders, but promotionally it's just old news.The rides through virtually unpopulated (natural) areas are beautiful, but you really must go through the large towns, otherwise you will not be noticed! We could have made a very nice coast-to-coast tour with only local media attention. By consciously going THROUGH cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington, we have showed that it is more than doable, while also attracting much attention.

When it comes to performance, then there are many solo rides that are more legendary for the HPV incrowd. But the media attention for them was virtually nil. Why not combine fun and promotion? Let's roll over Europe too!

ROAM Aftermath, random rambling.

So here I am at Cherry Hill Park campground, Maryland. That's close enough to Washington to get there by bus and metro quickly. The European velomobiles are crated and put in two containers, so it's walking and public transport until I fly home on Thursday September 1st. All kind of little aches are all of a sudden kicking in to body. It seems that it simply didn't have time to complaint while we were doing the Tour, HA. For instance my calves felt very hard yesterday and a twisted nerve in my hip makes walking a bit awkward. Today, after the storm we could go out and walk some and I feel much better already.

a tired but very happy H@rry, cruising through DC

Because of the bad weather (hurricane Irene gave us a huge amount of rain) we stayed indoors most of the day. Stop, I forget to mention the fact that "we" has now come down to Wilfred and me. The rest of the party has already gone home. Well, as far as possible, because trains and planes were cancelled or delayed because of Irene. So they might be sleeping in a hotel lobby or at the airport.

The staying indoors, seated in chairs is not very good for a body that is used to daily exercise, but it did give me a chance to upload many videoclips that I made during ROAM. My original plan was to make a little film every day. This is making me smile as I write it, since it has proven totally impossible to fit in the tight schedule of cycling, eating and camping. Let alone the fact that editing in iMovie and uploading hundreds of Megabytes to YouTube through sometimes non-existing or slowly functioning wifi on the campgrounds is, to put it mildly, very positive thinking. 

I have come up with a new saying for this: "ROAM comes and Internet goes". Many ROAMers  want to check e-mail, blog, Skype, upload pictures and movie clips at the same time, which caused the Internet on the campgrounds to crash constantly. You could almost hear sighs of frustration going between the tents when this happened, if it weren't for the millions of locusts in the trees that made a deafening cricket-like sound every evening.

Because I really wanted to upload clips while DOING the tour, I have shifted my "uploading schedule" to the middle of the night or early morning. This worked pretty good actually, because I had the whole band-width to myself, but in the end it was to tiring to do next to the average daily 125miles of cycling. In Minneapolis I stayed at a coffee-joint for hours, because it had such a good connection and subsequently had to rush to the campground for the "short" track of that day. I was with Benji that day. He was sort of forced to stay with me, because he didn't have a track and I did. Ben is a fun guy from Austria with a very playful and creative mind. Good company and not at all impatience because of my race for Internet access and the campground rush later.

Benji makes this sign complete with a velomobile

As we came close to the campground, I thought it would be a nice idea to compensate him with an ice-cream which surely would be to have at the rather big Icecream Truck I saw across the intersection. Of course it wasn't what it seemed to be, instead it turned out to be the transport of a wedding party. Of course bride and groom had to sit and our vehicles and lots of Photos were taken by the Wedding Photographer at hand. 

Thinking of this, the huge amount of locusts in the Mid-West immediately jump to my mind. They sure jumped all right, right into our velomobiles. They would typically come in through the footholes, jump or climb to a high spot, which usually was my shoulder and eventually jump out again. Some riders didn't like it, but I found they were harmless and funny to watch. I'll endure 6 locusts over a single wasp anytime. Why the number 6? Well, obviously there are always 6 (or none) of them inside a velomobiles at all time. It's no use trying to remove them before they are ready to jump out by themselves, because another one will immediately jump in. 

These are things you cannot plan, but sure makes the whole undertaking a lot more fun. A have many examples like these that made the whole undertaking very enjoyable. Of course the SAG-people, other riders and the people on route played a major role.

SAG was indespensible, I had a mechanical problem that could not be fixed on the road quickly enough

 I have seen the people in the USA now for real. That was one of the major reasons actually to do this. I knew that infrastructure would not be the best to do such a tour. Might as well have done this in Europe for that matter. The fact that the USA has such a huge (and often in a negative way to European eyes) influence in the world and in this era, made me want to meet the people who live there. My conclusion? Most of them are very kind. I didn't encounter hefty political or religious debate and although they usually thought our mission was a strange one, they were totally open to listen to what we had to say. Of course we also met the occasional total jerk, like the ones that produce huge amounts of exhaust fumes from their oversized trucks at the moment they pass us or like the man that called our velomobiles with dismay "Obama bikes". These were the exceptions to the rule. We have seen so many people taking pictures from us while smiling, even sitting in chairs next to the road to see our small groups pass.

you click me, I click you. attention in Washington DC

 Cars that gave us plenty of room and stayed patient when we boldly took priority on intersections (to keep the group together). Police officers that were mainly worried about our safety instead of giving us a ticket for impeding the traffic. Restaurant waitresses that never failed to supply us with ice and water for free and so on and so forth.

A good deal of the ROAM story is told by moving images. Because I have done almost no editing, I mostly uploaded short clips to YouTube and am still uploading as I write this. You can find them on My YouTube Channel

More movies from other ROAM riders can be found by searching "ROAM2011". Enjoy.

Poison Ivy

Now we now what it is. I must have been lying with my knee in them. It seems that the oil gets everywhere on your body when you start to scratch. First I thought it was just the Mosquitos (which is bad enough here) but now I have regular tiny lumps on knees, hips and my hole back. The itch is really bad, but I guess I'm still lucky that I'm not allergic. Just another small inconvenience on ROAM.

What a drag

"Just a little bit of drag, that's all" I thought. I'm talking about my diskbrakes. They are very precise to control and have amazing stopping power. That's the good side. It seems that braking at the moment that I hit a pothole, warped the disk. Ever since the brake has been rubbing.... and robbing my power. I tried to adjust it to a point that it would not rub. The only real time I had for that was in the evening, in the dark at the moment that the mosquitos were most active. Working by the light of a torch, one hand for the bike and one hand for the mosquitos. Not the best conditions. This morning I again felt that the brake was rubbing a bit. I couldn't straighten the disk enough and even couldn't get it free completely. It was only morning and was already tired and sweating heavily. That was it for me. I stopped the SAG vehicle and we got the Mango on the roof.
After a good meal in Spencer and a nap in the shade, I'm coming back to life a bit. Now off to Medina and hope that the bicycle shop there is open.

Ok. I'm lying in my hammock now. I drank, ate and slept in the SAG vehicle, so I got a bit of a rest. I managed to get a new disk, set it up, reduced my gearing by 10% (22tooth chainring on the mid-drive instead of the standard 26) shortened the secondary chain accordingly, lubed the chains and took out everything unnecessary from the Mango to reduce weight and carry only 3liters of water instead of 6. Tomorrow is going to be a serious climbing day with short but steep climbs and 200km distance! At the riders meeting we heard that tomorrow has a good chance of rain. We applauded that, because we are a bit tired of the long streak of dry and hot weather.

Zipping between skyscrapers and cabs

I didn't know that Obama lives in Chicago. I have the feeling I was close to him yesterday. First there was a helicopter flying over me and then, as I was following the Waterfront of Michigan Lake, I was stopped by security people. There was a "security issue" and I couldn't pass. All traffic was diverted, but in the wrong direction for me. So I went back along the Waterfront and found a tunnel underneath the streets, leading me towards a very busy street. After riding one block on the sidewalk (several people wanted to know what my bike was about) I decided that this was taking to long, crossed the street and went with the flow of traffic. At first that meant mostly standing still. I heard oh and ah from the sidewalk. Then I was between the impressive skyscrapers and green lights got the cars moving. After some acceleration, I got the hang of it and changed lanes to move around cars that turned right. The street went down a bit and all of a sudden the Mango was going the same speed as the cars. Now I heard WHOOOO look at THAT :-)

Looking at the GPS, I thought it was time to make a left across three lanes and pick up the original track. The cars behind me made room when I indicated that with my arm. A cab on my right had just picked up a passenger and was in a hurry to also go left, using the gap that the other cars gave me. Gently squeezing my disk brakes and steering to the left, I could easily avoid him and then was behind him to make the turn at a stoplight. A bit later I was on the Waterfront again. My little adventure was over, HA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVGftHf3us

Just before the cars start to move faster.

ROAM 14-8-'11

Today I had a very hard day. I left together with Wilfred but my chain dropped. I told Wilfred to keep going because it takes me just a few minutes to get it back on. I never saw him again during the day, because not long after that, I hit a pothole in a curvy downhill. After a coffee in Hastings I noticed not being able to keep up with some other ROAMers. I checked the disk brakes and noticed one was a bit warped and therefore rubbing the brakepad. Due to my inexperience with diskbrakes, I could not get it completely free, but figured the drag would be so insignificant that I'd be able to keep up with the group that emerged at that time: Benji, Greg, Hasse and me. I didn't really notice that I still had to much drag on the brakes and it was much later that I noticed that my power output was significantly higher than normal. 20 km before camp, I adjusted the brakes again, because I simply had way to low speed. This time I was able to run the brakes completely free and I could cruise 36 km/h again.
On the last hill before the campsite, the shoulder was replaced by gravel, so I wanted to cut into the lane. The first car didn't let me, so I signaled clearly to the next car that I wanted to change lanes. I could see in my mirror that the car kept my speed although a bit close. Because of a ridge in the asphalt between the lanes I figured the safest way to cross it would be to steer sharply over the ridge. A few seconds later I heard the distinct signal of a police-car. I was being stopped by the police for the first time in my life.
The cop said I was impeding traffic because we could not keep the same speed as the cars and that my swoop into the cars lane was a dangerous action. I explained the officer that I had communicated with the driver and that the sudden steering action was needed to negotiate the bad road.
He nevertheless thought that we would not be safe on this particular road because it's the worst road in the region. I did not feel any urge to discuss further, but I feel I have plenty experience to stay safe.
To make sure that we would arrive safely at the campground, the officer drove behind us and we stayed as close to the side as we could.
Despite the strenuous day for me, I felt strong again after the nice meal that Winda had prepared for the Dutch Express. I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow, especially since I also aligned the front wheels again that had apparently gone out of true at the pothole. I gave the Mango a gentle push on the flat and it rolled along nicely, so it should be ok again.
See you on the road.

PS: on the photo it's NBTriker that is fixing the DualDrive.

ROAM rest day 13-8-'11 Minneapolis

A rest day on ROAM is not your ordinary resting day where you get up late, have a nice breakfast and maybe go out for a walk later.
Todays' rest day was like this: we got up around 7 in the morning, had scraps for breakfast or a bar from our sponsor Cliff, filled water bottles from a hand operated pump on a well and got in our bikes to ride 90km to our next camping place in St. Croix. A so-called rolling stop through the twin cities on each side of the Mississippi river Minneapolis and St. Paul. The ride through town was along a nature rich trail. As it went up and down right and left, bendy and with unforeseeable encounters with oncoming strollers, joggers and cyclists, it proofed difficult to navigate for us who had never crossed these towns. It's simply not the same as when you ask our captain the route for the next day and he says: "just go east on route 12" and look out for velomobiles at the lunch stop.
Anyway, I was amongst the latest riders to leave the campground and since I was determined to upload at least 3 clips from my about 100gB of raw ROAM movie material to my YouTube account, I left the group I was in at the first coffee shop that I saw. There were just a couple of ROAMers leaving the Caribou and they could assure me they had good coffee and fast and free Wifi. Benji had come with me. He was not in a hurry, but waiting 2 hours for me to upload the clips was a bit more than he had expected. As he had no GPS, he had to stay with me or risk getting lost.
Afterwards we went to the Freeway cycling shop and restaurant where we were supposed to meet. The others had already left! Only John and David came in later, but they went on by car.
Expecting 65 km instead of 65 miles, we were a bit disappointed when we discovered that we had to cover more ground. To cheer us up, I thought I'd buy Benji and myself an Icecream at what seemed to be an Icecream van. So we came around this vehicle that turned out to be a vintage bus and found ourselves all of a sudden in the middle of a wedding party. This was of course the perfect opportunity for an improvised photo-shoot. We got a gorgeous bridesmaid and both the lovely bride and groom to sit in our Mango and Quest.
I had a smile on my face for the last kilometers to the St. Croix campground
:-))
See you on the road.

ROAM rain

That's not a biggie for a velonaut, you would say, but I am sleeping in my hammock without the rainfly. Stupid me! Double stupid because I trusted the weather forecast and not the visual information I got from occasional lightning.
So I wake up with a shock because I hear or sense raindrops falling. I squirm out of my sleeping bag and out the slit in the hammock. Grasp the drying clothes from the ridgeline of the hammock. Take da Hood off the Mango (at least I HAD closed that). Turn the Mango towards the hammock and turn on the light. Pull out my backpack and get the rainfly out and drape it over the hammock. Now I'm safe for the moment. (I am SO lucky that it only rains lightly so far) I find my raincoat and now can work in a bit of comfort. Working steadily now instead of frantically, I attach the rainfly and organize my stuff a bit. Before I can get back to sleep, I must report this of course by means of my blog. The rain drop, drip, drops playfully on the rainfly and I'm cosy again. It's 1.40 PM, I bid you goodnight.

PS: the photo is shot at another campsite as I look up to one of the trees I am supported by. You can see the thin but very strong ridgeline of the hammock and the mosquito netting.

ROAM Minnesota

We're close to Minneapolis now.
The ride today was only 165km, mostly on the shoulders of a busy route 12. I took it a bit easier than yesterday when I put 155Watt on average on the road. Managed to wear out Nick and Greg that day. In the end we even hooked up with a larger group of fast riders. I had planned to creep up on them, but Nick suddenly made a sprint. This is not my forte, but I also pushed it even harder to close the gap quicker. I did overheat though, and had to use water from the trusty spray bottle abundantly to keep my head cool. Nick was toast after that sprint and even stopped for a while at a SAG vehicle

Hasse rode that whole day with da Hood and was going fast. Earlier Wilfred had a go with it and also rode in it all day. Seems that up to about 28degrees Celsius da Hood is good to ride.

Today was Gregs' turn. Unscientifically he also changed to faster tires, so there's no way to tell what contributed most to his keeping up with our powerful captain Josef. Our group with Mike and Nina did catch up with him since he had spent much time in a restaurant with excellent free Wifi. Don't know whether the food was any good ;-) Temperature was pretty high with about 29 degrees Celsius max. but like Hasse Greg had no real problem with overheating.

Tomorrow the extra Mango that Larry Varney managed to get across the Rockies before he had to give up, will have a new rider. Nick had borrowed the Go-One3 from a friend and this man will be riding it himself as from today. Being without a velomobile, Nick originally planned to return home, but since he knew the extra Mango was without a rider he approached me to ride it. I readily agreed. Much better than having it on top of a SAG vehicle :-)

Roam Poem

Roam, smelling the daisies
Washing salt out of my eyes
Watch the miles go by
Rolling, rolling over America
Roam, washing the sweat out of my shirt
And talking with my buddy riding next to me
Welcome to ROAM

ROAM, Billings to Miles City Fitnessdata

Billings to Miles City

Interestingly a higher output this day, although we mostly descended.

Fitness data Lolo pass

Garmin Connect, fitness data

Just click the link and you will see temperature, power, speed, elevation, heartrate and so on of my ride across the Lolo pass. Average power output 140 Watt.

Leading the pack

Some photos and a little film about the ride of 6th of August to Miles city

shirt and seat. notice any similarities?

shirt with salt marks from sweating in the pattern of the seat

The bumper of Volker's Dodge, covered with squashed grasshoppers

Made it to Miles city

Today is our second rest day and we have access to Internet. And fast Internet too here at the KOA. History repeats itself though: everywhere we go, Internet gets slow (and crashes). The amount of Photos, blogposts and occasional tweets and Facebook uploads are probably responsible.
So here I am, hanging in my hammock and writing a post by means of a smartphone app at 6.15 PM, because almost everybody sleeps and I have all bandwidth to myself.

Yesterday was a long day with 240km and some short but steep climbing. My Garmin indicated 13% for a while and I was grinding my chainring as well as my teeth. We mostly had long stretches of rolling hills and the wind at the back, so we could cruise at 38 km/h for a long time. At some point I became the leader of a small and changing group, being the only one with a track on my GPS. Greg rode with me all day and we had good fun, making jokes and enjoying the beautiful scenery along the Yellowstone river. I had made up an easy way to remember where the rest stops were. The first was at Custer and the second at Forsythe. That's easy: general Custer and the Forsythe saga :-) when you keep your eyes on the Gps and not on the road signs it doesn't really help, but by accident I had to make a pee stop at the junction near Custer. We had started a bit late and Felix stopped with the van from Greg next to us, so we decided to use the facilities at hand to make a picknick instead of going into Custer. Greg made us a hot drink in the van and I dug up some muffins from my Mango. The pick-nick was all complete with red ants, that roamed near our vehicles. We donated them some muffin crumbs. The fauna sure was abundantly present. On the quiet frontage roads of Interstate 12, grasshoppers jumped into our rides, found a high spot (my shirt) and jumped out again. Accelerating this process proved useless, so I have come up with the theory that there are Always 6 Grasshoppers in a Velomobile. When one jumps in, another will immediately jump out. No worries. Volkers' Dodge was covered with squashed grasshoppers, claiming he had swept the roads for us, but little does he know about Harrys' law: Always 6 grasshoppers, no more!

Felix had found a stop for us in the shade, but it came it a price: the loud noises of numerous insects in the trees near Yellowstone river. Nobody knew the exact name of these insects, but they have hard shells and hatch from a hole in the ground every 17 years and then all climb up a tree and make loud cricket-like noises. Not that you would notice this long cycle, because they do not hatch at the same time.

Apart from a fall from an F40 rider on railroad tracks, several flats, two chain-drops on a hill and Benji with failing brakes having to turn the wrong way after a fast downhill ending at a T-junction, the trip (yawn) was rather uneventful. So I'm going to sleep late till 11 now and perhaps do a bit of wrenching later. Good morning, ZZZZ.

Note: I later saw Benjis' brake, it was literally smoked, the metal discoulered from the heat druing braking.

Friday,  5th of August, 9th day of ROAM.

The last two days were pretty easy with mostly descending. Of course the days before were mostly climbing and they were no short rides either. Apart from the fact that there was simply no time to keep the blog, the Internet is non-existent too. No wifi on the campgrounds and 3G from T-mobile is failing at the moment. I can be called BTW on my USA SIM, when you have my number.

We are now in Billings and Internet is sometimes very good and then all of the sudden it's gone, so I'm writing off-line now and hopefully I get it online.

Anyway, the landscape is just beautiful along creeks and rivers,  mountains and farmland. The fauna is someting else here, deer and moose in the city, rabbits. I nooticed a prairiedog right along the street, looking out it's hole in the ground. I jokingly said to Jim Snyder from RideSouth: "it's Groundhog Day". He immediately understood what I meant. The scenery may change a lot, but our routine is basically the same every day: we break up camp, eat Breakfast that we bought the day before, start riding a long stretch to the coffeestop, where we eat and have our first coffee, we ride on to the lunch-stop and get a copious meal and ride on to the campground and find some restaurant to have another huge meal.  Before or after we set up camp and get a hot shower. I wash my clothes under the shower. I have only one short bikepants and it's mostly time not completely dry in the morning. It simply dries on my body while I ride. The cooling effect is welcome, even in the early morning. 

This all is not to say that I get bored. On the contrary: I feel either exstatatic or immensely tired. Either way I do not get bored, Ugh.

Just before the Kims' Marina (Helena) I was very, very weak. I have a powermeter in my Mango Tour and while I typically output 145Watts on average throughout the day, I had only 50Watts to give on the last short, but steep uphills. The ride had been long, with much climbing to do and I had had not enough electrolytes. Maybe it would not have mattered much, since ALL riders were beat.

tiredness

Very impressing is the sky of Montana. The clouds are very high and from the passes you can look very far. I'm getting dialed in with the heat. It was not extremely hot this Friday, but nevertheless I could see a huge thunderstorm above our destination (Billings KOA campground).

Big Sky Montana

I took it very easy to give the storm time to pass ;-) and that seemed to work. In fact I took it easy because I know that dealing with a thunderstorm can be exhausting when you need to improvise, find shelter and sit out the storm. Outrunning a storm never works. You just get exhausted and when you need the energy, you're out of it. Most riders made it to the campground in time before the thunderstorm to burst, but David Egglestone got caught in the middle. He was picked up by a SAG vehicle, but before they could reach him, he got pretty cold and tired. He had to deal with hail stones, just like Bram a few days earlier. Bram was brought to the campgorund by a friendly car-park owner. That's something else eh?

When the storm began at the campground I was just setting up my Hennessy hammock. I was just putting on the rainfly when the wind picked up, flapping the unfastened rainfly around, and i I felt some drops. I knew what to do, get the rainfly off , throw it in my Mango, close the Mango and run with my stuff to the nearest sheltering place, which happened to be the Barbeque spot from the campground. After studying the fierce thunder for a while, during which a huge branch was ripped from a tree, I decided to take a shower. When I got out, the sun was already shining again and I could finish setting myself up. No time lost, HA! I treasure every moment of this wonderful trip. This blog is not only for my readers, but not in the last place for myself as a sort of diary. 

Likewise, I started to talk into my camera. Vlogging, so to speak. I talk about what comes to mind, it can be about the environment, a piece of my equipment or anything else concerning ROAM. I hope to be able to upload at least a bit of these Vlogs on my YouTube account (twilwel), but that can only be done on rest days. Sunday will be a rest day and I'll do my best to keep you posted. 

Dealing with the heat on ROAM

The heat and strength of the sun is our main enemy at the moment. It is every day 34degr C (93Fahrenheit) and in the valleys there is no wind to cool us. The riders each have their own strategies to deal with it. I will mention my own only, because other riders have their own blogs. What I have found so far to work best is to do no overpowering at any time, unless really necessary in an uphill climb. Then there is the cap from SinnerBikes or the one from Walz. This cap is featured in the bicycle comic "Yehuda Moon" and it really works very well. It keeps the sun out of the eyes and the wind. Important thing, it doesn't blow off, because the cap is short and downward. Just check out Yehuda Moon and you'll see.
Hydration:  No real headaches so far for me, so it seems I manage to keep hydrated. This means 7 liters of fluids during the ride and a lot to boot before and after.
 I use a spraybottle to keep my head cool. Great invention. I just spray water on my cap, neck and shirt. The water evaporates and cools me for a while. This is probably the most important thing to keep me cool. I use only half a litre a day for that, as cold as I can get it. I saw fellow rider Bram throwing water over his head and copied that. But that takes a lot of water and I already have so much to carry. That's when I thought off the spray bottle. It saves me 1,5kg. Being a bit of weight-weenie, I can appreciate the psychological factor ;-)
We sometimes can use the cooling water of the rivers on our route. We once stayed in there for some 5 minutes and then we were ready for many hot miles to come. There was no need to dry the clothes, it dried on our bodies! I only took off the socks, because I feared that wet feet was going to hurt.

 cooling down in the Clearwater river

swollen sunburnt lips

 At a stop, two caps to protect face and neck

Tomorrow I will try my modified Flevobike roof, because sunburn is a continuous threat. My lips are swollen and a bit cracked, but now I have lipstick with factor 50 to protect me. We learn as we go along and sometimes there are painful lessons.