Category: Food

The last item to debug is eating and drinking.

Normally, I don’t have any issues eating and drinking enough when bikepacking. That did not carry over to Baja, and I don’t know why.

First, keeping up with hydration was really hard. Even though I covered up with a long sleeve sun shirt to keep the direct sun off of my torso, arms, and neck, the sun was still hot. As a Seattleite in the middle of winter, even the 80 degree F/27 degee C weather was really hot for me. I always had plenty of water and/or Liquid IV, I was never running low enough to have to ration. When I refilled my water, I would drink as much as I could straight from my filter. Yet I consistently experienced some symptoms of dehydration every day.

The more significant issue was my inability to consume enough calories to keep going each day. I had a constant supply of snacky food – peanut butter, some honey sticks, cookies, peanuts, snickers – available to me while I rode. More often than not, I didn’t really want what I had. None of the food was appealing to me. When I sat down to eat, I wasn’t hungry even though I knew I needed to refuel my body. I expected to be ravenous, consuming larger quantities of food than normal, yet my intake was less than I eat normally at home. This was incredibly frustrating for me – I was free to eat whatever I wanted and yet I didn’t want what I had.

I don’t really understand why this was. Since my past bikepacking experiences were all overnighters, I could manage even if I wasn’t eating well. Not eating enough calories across multiple days was unsustainable. I was bonking, hard, and it began to impact my mood.

So what’s next? I don’t really know. I need to keep working on finding foods that I actively want to eat while bikepacking that are calorie dense and enjoyable to eat. Andrew Skurka has a few recipes I’ve used that I like, and Garage Grown Gear has been my go-to source for mostly enjoyable pre-packaged dehydrated meals. But this was not an option in Baja where I was trying to be self-sufficient and live off the land… er… local markets. Sorry, Ryan van Duzer and Baja Divide riders everywhere, but bagged beans served at ambient temperature were not that great!