Hello! I am back with another Remedy+ review! I was lucky enough to receive Remedy+’s newest product, The RUB, in the mail this week. The RUB is a CBD salve that aims to manage discomfort and pain throughout the body. Unlike Remedy+’s other CBD products, The RUB is a topical product. Rather than ingesting CBD, as you would with The DROP or The CAP, you apply The RUB to parts of your body that may be feeling icky after a workout or a strain.

Overall, I love The RUB and I’m glad that it’s a part of the Remedy+ family. If you have been searching for a CBD salve to use after a session at the gym, sports practice, or morning of climbing, you have come to the right place. Let’s get into this review!

CBD Basics

I’ll get these out of the way for people who are already familiar with CBD. Yes, CBD is legal throughout the United States. No, applying The RUB or using any Remedy+ products will not get you high. CBD is a natural cannabinoid found in the cannabis (hemp and marijuana) plant that works with the body’s endocannabinoid system to regulate various bodily functions from sleep to appetite to inflammation. This is where The RUB works its magic.

How Does CBD Help Sore Muscles?

Inflammation can be a good thing – it’s your body’s response to illness or injuries. Inflammation can ensure that foreign bacteria don’t affect the body and that the healing process continues without any problems. But too much of a good thing … you know where I’m going with this. People with chronic pain or inflammatory diseases know that too much inflammation can cause prolonged pain, redness, and other symptoms. CBD keeps inflammation in check, moving the healing process along without unnecessary pain or aches.

Athletes have started turning to CBD for pain and soreness relief surrounding workouts or injuries. This is where The RUB comes in. It was designed to help athletes manage discomfort and enable a faster recovery while training or playing their sport. I would not refer to myself as an “athlete,” but I do have a regular bouldering routine. (My Instagram is @climb_and_flow, after all.) I was excited to receive this product in the mail and try it out for myself!

Review: Remedy+ The RUB

Overall, I’m going to give this guy a 9/10.  The RUB is effective, uses natural ingredients, and provides more value than many CBD salves that I’ve researched while writing this post. If you are interested in the effects of a CBD topical, I would start here. Remedy+ has once again created a great product that centers CBD and its healing effects for people experiencing pain, aches, or the general wear-and-tear of living life during a pandemic.

Let’s get into the details.

Ingredients

The ingredients listed on The RUB include:

• Sunflower Oil
• Beeswax
• Castor Oil
• Broad Spectrum Hemp Extract (1000mg CBD)
• Cocoa Butter
• Shea Butter
• Vitamin E Oil
• Menthol
• Frankincense Essential Oil
• Green Tea Leaf
• White Willow Bark
• Organic Rosemary Oil

Always nice when you can pronounce the ingredients! As a former Lush employee, I know that these are all standard ingredients for a moisturizing, natural salve. When comparing this product to other CBD salves on the market, I noticed that this product has a much higher concentration of CBD. I saw this as a benefit. It’s always disappointing to buy a product for an ingredient featured on the packaging only to see that ingredient at the way bottom of the list. The RUB, along with other Remedy+ products, centers around CBD and provides the benefits that appeal to CBD users.

Smell and Feel

I have seen reviews comparing this product to Icy-Hot, but the smell isn’t as intense. You do get a subtle whiff of menthol when you open the product – one that doesn’t overpower the room. You get the impression that the product uses a lot of natural ingredients.

The morning after I got The RUB in the mail, I went bouldering. If I don’t stretch properly or go too hard at the gym, I tend to notice discomfort around my neck and shoulder. Whether this is tension, a knot, or something else, I’m not too sure. (Does anyone know a cheap chiropractor?) Usually, I try to massage the area and the pain goes away within a day or two. I experienced that same discomfort (unintentionally) after bouldering, so I figured I would apply The RUB and see if it worked its magic.

The product is packaged in a way that you have to scoop some salve with your finger and apply it to the affected areas. I was told that it’s important to be liberal with the application and rub it into the muscle or strained area, so that’s what I did! The RUB is easy to apply, slightly melting on your fingers and gliding onto the skin. It’s not sticky, but you can still feel it on the skin after you apply. I washed my hands after applying, but there was no dramatic residue that remained or an icky feeling that could come from a salve. You don’t have to rush to scrub the salve off after you apply it.

Effects

This is actually my first time using a salve, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would the pain disappear magically? Would I need to re-apply over and over again? Would nothing happen?

Here’s my experience. I put The RUB on my shoulder and neck where I was feeling tension. The tension didn’t go away immediately, but when I woke up from a nap shortly after applying, I did notice a significant decrease in pain. I was actually shocked. A few hours later, I did notice the pain coming back. I was not at home when this happened and found myself thinking, I wish I had brought The RUB with me. That’s the sign of a good product.

Shop All Remedy+ Products

The RUB is just one of many Remedy+ products that I use to enhance performance and recovery with CBD. I am a big fan of Remedy+. My personal favorite has shifted to The CAP for sleep. I swear I have a better night’s sleep when I have one! You can check out all Remedy+ products through my affiliate link. Let me know which products are your favorites!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Clicking at the link and buying products, at no extra cost to you, helps to support this blog. Thank you! 

I feel like I have to start all of my blog posts off by stating the obvious: I’m not backpacking right now. Potato (my cat) won’t let me. Since March, I’ve left Travis County twice: once to go to Virginia, and once to go to Colorado and Utah. (That was pretty amazing, and I ate a bunch of rehydrated meals.) My most exciting travel adventure this month was going to the other Michael’s that’s not on the way to Trader Joe’s. Live, laugh, love, wanderlust, whatever.

Fortunately, I’m not broke, either. All I do now is work as a ghostwriter and spend money. It’s pretty neat! But I hate online shopping. Never was a mall person, and COVID is not the time to start browsing and touching things in stores. At the risk of sounding totally basic, subscription boxes have been a pretty great way to spend money in 2020.

Continue reading→

Camping seems to be the safest travel plan during COVID, but has its own set of obstacles. Instead of lounging at a cafe in a new city, you might be digging through your backpacking trying to find those snacks you packed. Make things easy with rehydrated backpacking meals.

This blog post will rank four vegan backpacking meals from four different brands. Overall, I enjoyed these meals more than I thought. If you’re heading out on a camping trip soon, consider adding these to your packing list.

Why Rehydrated Backpacking Meals?

First things first. I’m not vegan anymore. (No, wait, don’t go away!) But when I started browsing backpacking meals online, I saw that there wasn’t much of a difference between vegetarian and vegan meals. I was already a bit apprehensive to try these rehydrated beauties, and eliminating dairy might prevent some of the more graphic reviews that I found online. (Reviews on backpacking meals either described a horrific bowel moment, or reassured consumers that if you’re a true fancy knowledgable authentic backpacker, anything will taste good.)

If you love REI, you’ll find about 17 vegan backpacking meals from four different brands. Mind you, I’m just talking about dinner. There is not much to explore in the vegan backpacking breakfast meal aisle, and oats are easy enough that you don’t really need a $12 meal to satisfy you in the first place. So during my three days at Canyonlands National Park, I grabbed one vegan backpacking meal from each brand offered.

I like the rehydrated meal route more than grabbing ingredients myself because clean-up is super easy. No dishes, minus a long spoon. Once you’re done ingesting 600+ calories, you just seal up the bag and throw it in your trash bag. (The meals have two servings, but who’s judging you for eating the whole thing in one go?)

Overall, I recommend these meals. I have no crazy stomach issues to report and each meal was less bland than I expected. Here is my ranking, from “meh” to I-might-actually-eat-this-at-home.

Patagonia Organic Spicy Red Bean Chili – 6/10

$7.00 at REI. Learn more about this meal here.

My favorite thing about this meal is the suggestion on the back to add a dollop of sour cream. I understand packing hot sauce, but unless you’ve got a little fridge in a tricked-out car, you’re probably not going to have sour cream on hand while eating this baby. I didn’t get to this meal while I was backpacking, so I made it from the comfort of my own apartment. I dreaded it.

If I were to eat any of these meals in my apartment, I would choose this one. Not because it tasted delicious, but because I’m glad I didn’t have to eat it and clean up after myself. The directions tell you to put the rehydrated ingredients in a pot of boiling water, instead of doing the opposite. Sure, I wouldn’t die from cleaning up a bowl in the wilderness, but if I don’t have to…

Again, I’m not vegan. The chili tasted good on its own, but I added shredded cheese and I’m not going to apologize. It was fine. I would maybe take this camping if the nights were chilly and I had an RV, because it was pretty delicious and spicy. It’s definitely better than any type of chili that I would have made around a campfire, but the fact that I couldn’t eat it out of the bag makes it a no-go for backcountry camping.

Good To-Go Herbed Mushroom Risotto – 7/10

$12.95 on Backcountry.com. Learn more about this meal here.

I played myself with this choice, because I decided to have it for breakfast instead of dinner. This hefty boy had a whopping 800 calories, and I ate the entire bag myself. (The Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai, which I split, has 920 total calories, and the chili meals each had 600 calories.) That’s a lot of calories, so it would have probably been a better meal for the early evening. The risotto tasted okay, but the texture wasn’t my favorite. I would get it again, just to have some variety.

Peak Refuel Three Bean Chili Mac – 8/10 

Decent camping spot, eh?

$12.95 at REI. Learn more about this meal here.

If hot sauce is not on your list of things to bring backpacking, you may not be from Texas. Hot sauce is not included in this meal, but definitely needs a little extra spice to reach 8/10 status. I wouldn’t eat this every day, but I would happily order it again on my next backpacking trip.

Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai – 9/10 

$9.95 at REI. Learn more about this meal here.

This was the ultimate favorite, although mind games could have been at play here. Upon my first bite, I said, “It’s okay.” Throughout the rest of the trip, I longed for it. Nothing seemed to live up to it. Maybe I was impressed by the peanuts, peanut butter, and hot sauce included in the bag to mix in before eating. Maybe I just got sick of eating beans, or maybe it was the fact that a few other backpacking friends had already hyped it up in my mind. No matter what it was, I’d buy two of these for my next trip. The only downside is that it takes 20 minutes (after boiling water) to make this meal. I’m impatient, but that’s one of the reasons I schlump myself out into the desert with no cell service or Netflix. One day I won’t be so ancy.

What’s Your Favorite?

Love vegan backpacking meals? Have any tips for staying plant-based while pooping in the woods? Let me know!

One doesn’t have to search very hard for Americans while backpacking. Our voices will find you. You’ll hear what city we’re from before you see it displayed proudly on our Hydroflasks.  

While I spent the better part of my travels whispering and bantering my way through the world, I’m just as guilty of having a natural internal volume that is not only ear-piercing, but also ear-shattering. Every time I would spend a morning in Brisbane’s Black Milk Coffee, I would be scolded, shhh’d, and subjected to a handful of eye rolls from a guy I was dating. “Taugh lew-oud, mate. Shut the fack up!”

After about the fifth visit to the coffee shop, it finally sunk in that I actually was speaking at a loud volume, and not just possibly drawing the attention of the 3+ cute baristas who the guy wanted to comingle with after I set off on the next leg of my journey. 

I digress. 

Since I had already been made aware of my volume in Australia, I needn’t get a lesson from backpackers in South America. When I met fellow Americans, I bit my tongue. 

The first Americans I met in South America were a brother-sister duo who always used each other’s names while talking to each other. 

“Jack, would you like me to call the bus company?”

“Yes, Lucy, I would.”

“Wonderful, Jack. Let me give them a ring and I’ll let you know what they say about tomorrow’s reservations.”

“Thanks, Lucy.”

These two came from the same womb, mind you. The three of us sat alone in the lounge as this conversation carried on, and I wasn’t sure if I was feeling symptoms of jet lag or if I was dizzy from Santiago’s heat.  

I wouldn’t pay to see their two-man show but I enjoyed their company as I planned my three-month trip. Jack assured me that Torres Del Paine, while expensive, was an accessible hike. Having booked eight days of hiking (in a possible state of delusion,) it was nice to hear that I had actually made a sensible decision to come down to South America and lug a backpack through Patagonia for a week by myself. 

Jack and Lucy were not brash and bold, but they did have the one trait shared by all Americans. Their heads had the perfect aerodynamics for jokes to just fly over them. It takes a few months to identify the subtle art to banter that did not make it past Ellis Island. The line between the absurd, the sarcastic, and the mean is more thin than the soles of my hiking Vibrams. Bantering Brits and Aussies, do not worry. There are no ghosts in the wind. Just me whispering to the Californians or the Texans that “they’re just joking.”

Subtlety has never been America’s strong point. (Alongside affordable health care, handling the Coronavirus, and electing someone who is not the Cheetos mascot and Satan’s lovechild.) But you know what? This is not such a bad thing. If Americans were subtle, I would never have met the doctors, and I might not have gotten through my eight-day hike without their unintentional lessons of positivity and perseverance. 

This Does Not Mean the Doctors Were Inspirational By Any Means. 

I was in good spirits the first time I met the doctors. The hike from the entrance of Torres Del Paine National Park to the Serón campsite took less than six hours. By 2 p.m, I had already set up camp and started to mingle with the rest of the hikers.

Torres Del Paine only allows 80 hikers on the 80-mile “O trek,” or circuit trek, at a time. Campers reserve their campsites ahead of time and must present their reservations before the Dickson campsite, which was my second stop. Hikers can enter from one of two locations, so you’ll either meet hikers who have the same schedule as you or are four days ahead or behind. 

The doctors, I learned, were four days ahead. 

I was in my tent, enjoying the quiet of the night and the idea of a shorter hike in the morning. 

That’s when I heard them. 

The stomps came first. Or maybe it was the sighs. All I remember is that very quickly, there was an issue. 

“WHERE DO I PUT MY BACKPACK, KEVIN?” 

None of the campsites had reserved spots and the tents had been spread out throughout the area quite sporadically. The right answer to her question was “anywhere.” 

I fell asleep to the sounds of the sighs, rustles, and complaints, forgetting all about my new pals until I rubbed my eyes and enjoyed my morning shower. The opportunity to eavesdrop was quickly presented to me, and I never turn down an opportunity like that. 

“KEVIN?”

“Yes?”

“Did you pack the Imodium, Kevin?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.” 

“Well, do you remember when I told you to pack the Imodium?” 

“Uh.”

“Well, I had assumed that you packed the Imodium because I told you to pack the Imodium.” 

I didn’t need to make coffee after hearing that conversation. I truly felt alive. 

I saw poor Kevin before I saw the rest of the doctors. He stood with his head down, stirring a pot of something for the group of three women chatting around him. We started chatting and yes, they were also American. Yes, they were from Boston and D.C., all doctors, all pals, all first-time hikers. 

Kevin asked me where my group was. 

“Oh, I’m traveling alone.”

“Wow. Must be nice.” 

“KEVIN!” 

This was my favorite group of people, and I couldn’t wait to talk to them before and after every multi-hour hike. Their exasperated sighs cured my homesickness. The pure frustration over anything brought me back to my homeland. I was filled with a feeling that I would like to call “Schadenfreude-lite.”

Goddamn Adventure Alan 

The second day of hiking would take approximately six hours to complete, according to Backpacker Steve. Backpacker Steve’s blog post on the circuit trek offered three different route options that could be done in 7-9 days. I chose an eight-day route, because I am a relatively fit human but knew I’d face some challenges on my first multi-day hike. I also booked a hostel the day after the hike, and a fancy hotel two days after the hike. I had read that weather could stop me along the way, and I was taking no chances at missing the one hotel that I would enjoy during my three months in South America. 

(Sure, I am the first to admit that I am one of the more neurotic backpackers that you’ll meet in a budget hostel. But in this case, the anxiety of Murphy’s Law on the Patagonian trails did pay off.)

The hike from the first campsite to the second was leisurely. Easy, even. TDP has very easy-to-follow trails and I was blessed with beautiful weather in early March. I arrived to the campsite in the early evening with a beaming smile and a thirst for adventure. Maybe I was a hiking gal. Maybe I could go back and do all the multi-day hikes in New Zealand that I ran away from. Maybe I could accomplish anything I put my mind to! 

I showed the rangers at the Dickson campsite my reservation with a smile. I put my backpack down, stretched my shoulders, and took out some cash to buy a beer. And look! My new friends were already at the campsite. I was ready to poke the Imodium bear. 

“Hey guys! What an amazing hike! Felt so great, right? Who’s up for a beer?”

“This is fucking AWFUL!” 

Uh oh! The doctors weren’t doing well. 

The doctors had planned on surpassing the Dickson campsite and getting in another hike to the Perros campsite, a three-hour hike before the John Gardener pass. They got stopped. It would get dark before they got to their campsite, which was a big no-no on the circuit trek. Rangers would cut people off as early as 2 or 3 to keep everyone hiking in the daylight. 

This delay would pretty much ruin the doctors’ chances of finishing the hike on the day they planned, which was the day before they were flying home. 

At some points during the evening I did feel bad and try to lift the group’s spirits, but any effort was overshadowed by the huffing and puffing and crinkling of papers that took over the area where campers could hang out and eat their meals. The three ladies spent quite a bit of the evening obsessively looking over printed blog posts from a man named Adventure Alan. 

Adventure Alan says, “O Trek can easily be done in 6 to 7 days vs. the 8-13 days recommended.” He said he did it in 4.5. 

The doctors pointed out to me multiple times that Adventure Alan was a guy in his 50s. Basically, if this old fart can bang out an 100km hike in 4.5 days, they could do it in six. So why were they being held back? 

The picture that the doctors painted for me was a middle-aged guy doing his best. No. This guy is legit. He’s been on hundreds more hikes than anyone I know. Adventure Alan makes trail snacks that contain soy protein powder and is a regular “canyoneer.” He’s no huffing-and-puffing beginner that happened to find the secret to conquering the O trek. But the doctors kept clinging onto his 6-day recommendation, utterly bamboozled at why the world was against them. 

I was not the only one entertained by Adventure Alan’s fan club. That night, I dined on a pre-made dinner at the campsite that I had ordered when I booked the hike. The dinnergoers and I were joined by sweet Kevin, who was ordering a pizza for the group to enjoy that night. 

“I just wanted to get away for a minute,” he told us, deflating by the minute.

“It does not seem like your group is having a good time,” noted a tall Swiss man who vaguely resembled our Adventure Alan. 

We all nodded, kept our smirks to ourselves, and wished Kevin luck as he delivered the pizza.

Chaos Was Coming 

Unfortunately, that was the last night I saw the doctors. I’m not sure what they decided to do, although they weighed their options for the whole campground to hear throughout the evening. They could go back. They could try and tackle three one-day hikes in one day, approximately 14 hours of the hardest hikes on the circuit. They could miss their flight.

Sure, I felt a little validated that my humble planning paid off. But more importantly, I was actually quite thankful to have met the doctors so early on in my trip.

During the first two days, I didn’t have any slip-ups or hang-ups. I didn’t run into any tomfoolery or bamboozlery. But I knew that one catastrophe or another was coming. It happened on every trip: an ATM ate my debit card in Bangkok, my day bag got stolen in Germany, I did not like the hostel I worked at in Kuala Lumpur. A catastrophe was coming in the next few days, I could prepare for that. Most importantly, I was given a glimpse into how not to handle the situation. 

No one at the campsite could help the doctors. (Unless someone had Imodium.) Even the doctors couldn’t really help the doctors. It wasn’t their fault that they were stopped by the rangers, and they couldn’t change their plans now. Filling the whole campsite with the sounds of their complaints, however, only made them the butt of the joke and the subject of bants from other hikers who had either planned better or kept their catastrophes to themselves. The doctors weren’t hurt, or sick, or in any real danger. 

They would be fine.

And even if my tent broke or my knees were in immense pain or I faced anxiety on the way up to the Towers (which all happened,) I would remind myself that things weren’t so bad and wailing wouldn’t make me anything other than the subject of some eye rolls. (One brief half-hour of quiet crying to myself and my hiking buddy was my limit.) 

Planning helps, but there’s always a chance that you’ll get thrown off your game. A ranger will hold you back from your next hike or the world will be hit with a global pandemic. But you control how you react to it, which can influence how others react as well. 

And if you think you need Imodium, just get it yourself.