Alyssa is one of two interns who will be joining the GladRags Team for the summer.  We’re super excited to have her on board! 

Name: Alyssa Beers
Age: 23
Hometown:Monroe, Connecticut
Current location: Portland, Oregon
Occupation: Crazy/Sexy/Cool GladRags Intern for the summer! Artist, Musician, Wall Ball Enthusiast, College Graduate (anyone want to give me a job?)

Interests: Drawing, collage, bicycling, playing wall ball, free boxes, diy projects, braiding hair, the many colors of wood, novice gardening.
Dreams: Going on a bike tour (it’s happening in July!) & to stop biting my nails (might never happen).

How long have you used reusable menstrual products?: 3 years
Reason for making the switch to reusables: My friend Mary said she had to go put in her “blood cup”- I had no idea what that meant so when I asked the answer was “Oh a safe, reusable cup that holds your period blood” I said “I HAVE TO HAVE THAT”. I’d like to say I’m “environmentally conscious” and was surprised to learn there were such amazing products — some from right here in Portland! — that I had yet to even hear about.

Funny anecdotes, deep thoughts, or anything else you’d like to share: The first time I used my Keeper I totally poured blood all down my arm. In a public restroom. People thought I’d come out of the stall having murdered a small animal or something. I’m totally vocal about all bodily issues after spending many of my formative years afraid to so much as fart in a room with my friends. I’ve come a long way to now being comfortable not only talking about how awesome it is to use menstrual products that won’t harm me or my environment, but comfortable enough with my body to use ‘em in the first place. Really, all you need is that first time of being like, yep, that’s my menstrual blood on my arm, and then you’re set for life.

The weather is beautiful again, which makes this the perfect season to spend time outside!  Your Green Goal this week is to make one trip on foot or by bike, instead of driving or taking the bus. There are many benefits to using alternate forms of transportation.  Not only are biking and walking awesome forms of exercise, but you’ll be traveling independent of environment-destroying gasoline or electricity.  You’ll see and experience your town in an entirely different way.  You can interact with your community, discover places you never knew existed, and even pick fresh fruit!

Often people are afraid of looking sweaty when they get to their destination.  Try short distances at first to become more comfortable with what clothes you need to wear and how much extra time you might need to give yourself to cool off.  You will soon end up feeling energized and good about yourself when you arrive at your destination!   Don’t forget a helmet — and bike lights, too, if you plan on biking at night.

Here at GladRags we love biking everywhere!  Of course we do have the advantage of living in Portland, OR, a biking mecca.  Tomorrow I am representing GladRags at Bike Economics: a fundraiser showcasing local, woman-owned, bicycle-oriented businesses.  I am really excited to connect with other bicycle-loving women in my community.  If you are in Portland, you should join us!

Do you bike or walk everywhere?  What obstacles did you face when you started?  Comment and let us know what biking and walking is like where you live!

Last month we posted about participating in Bike Transportation Alliance’s Bike Commute Challenge.  Now we’re excited to share the amazing results of this month-long competition!

Number of participating workplaces:
1240

Number of riders:
11,118

Number of riders new to bike commuting:
2,693

Total number of miles biked:
1,244,718

That’s a lot of bike commuters and a lot of miles!  We had so much fun challenging ourselves to bike to work every single day (as a team, we logged 490 miles in September!) and checking our ranking on the BTA website — we even received a plaque for our 100% workplace participation rate!

You can read more about the Bike Commute Challenge — including the guy who biked over 1,800 miles in just 21 days! — at Bike Portland’s blog.  Thanks again to the Bike Transportation Alliance for organizing such an enjoyable competition and to all the other teams who participated!

Team GladRags from left to right: Alex, Brenda, and Tracy

Here at GladRags, it’s important to us to be as sustainable as possible.  From the way we package our products to the way we get to the office, we try to make the best choice possible for the environment.  All three of us bike to work fairly routinely, but when we heard about the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s Bike Commute Challenge, we were excited to really put ourselves to the test! The challenge is “a friendly competition — workplace against workplace — to see who can bike to work more during the month of September. The workplaces with the highest percentage of commutes by bicycle during the month win!”  There are also weekly drawings for prizes and discounts for bike parts/accessories at local bicycle shops. The Bike Commute Challenge website is really fun and interactive.  Each day you work, you log your mileage on the calendar and your total miles, calories burned, pounds of CO2 saved, and participation rate are automatically calculated.  Check it out: as a team we’ve already cycled over 232 miles!

As of this posting, we’re #1 in our category (Business or Non-Profit with 2-4 employees) with a participation rate of 100%!  While there are no official prizes offered to winning teams by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance — other than glory, of course! — there are plenty of benefits from just participating (better health, a reduced carbon footprint, and the simple joy of just riding a bicycle, to name a few!).

One day last week we all needed to attend a meeting about three miles away, so we hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.  It was a beautiful day and so much fun to ride as a group, plus the midday exercise perked us up.  As soon as we made it back, we all logged on to add the trip to our mileage!

If you’re in Oregon and SW Washington, it’s not too late to join the competition!  You can still sign up and enter your commutes retroactively. The website is also available for bike commuters from outside the area to use, although you won’t be part of the official challenge.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated on our progress and hope to see some of you at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s after party on October 8th!

Hey Everyone, Elizabeth here, GladRags’ elusive third team member.  I’ve been elusive because I’ve spent the past two months out of the office traveling through 28 states via bus, train, bike, car and plane. The primary impetus behind this adventure was an 1800-mile bike ride from New Orleans to New York City called Wanderlust . Wanderlust is a story collective and bicycle caravan. We pedaled 40 to 60 miles a day for about six weeks; listening to stories and observing how communities in the south and northeast are working to expand access to reproductive health care, defend reproductive rights, and promote reproductive justice.  The trip was motivated by the belief that sharing stories is a powerful way to create awareness and foster social change.

Needless to say, it was a life-changing experience in just about every possible way.  I got to connect with activists from all over the country and see what the movement for progressive change looks like on the ground in those places.  More than anything, I think Wanderlust was a fabulous opportunity for me to practice wholly embracing adventure when it comes my way.  Traveling with 11 other women by bicycle, you learn quickly to expect the unexpected; there was always a flat tire to be fixed or a dramatic change in weather to send us scrambling to protect the bikes and gear. For a person who usually relishes routine, it was exciting to learn that I can happily cope with and even meet unexpected challenges with gusto.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in a trip like Wanderlust. I seriously recommend that y’all out there seize the opportunity to do something that maybe other people think is crazy, but you believe in passionately, you won’t regret it.

An exciting experiment is planned this Sunday, June 22nd in our neighborhood of North Portland. Sunday Parkways is modeled after the Ciclovias (bike path en español) event in Bogotá, Columbia where every Sunday streets are closed to cars so bikers, skaters, walkers and runners can enjoy the streets without traffic.  The event in Portland this Sunday is from 8am – 2pm and straddles 1-5 to connecting four neighborhoods in North Portland with six miles of streets closed to cars.  There is no start or finish to the event, so people wanting to enjoy the streets can fall in with the parkway at any point.

Portland is the perfect place for an ‘experiment’ such as this, a town where the City Auditor estimates that at least 16% of people already use their bike as primary or secondary form of transportation to work.  We are the first large US city to achieve Platinum Level status of Bicycle Friendly Community from the League of American Bicyclists, and the community is open and excited for new developments made in the world of biking in Portland.

Yay North Portland.

We’ve got some new faces at GladRags these days. One of the great benefits of owning the GladRags business is meeting great customers and getting to work with amazing women.  Elizabeth and Tanya continue the tradition of GladRags employees being forward thinking, trail blazing, interesting women.

Elizabeth grew up in California’s Bay Area. She moved to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College in 2002. Since graduating with a BA in Anthropology, in addition to working for GladRags, Elizabeth has led groups for teenage survivors of domestic violence and organized books at the public library. Her interests include: learning, music, art where animals wearing clothing is featured prominently, gender studies, road trips, and Anthropological theory. This summer Elizabeth is joining other activists as part of a bicycle caravan for reproductive justice called Wanderlust where she’ll ride from New Orleans to New York. Elizabeth loves working for GladRags because she gets to help create more positivity around our cycles.

Tanya moved to Portland late summer 2007 from Boulder, Colorado where she had worked for Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy (a great place to purchase GladRags products!) for the past two and some odd years.  A graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 2005, she has wanted to move back to the Pacific Northwest since leaving the area.  Her interests include but are not limited to making and appreciating all art, especially visual art, biking around Portland, friends, bars, concerts, gardens, fish tanks, traveling and languages. She has always been a passionate bleeder and has been dealing with her menstruation alternatively as well as sharing her knowledge with her peers since late high school.  She can’t really remember what inspired her to do so, but she thinks it might have had something to do with common sense and the book Cunt by Inga Muscio. She is really excited for the opportunity to work for a small, local, proud-to-be-bleeding company such as GladRags and it ready to give it her all.