Beach bike and insect repellent

[pinkshogun]

it handles the weight pretty well but the little black flies are feasting on my soon to be tanned legs. i gave a spritz of OFF and lit a romantic citranella candle to no avail. what product(s) will give me some relief from the beach bugs

[DRZRM]

Seriously? Deep Woods Off, At least 25% of DEET.

[carpediemracing]

I'll find it at some point but I have a few pictures my then-gf took of me after I got stung about 100x on each arm and each leg in about 3-5 minutes. We were camping, she got attacked when she opened the tent, and it got so bad that I told her to sit in the car (with air on recirculate) while I threw everything in the trunk. I was absolutely drenched in Avon skinsosoft or whatever that "natural" repellent is called and it did absolutely no good. (We stayed in hotels the rest of the trip.)

I'm a human mosquito magnet - I've only found a couple people that get bitten before me so I must be a great combination of heat, carbon dioxide, and the octenol type thing that attracts mosquitoes.

I use Deep Woods Off, I think the one I have is higher than 25%, maybe 50%? Whatever, I use that as well as a 100% DEET pump spray thing that I stash in one of the cars. I also sprayed it around the rim of our garbage can - no flies, ever, even in the summer heat, and that was one spray.

Granted I prefer it on my clothing but I'll spray it on my neck. I wear long sleeve stuff when dealing with yardwork, even in 100 degree weather, so I spray my clothing, boots, hat.

If it's not too windy the Off fan thing works reasonably well. You may need two. It repels to about 15 feet vertically but only a few feet across. I've used them successfully at outdoor concerts and such, and the bandshell in town is in a flood zone next to the Farmington River, so there are a bazillion mosquitoes out there. I have an emergency one in my bike registration drawer, for any outdoor registration work where I might have to deal with mosquitoes.

Finally Consumer Reports did a report which is Googleable and it has one natural ingredient repellent that seemed to work reasonably well. I haven't tried it as I have 4-5 cans of the DEET stuff. All the others that worked were DEET based products.

[jamesau]

I prefer products with the active ingredient, Picaridin. It's effective, less toxic/irritating than DEET, and won't ruin synthetics/plastics (clothing, sunglasses, etc).

[67-59]

DEET is the most effective thing out there...but given the toxicity, I'll only use it where I think the benefits outweigh the risks. For bugs that are a nuisance but not likely a health hazard, I'd use something less toxic. But in an area with lots of mosquitos and a reasonably high incidence of something like West Nile, I'd go with DEET.