Home and Sunscreen

I am back home from a week up in Burlington Vermont with my brother. I had a blast up there, from exploring the area all the way to playing video with my brother. Now, some of my biggest takeaways from the trip were about sunscreen. I have what you could call very pasty and pale skin and because of that, the sun can be my worst enemy.

The first couple days I was there I lacked any sunscreen and so had to shadow hop to avoid the bright menace. This shadow hoping was too much of a nuisance and so I decided to leave my brothers home with ten dollars and the will to find sunscreen. The first place I thought there could be sunscreen was at a CVS I had been in earlier. With this, I thought I'd be able to satisfy my munchies too because there was a Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlor directly across the street from the CVS. Now, at this point, I had already been sunburned a bit from the previous days and wanted to not get sunburned anymore in my journey to CVS.

The weather of the day was supposed to be cloudy with some rain, but somehow I swear the sun disintegrated all those clouds because it was as bright as ever. I grabbed an additional shirt of mine for added protection on the trip and started to head out. It was not a very long walk, but my paralyzing fear caused me to end up with my arms in my shirt, and the extra shirt wrapped around my neck like a scarf, in the burning summer. I was not gonna lose this time to the sun. The sun had a few tricks up its sleeve though, namely embarrassment. As I walked on the sidewalk and had people occasionally pass me, or me them, I could feel my eyes staring for them. I looked like a bulgy pencil with arms popping under my shirt and an additional shirt that was on my neck and could never seem to not fall off causing me to have to pick it up from the "pristine" sidewalk to reset.

Anyways, I eventually got to the CVS and started looking for the sunscreen. Once I found the aisle I could only be baffled. Everything was so expensive. My ten dollars could only buy some of the SPF 15 weak sauce. My very pale arms needed some stronger variants. Then I found it, the in brand CVS sunscreens. They were around nine dollars pre-tax, going all the way up to 50 SPF. I did not know the tax percent, which caused me to go for the slightly cheaper SPF 30 so that I would not be caught at the register shy a few cents. As soon as I got out of that store I slathered that sunscreen on myself. I used a large amount of sunscreen to cover my exposed skin. Enough that I realized this sunscreen would not last me long. Especially because when out in the direct sun you are supposed to reapply every two hours.

My sunscreen research had made me find this reapplication need very humorous. Here are some quick facts about sunscreen SPF: SPF 15 protects from 93% of UVB rays SPF 30 protects from 97% of UVB rays SPF 50 protects from 98% of UVB rays In addition, sunscreen SPF acts as an approximate multiplier to your normal skin's protection from harmful UV radiation. As in, if you normally burn after twenty minutes SPF 15 should let you be in the sun for five hours before burning. So here I am being told that if someone normally burns in twenty minutes and applies SPF 50 they should be able to be in the sun for approximately 16.67 hours before burning. And yet, no matter the sunscreen SPF you are supposed to reapply after every two hours. I could understand if the number of hours changed based upon the SPF strength, but why should I have to reapply SPF 50 as much as SPF15. SPF 50 vs SPF 30 seems almost irrelevant being only a one percent difference in protection from the UVB rays. Safe to say, I do not understand the sunscreen business, making me to broke to even get my ice cream. Still heart you sunscreen :)

Hope you have a great day!