A good water bottle is like a good cigar. Pleasing to the eye. Supple, but not too supple. Firm, but not too firm. A sensual pleasure to roll around ones fingertips. With a stopper that can be pulled and pushed with ones teeth without the risk of expensive dental work. And with an analogy that can be pulled and pushed only so far.
Actually, I know nothing about cigars, but I'd like to think that I know something about water bottles, having owned numerous water bottles throughout my riding years. Currently, I'm the proud owner of 21 of them that take up most of the space in the lower shelf of one of my kitchen cabinets. And this doesn't include the emergency water bottle I keep in my office in case I forget to bring water bottles from home when I travel directly from work to an evening KBC ride. Which, and you'd better be sitting down when you read this, I've actually done from time to time. (Wow, they say that confession is good for the soul and they're right!)
These water bottles are of various colors, sizes, and shapes. Most are white or clear, although I used to own a black water bottle, apparently because I had decided at some point in my cycling career that the water in my other water bottles wasn't turning lukewarm quickly enough on a hot summer day. Most hold 24 ounces of liquid, although a few hold only 20 ounces. Some are long and narrow, others are short and squatty; the ectomorphs and endomorphs of the mobile liquid transport world.
Some of these water bottles have sat in my cabinet for years without being used; for instance, my National 24 Hour Challenge water bottles from years that I associate with dry heaving and/or fighting off heat exhaustion. I also have a couple of water bottles where the plastic is too firm, but have yet to be thrown out, i.e., recycled, where they'll have the opportunity to be made into other too-firm water bottles and languish in someone else's kitchen cabinet. There are also a couple of rookie water bottles waiting to break into my water bottle rotation.
One of the reasons for my tribble-like collection of water bottles is that I haven't bought a water bottle in at least 20 years (with one recent exception to be discussed later, because I've heard that many fine writers use this sort of "cliffhanger" technique to entice their readers to continue reading articles devoted to subjects that fascinate only those fine writers). I've obtained them through races and tours, such as the aforementioned National 24 Hour Challenge and our own KalTour, although it can be reasonably argued that I did pay for them indirectly. I've obtained them through bike store giveaways and, as many of us can also claim, at KBC Winter Recovery Party raffles. I've received a couple of bottles as presents of the Christmas or of the "I don't want it, maybe you can use it" variety. This includes one of my favorites, my Vectren bottle, a company that distributes natural gas, presumably not via water bottles.
Another reason for the magnitude of my collection is because water bottles don't wear out easily and I like to assume that my dishwasher keeps them clean. Although if this assumption is false (unlike the assumption that ignorance is bliss in this case), I do own a recently purchased Clean Bottle. This was a bottle that I purchased for ten dollars along with another gift from L.L. Bean last Christmas in order to get a ten dollar gift certificate, so perhaps I didn't actually buy this water bottle either. For those of you who have never watched the Tour de France on TV and, as a result, are not having nightmares about being chased by the Clean Water Bottle Man, the Clean Bottle opens at both ends of the bottle in order to facilitate, that's right, the cleaning of the bottle. I've used this bottle once, and I'm happy to report that after being washed, it's not covered with mold.
Yet another reason for the magnitude of my collection is that it's hard to lose water bottles. I've had the occasional water bottle fly out of my water bottle cage after running over a pothole or over railroad tracks, to be missed several miles later, when it was time to take a drink, but that rarely happens, although I once lost two water bottles within two weeks that way. I took that as a subtle hint to adjust my water bottle cage. Once, I ran over a deep pothole during a Wednesday night KBC ride about 12 years ago that jarred my water bottle from the cage, and I was aware of my loss immediately, but in the heat of battle, the battle to not get dropped, I decided not to retrieve it. One must keep ones priorities straight. Actually, this incident was noteworthy only because the pothole put a dent in the rim of my front wheel, but, somehow, did not result in a flat tire.
And then there was that strange incident that occurred about 20 years ago during a Century Tour. I was riding my Fuji 12 speed, a bicycle that did not have water bottle braze-ons, so I had to secure the water bottle cage using two clamps around the down tube. I hit a pothole, and my water bottle cage along with the water bottle in it went flying. I was riding over a bridge at the time and I found my water bottle, but the cage was nowhere to be found, and I strongly suspected that it had disappeared into the creek below the bridge. Since this was in the day when my preferred cycling top was a t-shirt, I had no pockets in which to place my bottle, but, fortunately, I had a rear bicycle rack, so there it went. However, this proved to be rather inconvenient whenever I wanted a drink during the remainder of the ride.
But I've been able to continue owning many of the water bottles that I've accumulated over the years and I guess I've taken them for granted. Which is a shame, really, because where would we be without our water bottles? Would we carry water cupped in our hands? Steering could be a problem here. I suppose we could all wear canteens (wouldn't that be comfortable) or Camelbaks, but I, for one, prefer to drink my water, not to wear it.
So, let's pay tribute to the underappreciated water bottle. Because we all know that a good water bottle is like a good woman. Pleasing to the eye ...... and with an analogy that I probably shouldn't push any farther.
Rick Whaley, KBC Newsletter Editor
