Bike Bottle Addiction?

All right let’s see 1, 2, 3, times 4 times 2 plus 2 more. That makes 26! Our family owns 26 bike bottles and some of you will agree and others will disagree but I don’t think we have enough. In fact, I don’t think you can ever have enough bike bottles.

My bike bottle collection started years ago when I bought my first road bike. It was a used Centurion I bought in grad school and it came with a free bike bottle. Back then I thought I’d never have a use for a bike bottle but I obviously didn’t know then what I know now.

Until 2006 we always had a small collection of bike bottles. Then, we found the holy grail of free bike bottles, The Seattle Bike Expo. This is a bike show held in the middle of March every year. It has a couple hundred booths and if you get there early enough on the first day a lot of the vendors are handing out free bike bottles. The first year we attended the expo Jenny looked at the 6 or 7 bike bottles that we came home with and said, “What are we going to do with all of those”? I assured her that they were a necessity and we had to keep them. She reluctantly agreed. Now she’s a believer.

In fact, Jenny has become quite the bike bottle connoisseur. She likes the bike bottles that are tall with the with the medium size lids. If I’m getting bike bottles ready before a ride I know these are her favorites but as a plan B she will use the tall ones with the large size lids. Under no circumstances will she ever use the ones that have the plastic nozzle. I was right, they are a necessity.

Our bike bottles use to be located in a large metal bowl down in the far reaches of a back cupboard. If you were to relate this to a neighborhood this would be the ghetto. Our bike bottles have really moved themselves up in the world over the years. They are now stacked neatly in the high rent district of our cupboard next to the microwave. I guess location is everything.

Every year that we’ve gone to the expo we come home with more bike bottles. To me it’s a lot like topping your personal best for a century or climbing that monstrous hill faster. Last year we topped our personal best for bike bottles at the expo and felt like it was a major accomplishment. Now, before all of the Pacific Northwesterners get ticked at me we actually use all of these bike bottles.

The obvious use for bike bottles is for rides and we definitely use tons of them for that purpose but other uses are almost unlimited. Here are some of my favorites.

The kids bring them to school in their lunches. That way they don’t fill up the landfills with plastic water bottles. Call it my version of being a tree hugger. I’m sure the kids are also the envy of all their classmates. I mean who doesn’t look cool drinking out of a bike bottle.

I bring a small bike bottle to work every morning filled with milk. I’m sure people see it hanging out of my backpack and think I’m using it on a lunchtime ride or something when in reality I use the milk for a bowl of granola while I sit at my desk.

Finally, I’ve never had to resort to using a bike bottle for this but the Fat Cyclist has used bike bottles for emergency situations.

For some reason our bike bottle supply never gets above 30 even though we end up acquiring them at different events and occasions all the time. There must be a mystical force that makes them vanish similar to the mystical force that makes socks disappear in the dryer every week. It’s either that or the kids don’t bring them home from school. I personally think it’s the mystical force.

I don’t have a bike bottle addiction, I really don’t. I’m sure I could quit acquiring them any time I want. I just don’t want to. That doesn’t sound like an addiction does it?