Bottle Launching Solved

I've ridden with a bottle behind my saddle for a while now, and have always struggled with bottles launching on rough roads.  It wasn't until a recent ride that I realized how the bottles were being ejected.  Once I knew that, I knew exactly how to fix it... straight ghetto style.


I always assumed that bottles were launching "up and out" in a true launch, so before heading out recently I grabbed a rubber band and looped it through the top of my behind-the-seat cage and over the bite valve on the bottle.  Exactly 4 miles later the bottle was skittering across the road.  "WTF?" I thought.  There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more frustrating than just getting into the zone for the day and hearing that sound.

I flipped a U-turn, grabbed the bottle, and pulled off the road to figure out how to rig up something new to keep my bottle from launching now that my rubber band was broken.  Except that it wasn't (Clue #1). So, this time when I put the bottle back in I double-wrapped the rubber band around the valve, swung back across the road (U-ey number 2) and headed back up the road.

Early on a crisp Saturday morning, my route is void of cars and populated by wildlife, and I'm quickly lulled by the rythym of my breathing against the chirping of the birds. Life is good.  I pass a groundhog, a doe with two fawns who are just barely still in spots, and one of those big Woody Woodpecker woodpeckers.  The open road unrolls in front of me as I crest the top of the railroad tracks.

Thud, skitter, skitter, skitter, skitter.

"Goddamn sonofabitch motherfucker!"

I don't normally cuss like a sailor, but 2 bottle launches ten miles into an 80 mile day is enough to turn a kitten into a honey badger.  I check behind me to make sure neither I nor the bottle are about to get run over, then slam on my brakes, swing around and recover my bottle, recheck the rubber band, and it's still OK (Clue #2).  "What the hell is going on here?" (I really do talk out loud to myself when I'm out riding.  It helps keep the crazies away).

To make a long story short, I started to check the bottle every few minutes, trying to make sure that it was not hanging half way out of the water bottle cage or something.  When I did, I felt the bottle not hanging half way out of the top, but rather hanging half way out of the bottom!  What a revelation! 

I'm using a Bontrager cage like this one:



(Image Courtesy of Bontrager.com)



See that little lip on the bottom?  That's all there is to hold the water bottle from slipping out below the cage.  Because my behind-the-seat bottle is relatively vertical, the weight of the full bottle combined with the design of the cage to allow my bottles to come out of the bottom of the cage, not up and out the top as I previously assumed. 

Once I knew this, the solution was simple.  I turned to my favorite engineering material: duct tape.  I simply made a basket out of duct tape to keep the bottle from slipping down and out of the cage.  A rubber band on top keeps it from launching up and out.  Hundreds of miles and dozens of railroad track crossings later and I haven't had a bottle hit the deck since.

My solution is not beautiful.  It is purely functional.  I'm sure there are different cages that might work, and maybe for next season I'll shop around a bit, but for now this is what I came up with:



Water Bottle Launching Solved!

It's easy enough to do with a some duct take strips doubled back on each other.  Maybe some day I'll re-make it out of carbon fiber (but I doubt it).