There are always options. Especially here in the free market world. You don’t even have to build a better mousetrap. You can build some crazy near-useless piece of junk and do well with it, as long as it’s marketed well.
How about this for an updated version of the old axiom: “Build a mousetrap and market it better than other mousetraps, and the world will beat a path to your stock offerings.” Or something like that. Feel free to edit that lumbering mess down to something pithy and comment below with it.
Anyhow, what if your options are REAL options? What if, for instance, you want to carry water with you. Here in this twenty-first century first-world free market country, we don’t need a heavy wooden bucket and a trip to the local spring (though that IS how my great-grandmother got water for her family. Oh, we haven’t been twenty-first century for all that long, have we?) No, we’re Americans (except for those of us who aren’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that.) and we get OUR water from the STORE!
Disposable plastic bottles filled with tap water (don’t argue with me. That’s tap water and everyone knows it) fill shelves in grocery stores, convenience stores and vending machines all around us. Is that how you like to transport your water? Just buy some when you need it? Convenient and Free Market all the way!
That doesn’t suit everyone, though. Some folks like to get a bottle that lasts a little longer around the house. (they might argue that the disposable ones last a little longer in other places, but that’s another subject) Nalgene-type plastic bottles. Wide-necked enough to drop a handful of ice into, and wide-necked is good if you’ve left some old Gatorade in there until it’s turned fuzzy. Cleanup on a Nalgene bottle is a good thing. Some of them now come with sippy-cup flip-up straws, too! I’ve had several Nalgene bottles over the last decade or so, and they’re fine things. They fit well into the little bungie-corded slot in my kayak. They hold enough water that you’d never get a full one down you, meaning that you’re not going to empty it the first time you open it that day and then wish you had more later. You can see disaster coming halfway through the bottle, and that’s worth something. On the other hand, they cost, those Nalgene bottles (and don’t think I’m ignoring the fact that they’re not ALL Nalgene bottles. Nalgene got sucked into the Kleenex Syndrome- their name having become synonymous with the product, like Q-tips, or, if you’re in the U.K., Hoover…If you’re in the U.K. and you guys don’t REALLY say “Hoover Up” instead of “Vacuum”, then by all means correct this social myth for us. We’ve been laughing at how funny “Hoover Up” sounds to us for long enough.) Another issue is BPAs, and how seriously you take them. Disposable plastic bottles and some of the older Nalgene bottle have been accused of having issues with BPA leaching. Apparently, I’m not too horrified by it. I still have one of the old Nalgene bottles. The lid leash is gone and it doesn’t block sunlight as well as the new bottles, but I have managed to LOSE every Nalgene bottle I’ve bought since (if you found on on the Grand Canyon in June 2009… that was one of mine. Nice, wasn’t it?) The old one loves me and I’m not giving it up.
If BPAs or the price of Nalgene bottles bothers you, you can just… y’know… buy a bike. Usually, the bike shops will throw in a water bottle and a cage for it if you ask nicely. I like my bike bottles. I carry one to the Boot Camp workout I go to. (You ‘member that scene in Iron Man II, when John Favreau gets smacked to the mat by Scarlett Johansson after asking if she’s in “Booty Boot Camp”? Yeah, I go to a boot camp workouts.”) The good reasons for bicycle water bottles: Reusable. Wide mouths, so you can drop ice cubes in ’em and wash them easily enough. Those little pop-up spigot whatchacallems on top. When you’re bicycling, or when you’re in Booty Boot Camp, you need to one-handedly snap up that bottle and squeeze a big drink into your mouth with as little effort as possible. Screwing off the lid or flipping up a sippy straw is out of the question. And Nalgene bottles don’t squeeze. You gotta pour. So, if your Booty Boot Camp instructor is saying, “Okay, that’s enough pushups. Now side-shuffle-hops! One! Two! Three!” There’s no time for mopping your forehead and unscrewing a Nalgene lid or anything. You gotta grab a towel and your bottle, one in each hand and mop and drink in one swift move, otherwise you’ll miss the first two side-shuffle-hops (Didn’t they used to call those Jumping Jacks?) and you look like a slacker in front of the other housewives.
But the other housewives don’t seem to mind missing the first two or three side-jumping-hop-jacks. They’ve all got these brightly painted aluminum bottles with the screw top lids. I’d love for this to be a fair and balanced assessment of portable hydration, but sadly, I can’t see the point of these aluminum thingys except that they: satisfy the human desire for Novelty (Expression of Novelty Gene=If it’s New, it separates US from Previous Generations. It’s GOOD.) and it’s a prime opportunity for manufacturers to put their slickest graphics on a really cool-looking container. That’s it, really. I guess they’re mostly crush-proof, and that’s sometimes a plus, but there are other rigid bottle options. The other options don’t necessarily feel as cold as ice when you put ice in them. And these aluminum things? Try getting a decent sized piece of ice, much less a quick handful of ice down their little throats. I’m too lazy to remember to put a half-bottle of water in the freezer so that I can have icewater the next day. Heck, sometimes I don’t know I’m going outside to play until I’m trying to find my shoes ’cause I’m LATE. So, BOO to the aluminum flasks for not leaving me ice-cube-loading-room. And for making my fingers ache when I do get some icewater in them.
The rigid plastic bottles are okay. They don’t feel so bad when they’re filled with icewater, and some of them have hand-friendly shapes. Some of them start with logos and printed graphics on them, but the printing never lasts long. Some have wide mouths, and some of them have the flip-up sippy-straws. The straws sometimes bounce around in the dishwasher and are hard to find unless you have a drawer full of them from having a dozen bottles SOMEWHERE in the house and car. They work without the straws in them, too, if you want to throw the straws out. They still have the flip-up sippy bit with the bite-valve at the top, but I worry that there’s mold or something growing in there. That’s a downside.
Now that I’ve mentioned things having bite-valves and possibly having mold growing in them, we can mention Camelbaks. Camelbak also has the Kleenex Syndrome. I think we’re supposed to be calling them Portable Hydration Packs or some ungainly thing. Anyhow, Camelbaks are the most notorious for being Not Easily Cleaned. I’ve joked with other bike riders about how they don’t clean theirs until the tube turns black. I don’t think anyone seriously lets them get too bad, but let’s face it. Cleaning those tubes is a pain. And the bite valves get manky just as fast as the tubes. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. BUT, if you’re riding something where balance is important, a nicely tightened Camelbak is a pleasure. Have you ever seen someone riding a unicycle? Not like circus unicycles but someone just going somewhere on a unicycle. You have to stop, twist sideway and hop over stuff occasionally (some hotshots can leap forward over stuff. Not me, I gotta do the trials-wise side hop) If you are wearing a plain old daypack with a couple of water bottles in it, you can nearly knock yourself out. Not only do the bottles themselves bop around back there, but the water in them slops around like… well, like water in a bottle. It’s a chaos physics experiment going on attached to your back just when you’d like to have pinpoint balance. Camelbaks solve the problem. You don’t leave an airspace in the bladder, so the water doesn’t slop around. The bladder itself is held immobile in the pack.The pack itself is strapped neatly to you and doesn’t flop around. Balance. Important.
Of course, the downside to the Camelbaks and the bicycle bottles and the Nalgene bottles with the flip-up sippy-cup lids is: bite valves. Never let your kid use any of them if you want to use them again later. Every bike bottle lid I owned when my kids first used them is gone now, chewed up like a dog toy. Same with every bite valve on my Camelbaks- all replaced because once a five year old chews on a bite-valve, you’ll see why it’s not a good reason to feed them by hand. The little rats are dangerous. Also, a kid can cross-thread the screw cap on an aluminum bottle without half trying. The best way to get water down a kid is to tell him not to drink from the hose and then turn your back. Then maybe go to the store for a new hose, ’cause the kids will EAT the one you have .
There you have it. A rundown of some of the most popular portable hydration options. I myself prefer squeezy bike bottles or Camelbaks, depending on what’s going on. What do YOU like? I’ve posted a poll over on the Hubris Facebook Page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hubris/207251005974307 But of course, you’re more than welcome to comment here. C’mon. Vent.
••••Postscript
Commenter Won mentioned that he prefers stainless steel bottles over the aluminum ones I mentioned above. I hadn’t thought about the difference. Anyhow, Won says he likes Klean Kanteens, and they make these here wide mouthed ones. Click on it if you want to shop them:
Discussion (17) ¬
Down with aluminum, up with stainless steel: Klean Kanteen‘s are the ones I aspire to when it comes to portable non-Camelbak hydration. Yeah, I’m concerned about BPA, especially as my idea of sterilizing bottles (and bite valves / hoses) involves boiling water. Not crush proof though. I’ve got bottles that will attest to the fact that they will dent, and perhaps unrecoverably (but the expansion of the ice from freezing a full bottle may pop some of them out).
Camelbaks ™ are the only hands-free options I’ve used. Nothing like an ice-cold backpack at the beginning of a ride through the microwave oven that is the summer climate over here.
Ugh, the hated erroneous apostrophe! That should have been “…Klean Kanteens…” etc.
Widemouth available as well, BTW (see link).
Ah! Excellent. I’ve added a shoppin’ link to the article, all ’cause of you. Thanks for the input!
Oh, and you could always claim that you were talking about “Klean Kanteen’s bottles”- and that the mention of the bottle was implied, so the apostrophe was, in fact, grammatically correct.
Thanks Greg. I do want to clarify that although I aspire to have Klean Kanteen gear, I’ve not yet plonked down the cash, instead using a (probably inferior) no-name brand stainless steel bottle I found on a supermarket shelf. Not to besmirch the Klean Kanteen folks if their bottles (improbably) don’t dent while riding at the bottom of an eclectically packed messenger bag.
I also aspire to drive a Porsche and surf like Kelly Slater. Maybe next week :-).
…aaaaand I just ordered four of them. I’m hoping someone wants to stay hydrated this Christmas.
Now let’s see… http://www.porsche.com…
Let us know when you order the new Porsche. We’ll need photos.
Seriously- let me know how the Klean Kanteen works for you. It’ll be interesting to find out if and how it’s really superior to the no-name brand (Like my son uses, and it won’t stand up straight any more ’cause the bottom is bowed out).
Will do on both reports :-).
Re: the bowed out bottle, I “solved” this issue with a rubber mallet and a soft surface (mattress) to rest the inverted bottle on. It’s a kludge yes, and now the bottom is dented like a steelpan, but at least it stands again.
I haven’t malleted my son’s steel bottle yet, but I’m eyeballing it. Thanks for the tip about resting it on a mattress.
Right! Finished torture-testing my Klean Kanteen. What follows is my review (as threatened above).
I got the 27oz loop cap version that fits in a bike cage, because someday, I will again own a working bicycle.
Without much further ado, a brief history of metal water bottles in my life.
My first was a donated Sigg, which was unfortunately aluminum, lined with a maybe BPA-impregnated plastic substance. It was lighter than subsequent stainless steel bottles I’ve owned, but not as durable. In point of fact, after maybe 10 months as emergency yoga hydration, it showed much flaking of the external paint due to repeated dents and it eventually developed a crack, not unlike a mistreated Coke can, and had to be discarded.
The second bottle (which I’ve referred to in a post above) was clearcoated stainless steel, unbranded (unless you count a deceptive “Property of Mom” decal as branding) and not so tough. It dented easily during rough-and-tumble gym bag transport (but has not yet cracked). I should point out that I believe it is plastic coated on the inside as well. In it’s defense, it’s the closest I’ve tasted to the drinking-from-the-garden-hose experience.
Now on to the Klean Kanteen. Easy enough to describe its merits; wide mouth for the easy application of ice (not that I ever did this, preferring tropical-room-temperature water to the cold kind), wide threads for the loop cap (more on this later), tougher steel and it’s all steel except for the BPA-free cap and its silicone seal.
The caveat with that wide mouth is that it makes drinking tricky as a mobile endeavour. With the previous bottles, taking a swig whilst driving is easy because your mouth fits around the entire opening, ergo no spills. Wide mouthed bottles, however, require that the drinker tip the bottle carefully to avoid soaking the Armani tie and the Lacoste silk chemise (whilst driving the also imaginary Porsche mentioned in a previous post). The road had better be excellent and one’s fellow drivers perfectly predictable for this to be practical however, so I often turned up for Fortune 500 meetings somewhat wetter that necessary. I suppose this is what the sport cap is for, but the Klean people explicitly state that the sport cap is NOT leakproof (which is why I chose the twist-to-open loop cap), so it’s either the while-you’re-wearing-it bespoke tailoring or the expensive electronics in the gym bag that will get soaked. Choices choices.
The value of large and (thankfully) few threads do make it much easier to remove the cap. This is very helpful while drinking and driving (don’t try this at home kids, not that your home has a two-lane expressway anyway, so what the hell, go ahead but don’t blame me for the death and dismemberment). Hydratus genericus above requires a full seven revolutions to remove the cap, while the Klean needs only three full turns. The Sigg was somewhere in between, if I remember correctly, but fewer turns is demonstrably better.
One other downside with the Klean’s particular design may be that the edge of the bottle (where one’s mouth touches) is a rolled-under affair that leaves a small open gap on the outside of the bottle’s lip where germs might take up residence if not cleaned regularly, presumably with a fine-bristled brush (and/or my favourite, boiling water).
In addition, I’ve always wondered why most such bottles (including all I’ve ever owned) leave said edge where one’s mouth touches exposed to the gym-bag and mud-splash elements. Do they expect that most people will take out a subscription to ZipLoc or Glad (as I have in the past) to ensure the bottle is carefully sheathed every time we head out? I submit that we will not. Maybe it’s a survival of the fittest thing, weeding out the fools and/or those with weak immune systems. (The only bottle I’ve seen that defeated this natural selection process had a sippy valve under a flip-top cap. I expect they’ve been bought out by the Neo-Darwinian world order.)
In an unusually thorough move, I read the Klean’s included literature and learned that one is NOT supposed to use it for hot liquids, though I get the impression that this is simply lawsuit-prevention, as grabbing uninsulated boiling hot steel may cause… discomfort. Fascinatingly however, one is also not supposed to freeze the bottle under any circumstances, as this will damage the metal. Presumably snowboarders need not apply.
In conclusion, I like the product, but I await a resolution to the sport cap debacle. Apparently, they’ve solved the issue of adequate liquid flow whilst drinking from an incompressible canister, but they haven’t managed to make it watertight when closed, nor foreign-gunk-resistant, otherwise, that would represent the ideal handheld hydration solution, from my perspective at least.
Thank you and happy, hydrated holidays!
Awesome! Truly Useful!
Won, can I copy this out of the comments section and turn it into a Product Review in it’s own right?
By all means, Greg, have at it.
One addendum I forgot to include was to address your issue with the cross-threading in your experience with metal bottles. Not an issue with the Klean Kanteen. Yea verily I say unto you ’tis well nigh impossible with these thick square-profile threads. I’d like to see even a hyperactive, accident-prone child manage it, that would be some trick indeed.
BTW, feel free to edit it as you see fit. Some parts work contextually in relation to the previous posts on this page, but might not so much as a standalone article.
Oh, yeah, please omit/correct any typos you find 🙂
Case in point, in paragraph 5: “…In it’s defense, it’s the closest I’ve tasted …” Should be its.
I’m backing away from the keyboard now…
I’ll be as conscientious an editor as I can… and link back to the contextual material.