Wet and Wild: Sucking Water From A Tube

I believe in trying new things.

Just kidding!

No, I hate new things.  I think they're evil and wrong--especially when it comes to bikes.  That's why back in the 19th century you never would have seen me on one of these:

I know it's hard to see, but that's only because I refuse to try new things, such as trying to learn how to take quality photographs.  Still, because I love you, I'll go into the magic box I'm now typing on and see if I can make it clearer:

Well, that's a little better I guess, but if it's still not good enough for you please click here.  (And if you're mad about the lack of a "NSFW" warning on that last link click here.)

Anyway, the point is this is a "ratchet drive" bike, and unlike the pennyfarthing with which we're all familiar, the small wheel is in the front.  Here's a close-up of the pedals:

I'm sure some early Fred read about this in "Velocipeding" magazine and spent a fortune on it, at which point he was roundly mocked by the proto-roadies and early weight-weenies because the set-up was so much heavier than a direct drive:

"Ahoy-hoy there Frederick, are you coming or going?," they'd ask derisively as they passed him.

Then would come the Retrogrouch who thought they were all a bunch of consumerist dupes:

Early Retrogrouch had good reason to be cranky, considering the pounding taken by his scranus.

By the way, if you're wondering where I saw these heaps, I was out in the "country" with the family this past weekend and we went to this museum-type place.  They also had a shitload of old cars--which, truth be told, I thought were way cooler than the old bikes.  Sorry, but they were.  I'm sure the people driving those cars ran poor ratchet-drive Frederick off the road with an "a-ROOO-gah" from their old-timey horns, but now that we're past that and bicyclists and drivers share the road without a trace of acrimony we can all look back and laugh about it.

Speaking of trying new things, despite my aversion to this sort of behavior I actually did something this past weekend I swore I'd never do, which is wearing a hydration pack:

Like most people who won't try new things (not that hydration packs are even remotely new, but they're new for me), I didn't have a good reason for refusing to wear one.  Really, my entire objection was that a backpack with tubes sticking out of it looks really dorky, and if I didn't know better I'd think all those people wearing them were scampering off into the woods to administer enemas to one another.  Plus, old-fashioned bottles always worked fine for me.  (For drinking, that is.  I never tried to administer an enema with one.)

However, as time passed, I started to understand the appeal of the hydration pack for the pursuit of off-road bicycle-cycling.  Firstly, it's fine stuffing your dainty little things into your dainty little pockets when you're riding your dainty little road bike, but having a jersey full of crap is a lot more annoying when you're riding your bike over logs and stuff and your full pockets are slapping you in the tramp stamp area, so a snug-fitting backpack can be nice.  Secondly, bottles get all dirty*, so if you're carrying a snug-fitting backpack why not be able to drink out of it too?  Most importantly, as I get older regularity becomes an increasing concern, so I never know when I'm going to want to "drop shammy" and give myself an enema.

*[Another reason people cite for wearing a hydration pack is that bottles can fall out of cages and can be difficult to drink from on rough terrain, but I would argue that if your bottles are falling out then your cages suck, and if you can't drink from a bottle on rough terrain then you suck.  And as for using a hydration pack because your full-suspension long-travel all-mountain enduro-gravity-whatever bike doesn't accomodate bottle cages, we're not talking about that stuff so go away and take your full-face helmet and your ugly long-sleeve Monster Energy Drink jersey with you.]

So I'd been thinking I should probably suck it up and try a hydration pack already, and by pure coincidence former advertiser Jetflow asked if I wanted to try one of theirs.  So I said yes, they sent me one called the "Tomahawk" (racist!), and I threw it on this past weekend.

Basically, the deal with the Jetflow is that it doesn't use a bladder.  Instead, you just screw a regular bottle in there and suck your hydration right out of that:

See how the system looks like a futuristic womb nurturing an alien fetus?

Here's how it looks unsheathed, and it comes with a bunch of different caps so you can attach various types of bottles to it:

It's also got space for your crap:

Which I need now because in addition to my keys and my cellphone and my wallet and my food and my pump and my Travel Yahtzee and my Sunday Times and my reading glasses I now have to carry a fucking EpiPen with me:

I haven't had The Hives since my little roadside incident, but I figure I should always be prepared, and until someone makes an integrated mini pump/EpiPen it's just one more piece of crap to carry.

Anyway, so far I like the convenience and I plan to keep using it for off-road bicycle-cycling.  I also totally would have used this for the Rapha Gentlemen's Race I participated in this past May, partially because you can never have too much food or liquid on a ride like that, but mostly because the sight of a hydration pack would probably make those preening Raphalites plotz.

Oh, and you get it to relinquish its precious liquid by biting and sucking this silicone nipple, which is my one area of concern so far:

As you can see, the head of the nipple started working its way out of the tube, and it would suck to lose that in the middle of the wilderness--or, in my case, the suburbs, where losing my source of hydration could mean riding up to one (1) mile to find a store.  Of course, it could be that I was suckling too aggressively, as in this photograph which was forwarded to me by a reader:

(Now that's a hydration pack.)

Lastly, it's sobering that while I need a special bag with enema hoses just to ride around on some mountain bike trails a few miles from my home, this person appears to be circumnavigating the globe using no special equipment whatsoever:

This bicycle was spotted by a reader in Saratoga Springs, and it gives new meaning to the term "saddlebag:"

That's some serious portaging.