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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

A Little Thing That Means A Lot


At the end of last year when I was outfitting my new mountain bike with the accessories it needed, I bought a bottle cage from Elite: the Vico, renowned for its lightweight construction and its firm hold. It looked great on the bike, but my very first ride convinced me that it was the wrong cage for that application. The Vico’s hold was far too firm. I could barely extract my water bottle in the parking lot, much less while bouncing around on singletrack. So, I replaced the Vico with an old aluminum cage that doesn’t pretend to have any of the Vico’s carbon fiber, designed in Italy, sexy charm. It just works.

In July when the Framed Gravier arrived, I tried again to find a home for the Vico. Again I was frustrated. I was literally forced to stop pedaling while extracting or inserting the bottle, that’s how much concentration it required. And I’m talking about roads and recreation trails now, not mountain bike trails. I expect to use my bottle cages without looking. The Vico wouldn’t allow it. I had to be so deliberate that my average speed was suffering because of my bottle cage!

The Vico works better with some of my bottles than with others, and I’ve heard it works exceptionally well with Elite’s own line. But I have plenty of bottles already. I would sooner give up on the Vico than replace all of my existing bottles to accommodate it.

Deciding that the experiment with the Gravier was a failure, I demoted the Vico all the way down to the spare parts bin. Ouch! That’s no place for a barely-used carbon cage, but there’s no other place for it right now. My road bike has stainless steel cages that work beautifully. My cyclocross bike doesn’t need bottle cages; they get in the way when I need to run with the bike on my shoulder. The Gravier got a pair of these:


Elite’s Cannibal cage has a much more forgiving design. It’s even marketed as a cage that works well with smaller frames, as extraction and insertion don’t have to be perfectly straight. Frame clearance isn’t an issue with my 56cm Gravier, but I’m enjoying these new cages nonetheless. Once again I can grab a bottle without taking my eyes off the road. The hold is firm but not excessively so. Nothing less than a crash should cause me to lose a bottle.

It’s remarkable how much this one piece of equipment was throwing me off. There are no unimportant parts on a bicycle. And the more you ride, the less you can put up with something that isn’t working to your complete satisfaction.

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