water bottles with lids?

[Wayne J]

I read some older PBP posts speculating that water bottle spouts could
have become contaminated by fertilizer. Can anyone reccomend a good
quality bottle with a flip top lid? Rivendell has an aluminum one,
but I'd prefer a good plastic.

Thanks

[Metin Uz]

Nalgene makes nice bottles with a flip top. I have bought some at REI and at North Face. You want to search "Nalgene All Terrain Bottle", there are several online vendors.

[Mark W]

"fertilizer" is a very kind word for what splashed up onto my bottles....this is farm country. I didn't get sick though others did.

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[Mark Wolff]

Got fenders?

MW

[Wayne J]

I do have fenders, and maybe also a case of paranoia. But if a bottle
with a lid works fine for drinking, I will probably use it for the
safety factor. I ordered a couple of the Nalgenes on ebay.

To somewhat expand the conversation, has anyone used Cipro (a powerful
antibiotic) to battle food poisoning on a brevet? (Not as a
preventative, but as an attempt to get over it fast enough to be able
to continue.) Travelers to exotic countries sometimes carry Cipro for
that purpose. Seems like a long shot, but worth asking.

any other stomache cures to consider?

[Donald Perley]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Wayne J <wjac...@omm.com> wrote:

> To somewhat expand the conversation, has anyone used Cipro (a powerful
> antibiotic) to battle food poisoning on a brevet?  (Not as a
> preventative, but as an attempt to get over it fast enough to be able
> to continue.)

Have you read the side effects? Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting... It
will kill the good germs in your gut along with the bad. Worth it if
you've got something worse going on (anthrax, pneumonia, meningitis)

[Wayne J]

More info re the Cipro treatment on this page (scroll to near the
bottom for antibiotic treatment): http://www.travelclinicoregon.com/DiarrheaTreatment.htm

--Wayne

[li...@jkassen.org]

> For normal stomach ailments, prevention is probably the best course.
> Don't eat foods you haven't tried before, and don't overdo your
> efforts. Keep your food intake on the low side - you can recover from
> a bonk much quicker than from an overloaded stomach that starts
> rejecting its contents.

Don't eat foods you haven't tried before?!? That's half the reason to go to PBP! I only wish I had easy access to
delicious bread and pastries in every town and tasty hot food in every control. Why can't RUSA rides be so accommodating!?!

Joking aside, I know a lot of people who feel much better *after* they have rejected the contents of their stomachs.
Their solution to a sour stomach is get that food out ASAP. Thankfully at PBP most controls are stocked with a wide
range of foods (meats, vegetables, soups, etc) so you're likely to find something which is suitable to your condition.

Jake

[littlecirclesvt.com :: mike beganyi]

Jake, you might want to make it to our cafe cruise poulaire... We
might have a date in August or September. 2 maybe 3 local, really good
cafes with bread, pastry, breakfast, lunch stuff crammed into 100k.
Plus a funky general store stop....


And on our 300k we stopped halfway at a liquor 'inconvenient' store
with handmade sandwiches...

True, it probably doesn't compare to France, but I encourage going
for the RCP award on every ride... (Randonneur Cafe Patisserie)

[Mark Wooldridge]

I have fenders now, but not in 2007. They weren't needed in '99 or '03...I plan on using them in August.

Mark W

[DistanceBiker.com]

Another shameless plug for the Nalgene spoken of below.

http://www.distancebiker.com/store/index.php/hydration/bike-bottles/h1174.html

Free shipping for RUSA member for >$50 orders.

R. Stum

Distance Biker (formerly B&B Gear)

Gear for Endurance Roadies, Randonneurs & Ultracyclists

http://www.DistanceBiker.com

Nalgene makes nice bottles with a flip top. I have bought some at REI and at North Face. You want to search "Nalgene All Terrain Bottle", there are several online vendors.

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[Alan Walker]

>
> In 2003, it rained for a week before the start. The forecast was bleak. The morning of the ride, I was in Saint-Quentin and saw
> many cyclists with sad looks on their faces and brown stripes up their backs. I returned to my friend's house and extended our
> front fender with a piece of milk jug, just in case.
>

You might have this mixed up with a different year. In 2003, I spent the week prior to PBP in Paris. The weather was hot.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canicule_europ%C3%A9enne_de_2003

http://france.meteofrance.com/france/actu/bilan/archives/2003/canicule?page_id=10035

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16830967

Fortunately, the weather cooled in the nick of time.

But getting back to water bottles ... Carry two bottles. Squirt from one bottle to rinse the top of the other. Carry disinfected
baby wipes. I dunno, even with fenders/mudguards, you could get spray from an adjacent rider.

As for calling it "fertiliser", I thought the original poster was talking about super phosphate or lime or gypsum and I couldn't see
why it would make anyone sick. If you are worried about semi-liquid cow poop on the road, why not say so?

[Erik Nilsson]

If I were going to switch for PBP to a new water bottle type at this
point, I'd test it out on at least one long ride first.

You can also probably reduce risk by squirting a little of the
contents out of the bottle before you squirt into your mouth. But I
don't know if any of these approaches make much difference. If the
nipple of the bottle is contaminated, then the whole bottle is
contaminated, and so soon will be your hands and everything you touch,
including food you put in your mouth and your eyes, nose and mouth.
The one thing that might make a difference is a fender.

I used to mountain bike a lot in wet weather on trails heavily used by
horses, and never got sick. But I have been hospitalized in France for
food poisoning. French cuisine is excellent, but food handling
practices and enforcement are not world-leading. Probably, undercooked
meat and food contaminated with raw meat (particularly chicken) during
preparation are greater risks than pommes de piste and similar
manures.

You can get campylobacter from either food or manure, and that's
probably the biggest risk. (Warning: I am not a doctor.) The good news
is that symptoms for campy usually take 2 or more days to show up, so
if you haven't poisoned yourself by Brest, you're probably good for
the rest of the ride. My biggest contamination worry is actually the
3-5 days before the ride even starts, when I'm going to be eating well
in Paris.

OTOH, my experience with French medical care was efficient and
excellent. Just keep your passport, your phrasebook, and a small
amount of cash with you. They need to know who you are to treat you.
Many French doctors even in Paris don't speak English. Unless you are
a French national, you will have to pay cash for services and
medication (after treatment). No, they will not bill your American
insurance for you. But my recollection is, the cash fee for an a ER
visit is about what it costs to see a movie.

[WillemJ]

You are not going to some underdeveloped country. Remember, life
expectancy in France is some 2-3 years longer than in the USA.
Willem

[Erik Nilsson]

WillemJ - The difference in life expectancy between France and the US
has little to do with infectious disease in adults.

And there's plenty of food-borne and other infectious disease illness
in the developed world. My understanding is that raw chicken is quite
often contaminated with campylobacter in both the US and France.
(Cooking kills it.) A number of people in Germany just died from food
poisoning. My travels to Africa, Turkey, Thailand, Malasia, and other
developing countries have never resulted in serious stomach upset. The
places I've been sick enough where it would have kept me from riding?
Paris, Tokyo, and Dallas. Food and water in these three places are
generally safe, but in all three cases it was my first visit to the
place, so I was unfamiliar with the local, um, culture. OTOH, I know a
person who became quite unpleasantly ill on her first trip from
Vancouver BC to Seattle, where I live.

[WillemJ]

Of course I know that these differences in life expectancy have
different causes, and that was meant to be implicit in what I said.
What I objected to was the idea that the risk was somehow greater
because this was France. That seems unsustainable, and distracts from
the real problems. There is a risk, of course, and as others
indicated, people do well to use fenders and mudflaps. Even so, I will
always use a bottle with a lid (a Sigg bottle with a spout that is
copered by a lid) for the bottle underneath the down tube. I don't use
a bottle with a lid on the seat tube bottle or on the bottle on top of
the downtube. Perhaps I should. I am not in favour of self medication
with antibiotics (it is also illegal in most European countries). The
dangers of the proliferation of multiresistent strains are simply too
great.
Anyway, enjoy the food (indeed avoid raw chicken), and enjoy your
ride.
Willem

On Jun 20, 10:52 pm, Erik Nilsson <erik.nilsson.poph...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Wayne J]

Following up on this icky little topic.

The Nalgene flip-top bottles work fine for me. When the lid is
closed, the spout is sealed. The lid flips open with a flick of the
thumb. The spout is still sealed at that point. It takes a gentle
pull with the teeth to open the spout. When the lid is closed, the
spout reseals.

I like the soft, rubbery spouts on Camelback Podium bottles. The
Nalgene spout is hard plastic. Not a big deal.

The Nalgene bottle is not insulated. However, the top worked fine
with a Polar insulated bottle. The top did not work fine with a
Camelback insulated bottle (it could not be screwed down tightly and
therefore it leaked).

While the flip-top probably is not a necessity, it doesn't have any
serious drawbacks, so I'm going to use it at PBP. It will also be
nice for riding a mountain bike on a dirt trail.

--Wayne

[thirty-six]

Try Rubbermaid's chug bottles.  I will carry two in a handlebar bag as the US quart size (there's a smaller one) is a little heavy to be hauling up and down over rough ground.  Using a bag though, really is your answer.  Standard drink is 60ml of glucose (dextrose monohydrate)  1/8 teaspoon of low sodium salt (sodium chloride and potassium chloride) and 1/16 to 1/8 tsp Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) all added to a lowish mineral content water from a known quality source.  I just shake it all up in the quart bottle with a 1/4 of the water before topping up.  This mix seems to reduce my requirements to otherwise consume vast quantities of water during exercise in hot weather.

[thirty-six]

On Thursday, 16 June 2011 19:44:58 UTC+1, Wayne J wrote:

any other stomache cures to consider?

Whisky to stop cramping, instantly.