Light carbon cages that work!

There are few things worse that going on a ride on some rougher patch of road, having to stop and turn around because your water bottle fell out. You reach down and have to tug real hard to pull the bottle out, or struggle to put the bottle back in because the cage is too tight! There are a few cages that really work well, but many of them are really pigs when it comes to weight.

For those of us that have larger size bikes Performance has a cage that is not only light, but it also holds your bottles firmly without being overly tight. It is their Performance Theta cage. The Performance Theta is about 25 grams per cage and is a mix of carbon and fiberglass.

Do not think that the light weight of this cage makes it less durable. I have been using them for the last two seasons and have yet to break one. Also with regard to holding a bottle securely, I have yet to drop a bottle even on the roughest of Union County roads. If you happen to find it on sale, it is one of the lowest priced, low weight carbon cage options available.

I like these cages so much that we will be using four of them on our new tandem. This is in addition to the two already on my single bike.

Now if you are like Nicole and ride a rather small bike, finding cages that actually allow you to remove your bottles while riding can be a challenge. Usually you are confined to 500 ml bottles and even then they can be a hassle to remove from a smaller frame.

Arundel Cycling to the rescue, they have a pair of cages, the Sideloader and the Other Sideloader that allow bottles to be inserted and removed with a sidewards motion rather than from the top. This allows a frame with little space to have complete access to water bottles even while pedaling. The Arundel Sideloaders are not the lightest cages around, but they are not too heavy either, tipping the scales at 30 grams each. They are a bit more expensive that the Performance Theta’s mentioned above, but that is one of the sacrifices you have to make for having a small frame.

You will notice that there are actually two Sideloaders, the reason is that since they open on the side, if you want to extract your bottles from the same side, you need two cages that are mirror images of themselves. As a matter of fact the Other Sideloader comes in a box where the label is written backwards so you can easily tell them apart without looking.

Sometimes you just need something that works, these are two of the products we have found that simply work. The Performance Theta can be purchased on-line or at any Performance store. The Arundel Sideloaders can be ordered at your local bike shop.