I go through water like a fiend in summertime. This is especially annoying because I can only easily reach the downtube bottle, the seatpost bottle is tough to reach for my stature, so I have to get off the bike every 10 miles or so to switch bottles. Annoying as heck.

However, I sweat like a fiend too, and camelbak's are uncomfortable due to a complete lack of back ventilation. To that end, I experimented around with a new concept; I bought a frame bag and an MSR water bladder and drinking hose:





This works remarkably well in practice so far. There is one caveat that I recently discovered however; last week we had 85 degree weather for the first time since implementing this system, and I found that the water in the drinking tube would warm up exceedingly fast. Not a deal breaker, but I found that this effect caused me to drink more than I intended, because I would drink everything in the tube first to get to the cool refreshing water still in the bladder, leading me to run out of water much sooner than usual (I had only put 48oz in the bladder to keep weight down).

But since the bag holds 5.5x24oz bottles worth, I don't consider this a huge problem; I will simply load it up with more water on warmer days. I will continue to experiment as the summer comes closer.