I like my water bottle like I like my men: lightweight, and durable.

I’m lying. If that were true, my water bottle would be bearded and tattooed, armed with an acoustic guitar and enough strength to wrestle a gorilla.

This blog post isn’t about my preference in the opposite sex. This blog post is about my relationship with Bobble.

With my upcoming trip to the Dominican Republic, I’ve been working my ass off to get back into my bikini. I’ve even jumped back into group exercise classes at Goodlife – something I haven’t done in years. Last night I propelled myself through Zumba and Body Pump, the sources of my full-body agony this afternoon. I can’t even climb the stairs right now.

And throughout these trials and tribulations of fitness fanaticism, my little Bobble has been there.

The Bobble is all about portable filtration. The people behind the product have an important mission: to change people’s drinking habits by slowing the mass consumption of single-serve water bottles. I’m the sort of person who will drink the tap water in any location – which probably resulted in my intense bout of gastro in Ireland. If I had Bobble, perhaps my week of agony would have been avoided.

According to the Bobble website, “the world consumes more than 200 billion single-serve bottles of water per year.” That’s a lot of plastic.

I was invited to test-drive a Bobble. Initially, I thought it was just the filter: when the Bobble arrived in the mail, the bottle part was so light and flimsy that I thought it was just a sample to hold the filter.

But like all good relationships, first impressions were wrong.

One day, while running on the treadmill, my mp3 player died. Suddenly, all I could hear was the insanely loud rattling of my heavy metal water bottle bouncing around inside the holder. I looked around, horrified that I was causing such a disruption among serious athletes.

Nobody cared, of course. It’s Goodlife. Do people even work out there?

Anyway, that’s when I started bringing my Bobble. I felt like a douchebag, filtering fountain water. But my Bobble and I have launched on this epic fitness journey together, and I’ll see it through to the end, dammit.

Plus we’re a sexy couple.

We’ve become so attached, that I temporarily went into freak-out mode when I thought I had lost my Bobble on the flight to Halifax. After a few minutes of panic, the couple behind me handed over Bobble and said he had fallen from the overhead luggage. Sometimes you don’t realize what you have until it’s lost.

Downside: When you’re sweating like a mofo and need to chug a gallon of water, waiting for it to filter through can be painful. Slow down, you animal.