Originally Posted by
Iride01
Carry some thing that you can cut the cable with where it runs bare along the downtube. Then you can tie it off on a bottle cage or some where else convenient in the gear that you want.
I saw a variation on that where a rider tied a loop in the cable, and then attached the loop to a bottle cage using a tie wrap. The nice thing was he could ratchet up the tie wrap to put the derailleur in a convenient gear. Of course, you have to carry a tie wrap with you ...