Tandem Questions-Mimi, Veronica??

[Triskeliongirl]

Hey guys- I know several of you ride tandems in addition to your single bikes, Mimi, Veronica............

Well, I never thought I would consider it, but last night when I brought up to my husband that I thought we should start looking for a new touring bike for him, he suggested we consider a tandem instead. No matter how much faster I get, he gets faster too.... He is a very strong cyclist, one of the strongest men in our club. When we tour together, he periodically waits for me, but says that isn't much fun, that it would be better if we could just share the work and ride continuously. While I thought I wouldn't like the loss of control, he is a very skilled rider, and given that I have been having issues with glucose control lately really riding together does have certain advantages. I know the answer is to test ride, and we do have friends with tandems likely to fit well enough, but with my 3 cm leg length discrepancy I don't think I could ride a bike without my modified crank on it.

What do you guys think about frame material?. I am thinking we'd want s/s couplers which spells steel, but would it be heavy (I don't care but my husband has a need for speed)? What framebuilders/brands do you guys recommend? I was very happy with the work Bilenky did on my s/s retrofit, so we could consider having them build us one. How often to s/s coupled tandems appear used? I saw a lot of tandems on ebay, but not with couplers. Maybe this will be our 25th wedding anniversary gift to ourselves.........As soon to be empty nesters we will have more time for touring, etc.

[mimitabby]

Steel isn't that heavy.

I'm sorry, i'm not going to be able to tell you which brands to buy, but it sounds like you ought to go custom, with your leg length problem and the couplers and all...

We ride an old heavy aluminum Burley (okay, not that old, at least 10 years old)
if you are a control freak, or even someone that likes control really a lot, it could be hard. Do you trust your DH's driving? then you'll trust him on the bike.
What we've learned is that I like to be on the tandem out in the country, but in the city it's much too stressful for me.
We've also learned that the tandem beats HANDS down 2 singles in ANY wind.
It's fun to be able to pat your Dh's butt while you are riding.

[Triskeliongirl]

Thanks Mimi! Oh, and I love steel, I ride my steel bike more than my titanium one, its just DH loves his featherlight carbon trek........... But, it we want s/s couplers I think we have to go with steel since you can't couple the lighter aluminum bikes, and I am not sure my body can take aluminum. I am a control freak but I do trust my husband's driving, and his bike handling skills, so I think I could adjust. It would be more fun than having to ride with my head glued onto his wheel. Sometimes when we try to ride together I end up in tears (and/or injured), he says, 'I am doing all the work, all you have to do is hold my wheel', but he doesn't get how hard that is for me (or maybe he finally does which is why he suggested the tandem). In a way it is admitting defeat, or at least weakness, but maybe it is just the practical conclusion he is and always will be a stronger cyclist than me.

Have you ever tried to travel with an uncoupled tandem bike. Does it fit into a standard sized trico iron case?

One more question. What about wheel sizes? For an S/S coupled bike does it make more sense to get 26" instead of 700c to facilitate packing? I know Veronica's is S/S coupled so maybe she has a better idea.

[Triskeliongirl]

Another naive question. On a tandem, is the peddling coupled, i.e. to we both always have to work at the same cadence? If he pushes hard do I have to also, or if my knees are hurting can I back off a little. He's controlling the gears, so I can't downshift and spin faster like I might if my knees are hurting, or can I?

[mimitabby]

we have 26" wheels and 1.25" tires on our tandem. I LOVE the stability.

I think steel is a good way to go. We have friends who have spent THOUSANDS on ultralight tandems and they have so many problems.
you're hurtling through the air at speeds up to 60mph and you weigh combined about 3-400 pounds (loaded) you don't want to scrimp on structure here.

Good luck finding the bike used. I don't think you can. Unless you get something like what we have.

[Triskeliongirl]

.......you're hurtling through the air at speeds up to 60mph.........


oooh, this part scares me............sounds too dangerous, maybe its not for me. maybe i just have to get stronger on my single bike..............

[mimitabby]

Trisk
WE have never gone faster than 49. You don't have to go that fast.
but you CAN...
I have heard of others going much faster. and I think it's reckless.
The point is, YOU CAN.
and you can easily cruise at 20mph when a single cannot

about him pushing hard while you not.
we do this.
Specifically on hills, when he starts getting tired, I can kind of give him a rest and "supercharge" for a bit.. then he takes over again.
Tandems are great this way.
or you can BOTH give your all for 10 strokes and end up way ahead of everyone.

[SheFly]

Mimi has given you some great advice, and I know that V will chime in as well.

For us, having a tandem is GREAT. My DH is a much stronger rider than I am and always will be. The tandem is the perfect equalizer, and lets us ride together. We started out tandeming on trails (yes, singletrack trails), so trust was a MAJOR issue there, and translated easily to the road when we made our switch.

It did take some getting used to re: pedaling styles. After a number of years, however, I think we finally have figured out a style that works for both of us on the road. There was a company that was making independent linkages (meaning that the captain and stoker could each pedal at their own cadence or coast independently), but I never heard much about them, and it looked like it was complicated and proprietary to me.

We ride aluminum Cannondales (we have one for the road, and one specifically for Time Trials). We really like the ride, but I don't think that this will work for you if you are looking for some customization and/or S&S couplers. One of the couples with whom we ride has an S&S coupled tandem and they have traveled from New England to CA and Europe with it. They love the ride on theirs as well.

As for speed - it's all relative ;) . I'm a bit of a speed junkie, so going fast doesn't worry me, as long as it is safe. We've hit a top speed of 59 mph on ours on a local descent, and I wasn't concerned. At the TT, we can average 28 mph over a 9.75 mile course. Naturally, not everyone is comfortable doing that, but you will definitely be faster on flats and downhills than on a single bike - climbing is another story ;) .

Good luck with your decision! As I said, we love our tandem, and have lots of great adventures together.

SheFly

[SR500]

We bought a Fuji entry level tandem to try it. We really liked riding together, so about a year later we bought a Trek T2000. The Trek is wonderful, full Ultegra, AL frame, fast and beautiful. I've seen S&S couplers, but they are real expensive. My DH rides a Madone, but he really enjoys the tandem. Co-Motion and Santana are big names, but there are many smaller companies making great tandems.

[emily_in_nc]

My DH and I had kind of a different experience with tandems than a lot of others. We have had three tandems over the course of our cycling career. The first, a 26" wheeled Santana Vision (steel), was our "starter tandem". We had it for three years and had a LOT of fun on it, and I even did my first-ever century on it. I was a very weak cyclist at the time, and DH was a very strong one, so it was literally the only way we could ride together. It was normally a joy to ride, and I could get by with my weaker skills since DH could do more of the work. He did find it to be more tiring to ride, though, both because he was doing more of the work than on his single, and because it required a lot of upper-body strength to pilot. The bike was a little on the large size for both of us (a "medium" frame), so we finally traded it in on....

...A 10' Ryan Duplex Recumbent with underseat steering. A blast to ride, but heavy b/c it was so long. It was steel and had S&S couplers. It was a very comfy bike, and we enjoyed it greatly but finally traded it in because we couldn't do u-turns in it, it was SLOW as mud uphill, and we wanted to ride with a bike club. We could FLY downhill but got left behind on every climb, so it wasn't a good "social" bike, and no way to carry much luggage on it either.

A few years ago, when we were both riding single upright bikes again (after a brief stint with single recumbents, which had most of the same issues as the Ryan), we were having the same problems as Triskeliongirl and her DH. I was a fairly decent rider by this point, but my DH was an excellent, faster rider. So riding together was fairly frustrating, and I too sometimes ended up in tears on a ride since I was having to work so hard to keep up at a pace that was "easy" for him. So, we bought a top of the line (at that time), very light, Santana Team AL tandem. We really thought that this bike would be the answer to our riding-together issues.

It was a flop.

By then, I was so used to riding my single and making all the decisions about gears, cadence, slowing down, speeding up, when to stop, etc., that I couldn't handle not being able to see the road in front of me - even though I trusted my DH's piloting abilities completely. It just drove me batty not to be able to see the terrain coming up. And DH was so used to riding his single bike that he'd sometimes forget to call out climbs, descents, and sometimes even turns and slowing. He tried, but he had forgotten how to be a good captain, and I was no longer a good stoker at all (control freak me). DH also really noticed having to bear my weight in his shoulders this time around, maybe because he was older than before. He said his neck and shoulders always bothered him after a tandem ride, so he didn't have nearly as much fun as on his single.

All that said, we did have a few rides when everything was clicking, and we could FLY on that thing -- we even beat some fast men in the club uphill on one memorable ride. Our average speed on it was typically faster than even my DH could do alone, since we had two engines on a light bike (under 30 lbs). But most of the time, we just weren't having that much fun.

The final straw was a slow-speed fall we took in a very, very rare moment when DH misjudged a crack in the road, and all I could do was fall with him in slow-mo. It was a minor incident and our only crash on the bike, but it was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. When we got home that night, we decided to sell the tandem, and we never regretted doing so. We just weren't cut out to be tandem riders - at least any more. I am way too much of a control freak now!

As for touring with one, I know that some couples enjoy it, but thinking of the places we stayed on our loaded NY tour in 2004, some of the hotel/inn rooms would have been more of a challenge to get a tandem into (plus the elevator and stairs we had to go up with our bikes). Another alternative is for you to ride your go-fast bike and have your DH ride a touring bike and carry all the gear. You'd certainly keep up with him then!

Not to be a wet blanket, but a tandem is a big expense, so I just wanted to give the other side of the story. But there is no way to know if you'll like it or not without trying it. Even without your custom crankset, it's possible that you could get some feel for that taking even a short ride.

Emily

[mimitabby]

Emily,
I hear you on the expense!
My husband has grown by leaps and bounds bike wise and he says a lot of it is because captaining the tandem has made him a much stronger rider.

So not everyone has problems because they're captaining.

[singletrackmind]

We've only had tandems for a couple of years now. The first is a trek doubletrack we got on ebay that is too small for me in the back. I don't care what they say, fit matters back there too! It's steel and I can feel it flex as we ride. The hubby says the flex doesn't bother him at all. He's currently using it to tandem with his daughter who loves it....and does not like biking on a single at all. It's not a bad bike, especially for the price.

My tandem is a 2006 aluminum cannondale mtb found on sale, bought for my son and myself, or sometimes the hubby and I with the kiddo in the trailer. I fit both front and back (yay!) and we do singletrack and road riding with it. I like its stiffness and feel, the hubby says "too stiff!". My son LOVES it. The handlebars are hugely wide, but that can be fixed if I ever get around to it.

Being a typical first born I was surprised to find I don't mind my husband as captain at all. Our cadence is a compromise between his fast and my slow one, as long as we communicate it works well. Ha ha, talk about communication....he's STUCK there, listening to me blah blah blah (drink) blah blah blah. :D No matter how fast he goes he can't get away...

My son as stoker is great too. I love to be able to hear his stories, songs, questions, comments.

Neither of our bikes are as fast as some of the nicer road tandems, but they work pretty good for us (and I can mountain bike again!).

Da Vinci is the tandem maker with independent drive (one can coast while the other pedals). You still have the same cadence when pedaling, though. They also, like others, offer coupled bikes.

There's used tandems all over. It's finding the one you want with the features you need that's the tricky part. A lot of research helps. :)

[Veronica]

We have a Santana Arriva with S&S couplers. It's aluminium. We loved it when we first got it. We took it to Hawaii and did a circumnavigation. But it really doesn't fit either of us very well. We'll be selling it. The new tandem is coming, hopefully the end of August.

V.

[emily_in_nc]

Just to add a bit about frame materials to my postings....

Our steel tandems were great, no issues at all.

When we were looking for a go-fast, light tandem, we test rode a Calfee carbon that we thought we would love (scared we would love was more like it, because of the high dollars!), but we hated it. It was very squirrely and noodly, just not stiff enough at all, and we were a light team (DH around 160 and I around 115 at that time, we're both lighter now!) We test rode some steel Santanas, and they were fine, but when we test rode the Team AL (aluminum Santana, and the lightest bike they made at the time), we LOVED the stiffness. I don't like aluminum on a single bike, but on a tandem, it felt very reassuring not to feel any flex at all -- all the power we delivered to the pedals was transferred to the bike. I had a suspension seatpost, so any discomfort was eliminated that way.

So, materials you love in a single (like, say, carbon), may not be as desirable on a tandem, and vice versa. The longer the bike, the stiffer it needs to be, in my opinion.

Emily

[Triskeliongirl]

We have a Santana Arriva with S&S couplers. It's aluminium. We loved it when we first got it. We took it to Hawaii and did a circumnavigation. But it really doesn't fit either of us very well. We'll be selling it. The new tandem is coming, hopefully the end of August.

V.

I didn't know you could build an aluminum bike with s/s couplers. If you are going to be selling it, please PM me the size specs.

[tprevost]

Another naive question. On a tandem, is the peddling coupled, i.e. to we both always have to work at the same cadence? If he pushes hard do I have to also, or if my knees are hurting can I back off a little. He's controlling the gears, so I can't downshift and spin faster like I might if my knees are hurting, or can I?

I just got an aluminum burley on craigslist... it was a great deal... however, DaVinci makes a tandem where you can each pedal at your own cadence. I saw one last weekend and it looked pretty wierd to me but if it helps, I'm sure its nice to have that option.

We haven't even ridden on ours yet... well, SO has ridden it solo to get used to it and we are riding it together tomorrow :eek: I think it'll add another fun dimension to cycling and am now going through our organized ride list to see which ones we can ride on the tandem :D

[mimitabby]

from Raleighdon: "YOu can too buy a used tandem!"

honey:

here's the link I told you about. Maybe share with your forum.

http://www.tandemmag.com/classified/

The magazine site itself is pretty cool, but this is a fantastic resource for used tandems. They will list both for sales and wanteds.

Happy searches, girls!

D

http://www.tandemmag.com/classified/

[tprevost]

from Raleighdon: "YOu can too buy a used tandem!"

honey:

here's the link I told you about. Maybe share with your forum.

http://www.tandemmag.com/classified/

The magazine site itself is pretty cool, but this is a fantastic resource for used tandems. They will list both for sales and wanteds.

Happy searches, girls!

D

http://www.tandemmag.com/classified/

I found mine on craigslist in Salt Lake City... bought it sight unseen and hoped for the best :rolleyes: I was SO happy that it was actually even better than I expected!

Although I'm pretty sure it was also listed on the tandemmag.com site too :D

[salsabike]

And we found ours, a 91 steel Burley Duet, at Recycled Cycles in Seattle for $350. Considered the S&S coupler thing and decided against it for now. We love ours, have done about 5,000 miles on it in the last couple of years.

Here's a link with a bundle of different tandem articles, links, etc.--

http://www.thetandemlink.com/LearningCenter.html#anchor10417632

[SheFly]

We have bought tandems on both craigslist and eBay. Got a great deal on a used tandem for a couple we know who is getting married this fall - could be a good thing, could be a bad thing :D .

SheFly

[singletrackmind]

, DaVinci makes a tandem where you can each pedal at your own cadence.
On a Da Vinci you can coast whilst the other pedals, but when pedaling you maintain the same cadence, when the stoker begins to pedal, they time it so the pedals are in the proper position on the pedal strokes.

The biggest advantage to this that I could see is butt-rests at will, less need to get it together when starting off and lack of knee jerks when the captain forgets to mention a sudden stop or begin in pedaling.

[KnottedYet]

Anybody use those "Tandem Talk" headsets?

We're researching tandems because the person I want to ride with and I just don't have matching paces.

I'd get to be captain, cuz I'm bigger (and bossier!) and can hear. Stoker doesn't hear well, and sign language just ain't gonna happen on the bike. (and I only know a few "universal" signs, anyway... so far.:rolleyes: )

Do the headsets help?

[Triskeliongirl]

I just want to thank everyone who posted for all the great suggestions. This is not going to be something we do overnight. I guess we'll start by borrowing a friend's tandem to see how we do. We are lucky that a really good friend recently bought a tandem to ride with his son/wife that is both light and exactly our size, so if I can figure out how to put my dropped pedal on it we are in business.

[mimitabby]

Knott, some friends of ours have the headsets and have used them for years.
Having said that, i've seen them try to get off the bike before disconnecting and it's messy when they forget.

[emily_in_nc]

I would be very wary of buying a tandem on ebay or craig's list unless you are sure of what size you need in a particular brand. Some of you got lucky, it sounds like. Since a tandem has to fit both of you, it can be even harder to fit than a single, and we all know how important fit is! A tandem is one item I'd be sure to test ride several brands and sizes at a bike shop (one that does a lot of tandem business). Once you do that and know what brand/size you need, and that you don't need to go custom, then ebay/craigslist are certainly options, but I wouldn't neglect that all important trip to the LBS (or several LBSs, since it can be hard to find many tandems in a size that works for both team members). We were lucky that we got to test ride tandems at Mt. Airy Bicycles in Maryland. Larry Black is opinionated, but he knows tandems and carries a bevy of brands and sizes. They are one of if not the biggest tandem (and recumbent) dealer in the east.

Emily

[Jiffer]

I ditto the comments others have made about being able to cycle with DH (and faster groups) and keep up and simply "be together". Men, over all, will always be faster than women. They are simply built stronger. For me, as a newbie, even most women are faster than me. So getting on the tandem gives me a chance to do something with DH and a group where I'm not holding anyone back. DH can get a really good workout and so can I. Or one of us can take it easier if we need to and let the other do more of the work. Tandems are great that way.

It's especially fun if you can hook up with another couple who tandem. We have friends who let us try out their tandem before we got ours. They rode with us on their singles and gave us pointers, which were very helpful. We are now in the midst of trying to suck another couple into our little tandem club! It's a wonderful thing to do with friends and get exercise at the same time.

You definitely have to trust your partner. It's a huge thing with riding tandem. My husband is a very strong rider and, though he freaks me out from time to time, he has never had a crash on his own bike, says he's even way more cautious when I ride with him, and I know I simply have to trust his judgement. Just as with driving a car, he slows down later than I ever would and makes decisions differently than I would, but the more we ride, the more I can anticipate what he's going to do. Communication is also key. The more you ride, the less you need to commnicate, but first, I wanted to know everything he was doing and made sure he knew when I was uncomfortable with something. Like fast speed down a hill. "Scary, scary!", I'd say. "You think we should slow down a bit?!" Being brand new to that kind of speed, it was something to get used to. Since you've already been riding, these things won't be nearly as big of a deal to you. Plus, just so you know, a tandem is much more stable because of it's weight. It's much less likely to crash on a downhill because of a rock or something, because of it's stability.

Tandems seem to be getting more and more popular. Our cycling club used to only have a couple. Now they have quite a few, including the couple who run the whole thing. They are fast and competitive tandem riders.

[Jiffer]

By the way, we have a 2006 Burley Rivazza. It's a medium frame, and of all the brands we considered, it was the closest we could find to fit us both. We're both 5'9" and most tandems are made for a larger pilot and smaller stoker. So, it doesn't "really" fit me nearly as well as it should. We learned just how much so when I got my first single last week. The saddle is like three inches farther away from the handlebars as it is on the tandem.

We are considering moving up to a Zona eventually. You can get those custom made. Not cheap, but from what I understand, SUPER sweet bikes. I don't know if they come any lighter than a Zona. The couple that runs our cycling club has both a Burley and a Zona. They absolutely love their Zona and ride very competetively. They are the one's who encouraged us to get the Burley, though, since it was closer to our price range. Not particularly cheap, either, but a little more affordable.

Burely doesn't make tandems anymore, by the way. 2006 was their last year. So, if you did decide to look for one, it would be used.