First solo ride

[Veronica]

Usually I ride with my husband on the tandem or I go out with a friend on my mountain bike with slicks (my road bike still hasn't come in.) My friend couldn't ride today and it was gorgeous. I decided to go by myself. It was great - just me and all those cars. I did the same loop three times - about twenty miles total. It's fairly flat with a few rolling hills, but nothing really steep. One section had a nasty headwind though and I swear I never had a tail wind. I hope the projected rain doesn't come tomorrow so I can go out again.

Veronica

[MightyMitre]

Good for you Veronica! Sound like you had a excellent time.

You say you usually ride a tandem - wow - what's that like ? I'd be terrified. I love my boyfriend very much but there's no way you'd get me on a tandem with him. I'm too much of a control freak. I bet you can get up some great speed though.

[Veronica]

The tandem has been great. Thom and I are fairly close in our abilities (he usually says I'm the stronger rider when people ask - I love that man!) What would usually happen when we rode our single bikes is he would take off and get a couple of hundred yards ahead of me, but eventually he would kind of peter out and I'd be ahead of him. He's not really good at moderating himself for the long haul. Heart rate monitors have helped substantially there. For me the heart rate monitor has encouraged me to push myself harder. It's funny how just a couple of beats can make such a difference. But I digress.

I like the tandem because it means we're always together. We have really good communication with each other and that is a must. Most of the time he doesn't even say anything, we're just kind of in sync. You do develop your own set of cues for things. It's also kind of nice to not have to do anything but pedal too. I can open food packages, take Thom's jacket off for him, take pictures and talk to people. In Hawaii I saw these rather uncommon birds because I get to look around. On the flat we can cruise at 15 with no effort. We usually maintain about 18 on flat roads. Sunday we went out with the intent of doing a short intense ride and we averaged about 21 on a flat 34 mile course. Downhill it's a freight train. We have hit 59. Thom gives me a hard time because I trust him implicitly on the bike, but wig out over his driving sometimes. On big climbs - it's a pig. We get passed by singles all the time when we climb Mount Diablo (big hill in the Bay Area. Check out our pictures of it on our website http://tvdyson.home.attbi.com/ )

But for rollers it's awesome because it carries it's speed from the downhills for a long way. It's not for everyone - but we really like it. We took it to Hawaii. We're probably going to bike the Pacific Coast in June. We did that trip about ten years ago with our mountain bikes. This time we'll do it with the tandem. The stoker really does have to relinquish control. But at the same time anything that goes wrong is not your fault.

Veronica