Commuting on a tandem?

[jsdilks]

I'm going to reference my DH's response to a query on another TE thread that is going about our "mini-tour" It's over in Touring and titled Our First Tour - Sort of. There have been questions about the panniers and such, but he's got a good response about how the tandem handles and that kind of thing. I wanted to speak up again about being bikers not only of different heights, but different abilities. As I've said before, I'm not a strong biker, but rather a happy toodler. Communication is really key when you're on a tandem. He lets me know when anything is going to occur, because I can't see to anticipate things - bumps, hills, turns, slowing down, gear shifts - any of it. It's all communicated back to me. We're close enough that I can hear him fine - in all but the windiest weather. And I communicate back to him - if I'm going to poop out on him, he deserves to know ahead of time that he's going to have to pull us up the hill and that my feet are really only virtual reality. And I will second the point that the bike is heavy and slow to get going. But it really zooms on the flats once we get going. We've long since reached the point where we've "used all the gears we have" (I'll pretend I know what that really means) and we may decide to upgrade the bike so that we can do more with the same or less effort. (*that* part I got...) Anyway - enough rambling. Oh - one more thing. There is a tandem forum if you want to read - they are VERY helpful and supportive about ALL things Tandem (for newbies looking to folks looking to upgrade crankshafts and other fancy things) www.bikeforums.net (One of the categories is Tandem Cycling)

[malkin]

Be careful over there at the bikeforums tandem board! There are a bunch of nice folks, but look out for swarms of sharks!

Maybe we need our own tandem place at TE.

We struggled on hills on the tandem, until the captain read about hill climbing here on TE. Start spinning at the bottom and keep spinning. I'm not sure what he was thinking before, but now that he's thinking 'spin' everything is better.

[malkin]

As for riding the tandem without a stoker, of course it's long, heavy, and awkward, but the biggest thing is to be aware that the rear brake is mostly useless, because there's not much weight back there.