We finally broke down yesterday and purchased our first tandem bicycle. It is a road bike style, a Trek 2000, with 700x28c tires, mostly Ultegra/XT components. I spent some time yesterday putting on some water bottle cages and swapping clipless pedals around so we could give it a spin. We first went for a 3 mile run this morning and after being home awhile we headed out on our first real tandem ride.

We had been on a tandem 3 times before but those were just test drives, no more than about 10-15 minutes, so I thought of this as our first real tandem ride.

We headed out to do the reservoir loop and by the time we reached Croy Canyon we felt comfortable enough to give that a shot. Climbing was no problem except we have yet to figure out how to best stand up on a tandem. .

We took the decent back down easy because it is not like handling a single bike, but even then we went faster than Ann usually goes down Croy. We then continued around the reservoir and went over Willow Springs, then into Morgan Hill for a sandwich. It was then back home on Santa Teresa where we were able to get the speeds up to about 25 mph on the flats.

We purchased a drum brake to be installed but they were out of stock so we will take the tandem back to have it installed. Braking was okay with just the caliper brakes, but then Ann and I together only weigh about 245 lbs, not much more than some individual cyclists I know. The tandem weighs 35 lbs, so not much different than two single bikes.

We both enjoyed the ride but we are still in the learning phase and I found it much more of an effort to control and corner than a single bike. We are learning to start better but we still try to avoid stopping if we can. We might take the tandem to Utah with us. It fits nicely in our Odyssey Van, right between the two seats in the second row.

Categories: Cycling
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