Simon Phin (Beyond The Break) wrote:

Hi

 

I have enrolled myself on this email trying to get some information about Tandem Cycling.

 

In short my partner and I are tandem surfers ( www.tandemaustralia.com ) and are keen to get into tandem cycling.

 

We saw an ad for KHS tandem bikes in Australian Cyclist but have been unable to find any anywhere to have a look. I have spoken to William at Beach Road Cycles in Melbourne, who was very helpful but was hoping to find something a little closer to home here in Sydney. We live at Allambie on the Northern Beaches.

 

Any direction or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards,

Simon Phin

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Hi Simon, welcome. It is often possible to pick up a tandem on Ebay for a reasonable price. Tandems typically dont get the miles on them that single bikes (half bikes) do so they often are in pretty good condition even though a few years old. You can setup a search so you get emailed when one comes up. I would avoid the "beach cruisers" and anything home made. People on this list have a range of bikes from the cheapest to custom but they all get from A to B OK. Most tandems seem to be built around 26" MTB wheels and wide range gears and have frame designs that allow a wide variety of captain and stoker heights - often they are made with only 1 or 2 frame sizes unlike road singles. Road tandems with 700c wheels are much rarer and I guess usually need to be built to fit a specific captain and stoker. Because tandems can use a lot of MTB components they have become a lot cheaper and even base models seem plenty strong.

Theres a lot could be said about tandem riding but most people agree it mostly comes down to the following:

The stoker makes no mistakes - sometimes quoted as the stoker is always right.

There is an article on the net by Bill McCready with a few pointers ( I think Bill founded Santana Tandems in the US:

http://www.gtgtandems.com/tech/propmethod.html

In my experience kids make fantastic stokers - they are not fazed by anything new, dont try to steer the bike and have complete faith in their parent up the front. Adults on the back have a much more stressful time to start with. There is an incredible feeling of loss of control and you want to steer - its quite scary especially if the captain is new and leans the bike a lot at slow speeds. I think you could put a stoker off for life in about 100 metres if you tried. Stoker stress settles pretty quickly as you learn to be passive and trust the captain - then you can just admire the view - to the sides at least. One way to be a good captain is to be a stoker for a ride or two and you suddenly know how not to scare the stoker witless.

There is something special about tandems that makes people get quite fanatical about them. Maybe its just the speed down those hills :-)

Chris

Ebay tandem that started life as a Specialized Something

PS Have a think about the Tas trip early next year.