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[octoprof]

Do any of you do this crazy thing? (I will underline that this 45 minute ride would be up a pretty significant hill and little riding on bike paths or bike lanes.) How can you ride in city traffic and listen to podcasts? I can't think of anything more distracting from focusing on the road!

(This is the chief executive of a pretty big technology company. You think he would be smarter? Or that his board will be discouraging him from doing this any more)

Daniel Friedmann, long-time chief executive officer of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., cycles year-round to and from his home in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood to the space-technology company’s Richmond headquarters. He pedals 45 minutes each way on a bike he bought at Costco, listening to podcast lectures on an iPod.

Mr. Friedmann is an idiot. Anyone on a bike listening to an iPod or whatever is just inviting death.

Clearly he's not the brightest. Who buys a bike at Costco?

[capper]

Do any of you do this crazy thing? (I will underline that this 45 minute ride would be up a pretty significant hill and little riding on bike paths or bike lanes.) How can you ride in city traffic and listen to podcasts? I can't think of anything more distracting from focusing on the road!

(This is the chief executive of a pretty big technology company. You think he would be smarter? Or that his board will be discouraging him from doing this any more)

Daniel Friedmann, long-time chief executive officer of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., cycles year-round to and from his home in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood to the space-technology company’s Richmond headquarters. He pedals 45 minutes each way on a bike he bought at Costco, listening to podcast lectures on an iPod.

Mr. Friedmann is an idiot. Anyone on a bike listening to an iPod or whatever is just inviting death.

Clearly he's not the brightest. Who buys a bike at Costco?

Amen, sister. 

[octoprof]

Even the famous can get hit by a motor vehicle while cycling.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/showbiz/hackman-accident/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[johnr]

This morning, I parked my bike next to a classically beautiful, near-mint condition, circa-1980s (?), full campy, lugged framed, Pinarello.  With toe clips!  A thing of beauty.  Ride on brothers and sisters, ride on!

[scampster]

My bike has been in pieces since I arrived, since I don't trust myself to put it back together without missing a piece. Hauling a bike in a bike bag a kilometer isn't particularly easy (the bike bag is awkward) and I don't have a car and the bus routes aren't finely nuanced enough for where I need to go. I also have a very easy 20 minute walk to work, which I enjoy, as I catch up on my NPR podcasts, so I haven't been rushing to get it put back together

Anyway, my house is a row style house and there is a closed off courtyard that is shared by couple of the houses on the row. I do my warm up exercises before I run down there and I noticed two tandem bikes. Today as I was coming in from shopping, two guys had the tandem bike out. Turns out my neighbor is visually impaired and they are part of a group of tandem bike riders (where one person is visually impaired) that go out every weekend and they invited me to come along. They are friends with a bike store owner in town so they are going to call him to see if he can come pick up my bike so it can get put back together.

I think I am actually being recruited to be a set of eyes on a tandem. Has anyone ever done the tandem thing? Front or back? I'd be a little worried about having the safety of another person in my hands.

In the meantime, at least it is incentive to get my bike put back together!

And riding with 8 tandems? I probably wouldn't even have to pedal if I stayed in the draft zone!

[octoprof]

Riding a tandem is a very different experience. Mr. W. and I own a tandem. In fact, we rode away from our wedding reception on it (that outs me to a lot of folks...).

Tandems have their own terminology. The person on the front of a tandem is called the captain. The person on the back is called the stoker. The most important rule in riding a tandem is: The stoker is always right. In other words, if anything goes wrong, it is most certainly not the stoker's fault. 

The stoker only pedals. The stoker has no other function on a tandem. The captain steers, shifts the gears, is in control of balance, and everything else you can think of. Obviously, this requires a lot of trust on the part of both persons. The stoker has to trust that the captain knows what he or she is doing. The captain has to trust that the stoker won't do something unexpected and stupid (even though The stoker is always right it is possible to do a few stupid things) such as jump off, shift their weight mightily (in panic?), or beat the captain about the head or whatever.  The stoker's only task is to pedal.

We know lots of other folks with tandems who ride them much more than we do. Since Mr. W. races, he spends 99% of his time on his half-bike (tandem rider lingo for a one-person-only bike). However, in Octoville, where we last lived, we knew loads of tandem riders, many of whom were married couples and many were not. For example, one couple, who still ride then tandem on very long trips, are about 75 this year. They are amazing.  Another couple are a bit younger but still significantly older than us and the woman (stoker) in that case doesn't ride a regular bike (ever) only the tandem with her husband. I think she has a balance problem and can't ride alone or something. Another two we know are a man and woman who work together but are not romantically involved and they do it for fitness and challenge. We also know several pairs of men who have raced on tandems. In fact, we bought our tandem used (they are expensive!) and our tandem has won some races and set some distance/time records (but not, of course, with us pedaling it!).

Tandems are very heavy, heavier than two bikes, really. Generally, the way they are made, the captain must be taller than the stoker (or not shorter) or at the very least, the captain must be tall enough to fit the size of the bike (and the stoker can be taller but adjust his or her saddle height to fit) because of the angle of the top tube. When we testroad our tandem, for example, which is an older Santana in a "small" size, another couple was there trying it as well. The captain in that couple happened to be very small (shorter than I am!) and the bike was just too big for him. Switching who was captain and who was stoker was not an option for them (even though their heights were about right for that) because he was the best bike handler and most experienced cyclist of the pair and the other one wasn't interested in being captain.

So, if you are riding with a visually impaired person, you will most certainly  be the captain. A visually impaired person can't safely be the captain but they will make a great stoker (who will learn to trust you and won't whine about what you are doing, most likely, since they are used to not seeing where they are going anyhow.

Riding a tandem is fun. It's a very different experience from riding a bike alone. It takes more coordination between the riders and will (as my husband says) "move the relationship between these two riders very rapidly in the direction it was already headed in." Why? Because the key to riding a tandem is communication!  You have two people on one bike. Everyone rides a little differently, prefers the cadence/gear to be higher or lower, etc.

For example, on a tandem, the captain controls the gear, thus, the captain and the stoker have to be constantly communicating about their comfort with the cadence/gear level and find the happy medium that works. This took a bit of time for Mr. W. and I because he is a very high cadence rider (think Lance Armstrong style high speed spinning) and I used to be a masher (think Jan Ullrich riding in a huge gear but not turning it so fast) and we had to figure out how much faster I could bear to spin and how much slower he could tolerate. It's not hard, but it is interesting!

Another interesting thing about tandems is, because of the weight (very heavy bike + two people) climbing hills is a challenge (more so than two people riding alone on separate bikes) but fun. On the other hand, downhills are loads of fun because a tandem, being heavy, can FLY downhill.

We learned from the very beginning that we didn't want to wear our standard bike shoes (we use cliples pedals) because those are hard to walk in since you are walking on the metal cleats. If you have to stop a tandem on an uphill, the captain will put one foot on the ground (to begin with) and if it's cleated, the bike is likely to roll backward because the cleat will not grip the asphalt or concrete.  So, we switched to bike shoes (and clipless pedal types - SPD) where the cleat is recessed up in the shoe and thus the shoe is putting rubber (or whatever shoe soles are made of) on the ground when unclipped and the bike won't roll backward when stopped on an uphill incline (we use bike sandals, but mountain bike type shoes often are made this way as well).  This is MOST important for the captain since he or she is the one balancing the bike and the one who always clips in last and clips out first (assuming clipless pedals and shoes are used, which they generally are).

That's way more info than you wanted, no doubt. But, it's a HUGE service to the visually impaired person who, without a captain and a tandem, cannot safely ride a bike. Ever. We have friends with a blind teenaged son in Cincinnati (a long way from us!) and have been trying to figure out how to get our huge tandem on our little car so we can visit them and take him for a ride.

And, you are right, if you are riding in a tandem group, you can wheel suck and not have to pedal very hard. We used to ride (on our single bikes) with a tandem in a town near Octoville and I always sucked their wheel, except on the downhills when I couldn't keep up (despite being a very heavy, small and fast descender!). It was loads of fun.

[cc_alan]

Reading another thread reminded me why I like cycling to work so much.

Traffic drives me #$%ing crazy. All the little dumb@ss things people do when they drive really annoy me during heavy traffic periods and even though my commute is not far by car, I do have to go through a few areas of heavy traffic.

Except for a few major street-crossings, I'm always moving on my bike and that keeps me very happy. My commute takes me on a bridge that crosses a heavy traffic area and as I ride over it, I usually look down, smile, and think- "suckers". And when I drive, I look up at any cyclists on that bridge and think- "oh, shut it".

The weather has been incredible cooperative this year. I have almost 600 commuting miles since the beginning of the year which is far more than I usually have at this point. Better cold weather gear has helped that stat!

Alan

[octoprof]

Hurray for good weather and proper gear!

[scampster]

Octo, thanks for your thoughts on tandem-ing! I am open to the idea of being captain for a visually impaired person, but I need to settle into this cycling community first. I'm not sure if hand signals and call outs are the same here for group riding, but riding with people on my half-bike (ha!) first should get me used to that. And also get me used to the other side of the road thing. I am definitely in no condition right now to be in charge of someone's safety on a road as I routinely have close calls because I forget which way the cars are coming from!

[prof_smartypants]

The Ronde (Tour de Flanders) is on right now on NBC universal sports.

[octoprof]

Octo, thanks for your thoughts on tandem-ing! I am open to the idea of being captain for a visually impaired person, but I need to settle into this cycling community first. I'm not sure if hand signals and call outs are the same here for group riding, but riding with people on my half-bike (ha!) first should get me used to that. And also get me used to the other side of the road thing. I am definitely in no condition right now to be in charge of someone's safety on a road as I routinely have close calls because I forget which way the cars are coming from!

Having lived I three different places after becoming a cyclist, I'd agree that sorting out local group cycling customs first is a good idea. When you are ready to try it, ride a tandem alone first.

That driving on the left thing is really annoying!

[johnr]

We learned from the very beginning that we didn't want to wear our standard bike shoes (we use cliples pedals) because those are hard to walk in since you are walking on the metal cleats. If you have to stop a tandem on an uphill, the captain will put one foot on the ground (to begin with) and if it's cleated, the bike is likely to roll backward because the cleat will not grip the asphalt or concrete.  So, we switched to bike shoes (and clipless pedal types - SPD) where the cleat is recessed up in the shoe and thus the shoe is putting rubber (or whatever shoe soles are made of) on the ground when unclipped and the bike won't roll backward when stopped on an uphill incline (we use bike sandals, but mountain bike type shoes often are made this way as well).  This is MOST important for the captain since he or she is the one balancing the bike and the one who always clips in last and clips out first (assuming clipless pedals and shoes are used, which they generally are).

It's interesting that you should mention this, because this came up just the other day during a mountain bike ride. I've seen many people have problems with walking their bike uphill, or, more commonly, down steep trails, because of this very reason (slippery cleats and bike shoes).  Their bikes gets away from them and they can't stop them....until I point out to them the obvious,  the brakes still work when they aren't on the bike!  I must have taught this "trick" to fifty cyclists over the years. Keeping pressure on the brake lever while dismounting uphill, or while walking the bike downhill, is the key. Of course, it doesn't work so well if you have coaster brakes!  It's seems so obvious, but many don't think to do it. 

[octoprof]

We learned from the very beginning that we didn't want to wear our standard bike shoes (we use cliples pedals) because those are hard to walk in since you are walking on the metal cleats. If you have to stop a tandem on an uphill, the captain will put one foot on the ground (to begin with) and if it's cleated, the bike is likely to roll backward because the cleat will not grip the asphalt or concrete.  So, we switched to bike shoes (and clipless pedal types - SPD) where the cleat is recessed up in the shoe and thus the shoe is putting rubber (or whatever shoe soles are made of) on the ground when unclipped and the bike won't roll backward when stopped on an uphill incline (we use bike sandals, but mountain bike type shoes often are made this way as well).  This is MOST important for the captain since he or she is the one balancing the bike and the one who always clips in last and clips out first (assuming clipless pedals and shoes are used, which they generally are).

It's interesting that you should mention this, because this came up just the other day during a mountain bike ride. I've seen many people have problems with walking their bike uphill, or, more commonly, down steep trails, because of this very reason (slippery cleats and bike shoes).  Their bikes gets away from them and they can't stop them....until I point out to them the obvious,  the brakes still work when they aren't on the bike!  I must have taught this "trick" to fifty cyclists over the years. Keeping pressure on the brake lever while dismounting uphill, or while walking the bike downhill, is the key. Of course, it doesn't work so well if you have coaster brakes!  It's seems so obvious, but many don't think to do it. 

So right! I think it's just the shock of rolling backwards when it never happens on the road bike. It was pretty funny. On a road bike stopping, then putting a foot down, your hands are free... Not so much on a tandem.

[scampster]

Well fortunately the only bike shoes I brought with me are my recessed SPD Keen sandals. Since I only brought my commuting bike* with fenders and the rack, I figured I wasn't going to be breaking any speed records anyway!

*It's still a road bike and I have done two double centuries on it, so it gets the job done, if not in the speediest of manner.

[wegie]

That driving on the left thing is really annoying!

Philistine ;-)