| |
| Our Learning Curve -
introduction to a very different bike |
|
|
 |
A lot happened between
these two pictures! The one on the left was
shortly after getting our bike. The one on the
right was a few years, and a few thousand miles later, crossing the finish line of
a 100 mile ride called
Reach The Beach.
Among other things, in the second picture we'd lost 60 pounds between
us! |
 |
|
|
|
|
This is our story... |
|
Every time we ride our bike,
we attract attention. Many times we have
had people say that they would love to try it
out. We tactfully tell them that there is
a learning curve involved! It is a major
transition to go from an upright bike to a
recumbent. It is also a big transition to
move from a single to a tandem. I am very
grateful to my friend Rod who loaned me his
recumbent single bike (right) for a month so I could
give it a real trial. I put 75 miles on it
during that time. It took me nearly that long
to get used to the uniqueness of a recumbent.
|
 |
By the time I had ridden
the single recumbent 30 miles or so, I was
already hooked. It was about that time
that we decided to take a test ride on a tandem
recumbent. Rod told me that any time I
wanted to look seriously at recumbents to visit Coventry
Cycle Works in Portland. They are a
great bunch of folks that will work with
you to find just the perfect bike and
accessories for you. In fact they
encourage you to test ride each bike you are
considering to make sure it really is the right
one.
On our first visit to Coventry we got to know
Heinz, one of their bike experts. He was
really great with us. Since I had limited
recumbent experience, and neither of us had any
tandem experience, Heinz took his time to give
us some much needed instruction. When we
headed out of the shop, he got on the front of
the tandem and put Michelle on the back.
He wanted to give her a good introduction to
tandem riding. I followed on a cool new
single recumbent. After they had ridden
around for a while through the local
neighborhood, they stopped and let me try the
tandem by myself to get a feel for it.
Then the time finally came -- Michelle and I
gave it a go for the first time! Heinz
headed back to the shop on the single bike.
When we started out, we were more than a little
shaky! At one point we were heading up one
old narrow neighborhood street. We had decided
to make a right turn but just before we
reached that street we noticed a truck coming
the other way. |
 |
We quickly said,
"Forget that, let's go straight."
Then we noticed we were approaching a major
street. "The parking lot, we'll head for
that parking lot," we said. We made a
careful, slow, unsteady U-turn and headed back
the way we came. But even though we felt
like we didn't know what we were doing, we
instantly fell in love with it! We had
never ridden a bike that was sooooo much
fun!!! We were laughing like a couple of
kids. A couple weeks later we came back
and took it for another ride. This time we
felt a bit more comfortable. |
|
We came
back to buy the bike a week later. I don't
know if we were bold, brave or crazy, but the
day we picked up the bike we had my Dad drop us
off and we rode it home. Now I should say
that we lived 22 miles away! Oh yes, in
addition to still being very inexperienced on
the bike, we had clipless pedals installed.
We had never used them before. We only
fell over once. We were almost home, and
were approaching a traffic light. I
unclipped as we got near the intersection and
gave one more gentle pedal stroke before coming
to a complete stop. We fell right over.
Without my knowledge, my shoes inadvertently
clipped back in! As soon as we knew that
we were both okay, we quickly jumped back on the
bike before the light turned green. We
felt like Artie Johnson when he would fall over
while riding the trike on "Laugh In."
We've had many good laughs about that! I'm
sure the people in the car behind us at the
light had a few laughs at our expense as well. |
|
Teamwork... |
|
|
A big part of tandem riding
is communication. You have two people
working as a team and you have to talk if you
are to be effective. A tandem is NOT a
pilot and a passenger, it is a pilot and
co-pilot! The "captain" (front rider)
obviously does the steering, breaking and
shifting. The "stoker" (back rider) shares
equally in the pedaling, plus a lot more.
When riding on the street, especially at
intersections the stoker is a second valuable
set of eyes checking traffic. As any bike
rider knows, signaling is key to communicating
your intentions to the cars around you.
Taking a hand off the handlebars to signal while
you are turning, breaking
and downshifting can be challenging and unsafe. |
 |
| On a tandem the captain can simply call out
"left turn" and the stoker can give a nice clear
signal while the captain is busy controlling the
bike. Especially at first the captain must
verbally communicate everything to the stoker.
Since the stoker can't read the mind of the
captain, simple things must be talked about,
even such things as "coasting." If the
stoker is pedaling hard it would be important
for them to know that the captain wants to
coast! Much of this communication becomes
non-verbal the more you ride together. The
stoker becomes aware of subtle changes in
pedaling and makes adjustments. They also
get used to the riding style of the captain and
know pretty well what to expect in certain
situations. It truly is a learning process
for both parties, and a whole lot of fun!
I think we had close to 200 miles logged on our
bike before we felt completely comfortable and
"at one with the bike." Of
course as time and miles have gone by, we have
continued to improve as a team. We now
have almost 10,000 miles on our bike! |
| |
 |
So what do we recommend?
If a tandem recumbent bike interests
you, but you have never ridden either a
tandem or recumbent, we would suggest
that you do (ride both that is)! Both are very
different from a single upright, and
gaining at least some experience on each would
be helpful. Logging miles on a recumbent
(say, 50) will give you an understanding of the
major differences with this type of
bike. Time on a tandem (even a
single speed "beach cruiser") will
give you an idea of how the two of you
need to work together and communicate.
Having that experience will make your
first ride on a tandem recumbent go
much
smoother! But even so, it will
take a while until you will be
completely comfortable.
You may also find these pages to be
helpful:
Recumbent vs.
Upright,
Tandem vs. Single, and
Finding "Your
Thing" (our ongoing learning curve). |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
