I hate cycling. I get terrified by traffic, my starts are wobbly and I can't even ride with one hand off the bars. By contrast, Mark is a great cyclist, covering 50 miles without even worrying.
There has never been a way for us to both go cycling together, so to try and redress this I looked into riding a tandem. As a good tandem is expensive we booked some basic training with http://www.tandeming.co.uk/ and a longer ride on a later date. The tandem was collected from http://www.bicycledoctor.co.uk/ a very friendly bike shop in Rusholme.
After several very wobbly starts we pottered around the park and got our balance. As the 'stoker' my responsibilities were simple. Maintain cadence, don't lean with the bike on corners and don't lean round to try and see where we're going.
We were riding a Landescape tandem, which was surprisingly light and coped with our height difference (6ft 4 to 5ft).
I enjoyed riding the tandem, as it was all the 'fun' of cycling that people talk about, without the wobbles, steering issues and the fear of traffic. Unfortunately Mark found that riding a tandem took away all the good things in cycling for him, he had to keep me informed about what was happening in front, he found the bike cumbersome to manoever and the bike felt slow to him.
Riding tandem also feels slightly ridiculous, dogs think tandems are a work of satan, people actually laugh and in one memorable moment we shocked a small child out of a tantrum.
I'd ride one again though, and I recommend renting one first to find out if it's for you.
If you want smooth starts, I've got a handy hint. Normally they talk about it being important to both push hard on the pedal to get the bike going ( for our riding it was the right pedal we started with), but to get a smooth start the stoker needs to not press the right pedal so hard, but to put a lot of welly into the left pedal, to keep the bike going while the driver gets on.
2 comments:
I happen to know someone who thinks that the idea of taking it easy behind me doing most of the work is a really interesting one - we've never got as far as doing anything about it, so this theory remains untested so far.
But I can easily see where the scope for conflict (in my case) is, as I find it hard enough to ride with other people on separate bikes sometimes.
Sounds like you had plenty of fun though - good for you!
The only way you can take it easy on the back of a tandem is to master the art of spinning the pedals in time with the person on front, but not applying much pressure. If the stocker actively freewheels it locks the pedals on the front (one of our major rows) and you can feel the pressure change if the stoker lifts their feet off the pedals.
Some of my friends (both keen cyclists) tried riding a tandem and it almost came to blows. That's because whoever was on the back kept trying to drive from behind.
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