Today’s mail included a very different and contemporary type of “Spring Catalog” from Tandems East & Evelyn Hill Cycling Apparel, and as I flipped-through the 8-page, 1/2-sheet size glossy brochure imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon an event’s page that announced the return of their COVID-19 interrupted, long-time annual Tandem Expo.
I’ve now added it to the 2024 Road Tandem Events Calendar page on ‘The TandemGeek’s Blog”
9-5 both days. Free admission and free parking. Due to the pandemic the expo was not possible. We are back and better with a whole new venue. Featuring Hokitika, Landshark pro carbon, da Vinci, Seven titanium, Bike Friday, Co-Motion, KHS, Kidz and more on display. New and used tandems. Close to 100 tandems in stock. E-tandems, road tandems, Gravel tandems. Parts, accessories, seminars, reps, bargains galore! Evelyn Hill Cycling apparel.
If you are interested in a tandem bicycle this is a great place to come to learn and test ride. Test rides, group rides. Food truck. Find out why riding a tandem is so much fun! Due to insurance, no one except Tandems East can sell a tandem at this event.
Since my last update, a few of the road rallies have opened-up registration — sort of, in some cases, e.g., ETR & MTR — and the Booking Page for the UK National Tandem Rally is now available. Specific updates have been sent along by the folks for the Fall Fayetteville Tandem Rally and our friends at the Florida PANTHERS have sent along the dates for their rally (18-20 Oct in The Villages), so a big thank you for keeping us in the know.
As for Off-Road Tandem Updates on the Self Organized Off-Road Tandem Adventure (S.O.O.R.T.A.) Facebook Group, I’ve not seen anything more recent than the Southwest Colorado SOORTA event added in my last update.
There are still spaces available for the Georgia Tandem Rally Pre-Tour and the GTR weekend immediately following in the latter half of May, and the Fayetteville events still have space available. Do note that we’ve noted some of the club-hosted rallies have been compelled by their club insurance carriers to require anyone wanting to attend their club events — including rallies — to be members of the club in order to be covered by the insurance policy, never mind the general trends we’re seeing in all insurance rates being on the rise, which trickles down into the cost of putting on rallies, as well as policy costs for clubs.
With that, here are the links to the two blog/web pages with the rally details. In some cases I’d encourage those interested in a rally to go directly to the rally websites, as information is not always as easy to extract and summarize anymore, given how some of the hosted event websites are structured, i.e., compartmentalized to accommodate on-line booking, reservations, registration and/or club membership sign-ups.
As always, updates and corrections are welcomed; just send them along to me in a comment or an email: mark@werlivingood.com
‘The Tandem Geek’s Blog’ landing page is now linked to the ‘Rallies!’ button at the menu bar on the Tandem Club of America webpage, which brings up a mirrored view of our blog within the TCA website. To go to the individual Tandem Events 1 / Road and Tandem Events 2 / Off-Road calendars, just click on their names in the menu bar below the image at the top of our Blog (See where the Finger Pointer is in the below image, for reference).
My methodology was the same as usual in that I visited all of the 2023 rally sites that tend to retain the same domain name / URL each year to see if they’d been updated, and then for those URLs that were not updated I did a quick search for the rally event name, batting about .650 with results. The events are listed in chronological order, noting that the latter half of May has become quite crowded with now seven (7) overlapping events, one of which is the International Tandem Rally in the Netherlands and one is the semi-commercial Horsey 100 in Georgetown, Kentucky.
For anyone involved in the planning for an upcoming 2024 tandem rally event who does not see their updated event information posted, or sees any errors, please let me know and I’ll adjust accordingly.
Please note, my blogs are still non-commercial, but WordPress has taken it upon themselves to change their policies over the past year to begin dotting blogs that don’t have a premium package with ads, so my apologies for the ‘junk’ that shows up in the margins and that gets inserted ‘in-line’ now and again. Just know that it’s WordPress who’s generating revenue from these ads and not yours truly.
Finally, note that as I did with the Road event calendar in December, I changed the formatting off the Off-Road event calendar a bit from previous years in a manner that has added a lot of ‘white space’ for separation of the event entries that will hopefully make it easier to parse the events from one-another. However, in doing so I also reduced the size of the text for my extracts from the event sites pertaining to summary information regarding the events costs, rally registration limits, host hotel information, etc. So, if it appears a bit too small, please feel free to use your browser’s ‘Zoom’ feature to increase the size of the all-text, no images webpage.
Knowing a few of the annual rallies that have not-yet opened-up Registration, but are poised to do so in February, having recently received a couple of sincerely-appreciated updates from the folks in Indiana (HOOTS) and Texas (HOTT), and also seeing some more recent Off-Road Tandem Updates on the Self Organized Off-Road Tandem Adventure (S.O.O.R.T.A.) Facebook Group I felt it was time to give both the Road and Off-Road tandem event calendar pages at The Tandem Geek’s Blog and update and did-so this morning.
It now appears ‘The Tandem Geek’s Blog’ landing page is now linked to the ‘Rallies!’ button at the menu bar on the Tandem Club of America webpage, which brings up a mirrored view of our blog within the TCA website. To go to the individual Tandem Events 1 / Road and Tandem Events 2 / Off-Road calendars, just click on their names in the menu bar below the image at the top of our Blog (See where the Finger Pointer is in the below image, for reference).
My methodology was the same as usual in that I visited all of the 2023 rally sites that tend to retain the same domain name / URL each year to see if they’d been updated, and then for those URLs that were not updated I did a quick search for the rally event name, batting about .650 with results. The events are listed in chronological order, noting that the latter half of May has become quite crowded with now seven (7) overlapping events, one of which is the International Tandem Rally in the Netherlands and one is the semi-commercial Horsey 100 in Georgetown, Kentucky.
For anyone involved in the planning for an upcoming 2024 tandem rally event who does not see their updated event information posted, or sees any errors, please let me know and I’ll adjust accordingly.
Please note, my blogs are still non-commercial, but WordPress has taken it upon themselves to change their policies over the past year to begin dotting blogs that don’t have a premium package with ads, so my apologies for the ‘junk’ that shows up in the margins and that gets inserted ‘in-line’ now and again. Just know that it’s WordPress who’s generating revenue from these ads and not yours truly.
Finally, note that as I did with the Road event calendar in December, I changed the formatting off the Off-Road event calendar a bit from previous years in a manner that has added a lot of ‘white space’ for separation of the event entries that will hopefully make it easier to parse the events from one-another. However, in doing so I also reduced the size of the text for my extracts from the event sites pertaining to summary information regarding the events costs, rally registration limits, host hotel information, etc. So, if it appears a bit too small, please feel free to use your browser’s ‘Zoom’ feature to increase the size of the all-text, no images webpage.
I fear it’s come time to start cleaning-out some of my shelf-ware that’s been essentially collecting dust in closets.
However, I’m in a quandary as to how best to find a new home for partial collections of 16 Spring 1995 to summer 1995 Tandem & Family Cycling Magazine editions, the only two “Double Magazines,” complementary copies of the first 20 Recumbent & Tandem Rider magazines + #26-#28, and my nearly ‘mint,’ complete set of the first 80-issues of Bicycle Quarterly (a heavy shipment to be sure), short of putting them up for auction on Ebay. I’d prefer they go to someone who might appreciate them vs. someone who will profit via re-selling… not that it should really matter.
I see where Bicycle Quarterly offers 8-packs of back issues for $50 and a ‘first 50 issues’ pack for $350, so there’s apparently a market for these things.
After receiving a Registration Now Open notice from the 2024 Coldspring Tandem Weekend yesterday, I made a point of dusting off our 2023 Calendar and updating it for 2024, and you can now find the by-product of that initial effort for at least the Road Tandem Events at the following link:
Our blog-page calendar is still mirrored on the Tandem Club of America webpage, so that now reflects the same updates I’ve just posted to my blog; it can be found here:
My methodology was the same as usual in that I visited all of the 2023 rally sites that tend to retain the same domain name / URL each year to see if they’d been updated, and then for those URLs that were not updated I did a quick search for the rally event name, batting about .650 with results. The events are listed in chronological order, noting that the latter half of May has become quite crowded with six (6) overlapping events, one of which is the International Tandem Rally in the Netherlands and one is the semi-commercial Horsey 100 in Georgetown, Kentucky.
For anyone involved in the planning for an upcoming 2024 tandem rally event who does not see their updated event information posted, or sees any errors, please let me know and I’ll adjust accordingly.
Please note, my blogs are still non-commercial, but WordPress has taken it upon themselves to change their policies over the past year to begin dotting blogs that don’t have a premium package with ads, so my apologies for the ‘junk’ that shows up in the margins and that gets inserted ‘in-line’ now and again. Just know that it’s WordPress who’s generating revenue from these ads and not yours truly.
Finally, note that I did change the formatting a bit from last year in a manner that has added a lot of ‘white space’ for separation of the event entries that will hopefully make it easier to parse the events from one-another. However, in doing so I also reduced the size of the text for my extracts from the event sites pertaining to summary information regarding the events costs, rally registration limits, host hotel information, etc. So, if it appears a bit too small, please feel free to use your browser’s ‘Zoom’ feature to increase the size of the all-text, no images webpage. And, yes, I’ll be getting around to doing a similar update to my off-road events calendar in the next day or so.
From a post by our GTR Hosts, Roger Strauss and Eve Kofsky….
Now, Let’s Talk About GTR 2024First of all, because our host city is very busy, there has been a GTR 2024 date change. We have moved the rally one week later to Memorial Day weekend. That’s May 23-26 for those of you marking your calendars. It’s not the first time we have had to do this (the last one was in 2018), and with over 6 months notice, we hope that most of you who want to be there will be there. (Please, no nasty emails if you can’t come.) This is for 2024 only and we hope to move back to our regular dates for GTR 2025.
GTR 2024 Will Be Located In…Dublin, Georgia, which is smack-dab in the middle of the state and where the streets are literally paved in shamrocks.
Photo taken on Jackson Street, the main drag of Dublin.
GTR last visited Dublin in 2012 and it’s time for us to return. Dublin has new hotels, new restaurants and a new brewery for us to check out. We’ve got three days of new bike routes to explore as well. And because it works nicely with our plans, we are bringing back the Saturday banquet in 2024.
Yes, We Have A Pre-TourThe GTR Pre-Tour will be in the sweet onion capital of the world, Vidalia, GA from May 20-23. It’s a great way to extend your GTR experience to six days and Vidalia onions will be in season.
The pre-tour gives you a chance to meet fellow tandem riders in a more intimate setting. Vidalia is a short 40-mile drive to Dublin so it will be easy to get to the “Big Rally” when the pre-tour is done. This is GTR’s first visit to Vidalia.
Registration Begins February 4That’s about three months away. The rally limit is 90 teams for GTR and 30 teams for the pre-tour. We will send an email when it’s time for you to register.
See You For a Memorable Memorial Day WeekendThere’s a lot of history in Dublin. It’s where Jefferson Davis was captured by Union troops in 1865 and where Martin Luther King preached his first sermon in 1944. The church is still there.
Although it’s early and some things are sure to change, there are a lot of rally details on our web site. We hope you will be able to make GTR 2024 part of your cycling adventures for the year to come.
This is our post-rally report and I’m pleased to note we were able to enjoy all three days of riding at the Florida Tandem Rally in Wildwood, Florida hosted by the Florida Panthers Tandem Club based in The Villages adjacent to Wildwood. Note: I’m still waiting to see if the many photos taken by Bob Thompson throughout the weekend begin to appear somewhere on the internet and, if and when they do, I’ll add them.
As an added-bonus that can easily be skipped, this rally report also includes our post-rally stop at Jekyll Island where we spent another two days riding our fat-tire, Fandango tandem around the island on it’s lovely mixture of bicycle paths and off-road trails that crisscross the southern end of the island. Given Jekyll was just three hours-away from The Villages and the drive-home from there is only 5-1/2-hours vs. the 6-1/2-hours from Wildwood, it was just too hard not to tie-in a return visit to Jekyll even though it’s only been about a month since our last trip.
Pre-Trip Planning: After going out for a ride on Tuesday and getting serious about preparing for our trip down to The Villages north of Orlando for the 2023 Florida Tandem Rally, I began to toy with the idea of adding-on a two or three-day stay at Jekyll Island on the way back. However, as it was a few weeks back when I was toying with the idea, the cost for a three-night stay was what I’d expect to pay if we were staying in a room in the Jekyll Island Club’s San Souci Apartments were we’d spent our honeymoon back in 1993.
However, on Wednesday after taking care of the yard work, I went back on-line and son-of-a-gun if Sunday and Monday night’s rate had dropped to a reasonable — reasonable for a post-Covid 19 world of runaway inflation — rate that made the stop-over, albeit brief, worth booking: if Debbie said thanks, but no-thanks we had until Friday night to cancel the reservation at no cost. I let her know about my revised trip plan and she was thrilled! We’d take both tandems along for our trip and use the Calfee for the road riding at the tandem rally, and then pull-out our gravel-tandem for riding on Jekyll Island.
The change in plans now required that I figure out how to take both tandems along without putting one up on the roof of the truck: yeah, that wasn’t going to work. So, I pulled-down the Yakima roof rack that I acquired back in 2012 so we could roof-top the three-seat tandem and dug-out the rear-wheel holder that attaches to the fiberglass camper shell with two large suction cups and began to figure out what changes I’d need to make to accommodate the 3-foot shorter tandem.
After getting both tandems down from their respective storage hooks I remembered how heavy the gravel tandem was with it’s three-inch-wide rear tire that needed to be on the bike to roof-top it. So, it would be our super-lightweight Calfee road tandem that drew the short-straw and would be stuck out in the weather, 70-mph wind blast and bugs as well as getting soaked from the nightly dew and any rain on this trip.
After making some adjustments to the rack and what not, I did a trial mounting and all looked good. And with that, the gravel tandem went in the back of the truck along with all my tools and it’s massive tires as well as the short step-ladder I’d need to use to get the Calfee on and off the truck. And, I picked-up a small convex mirror to fit to my driver’s side mirror that would allow me to keep an eye on the tandem as we were driving, less the rear wheel start to move around.
The Drive Down to Florida & Our First Night at The Villages
Thursday: We had a casual morning and left around 10:30am for the for 6-1/2-hour, 419-mile drive to the Hilton Home2 Suites in Wildwood, Florida. Other than the usual, rolling traffic jam that adds 20-minutes to your drive on Interstate-75 drive through McDonough, Georgia just south of Atlanta, it was an easy and uneventful trip.
We’d already made tentative plans to meet with our friends Paul & Jody from Atlanta who we’d not seen in several years, so after arriving at the hotel and getting settled into our room we all jumped-in my truck and headed off to the Prima Italian Steakhouse in the Brownwood Paddock Square, about a 12-minute drive into The Villages. Note that, one of the benefits of having a long-bed, double-cab is that we retain our use of an uncluttered four-seat vehicle at tandem cycling events.
For those who don’t know, The Villages is a collection of four or five major “communities” comprised of 78 smaller neighborhoods, some with as few as 100 homes, while others have more than 1,000: all told, there are purportedly over 41,000 homes and over 80,000 residents per the 2020 census, with the actual number of full and part-time residents at somewhere over 141,000. At present, they’re still growing and adding about 4,000 homes a year. In terms of land area, The Villages covers 80 square miles, equivalent to more than 51,200 acres. Golf is the most popular avocation and there are 12 championship golf courses, 38 executive golf courses and 4 practice facilities, where playing a round at most of the courses is included in the annual homeowner association fees, as is lawn care, trash, etc. Yeah, it’s almost incomprehensible but we could see the appeal during our visit and also appreciated the very different feel each of the major communities had. Amazingly, The Villages is still owned by the Morse family, descendants of Harold Schwartz, who founded what became the The Villages in the 1970s as the Orange Blossom Gardens trailer park surrounded by pasture land that still sits on the eastern edge of The Villages. Schwartz and his son Gary Morse began to fully-developed the land based on the Sun City in Tampa, Florida, model in 1983 and renamed it as The Villages in 1992. A full history can be found here.
It was great visiting with Paul & Jody again, and our dinner at Prima was excellent: Pecan Encrusted Halibut, Pan Seared and Finished with Maple Brown Sugar Glaze, Paired with Truffle Mashed Potatoes and Grilled Asparagus. I must note, when we arrived at Brownwood Paddock Square around 5:30pm, the place was jam-packed with residents as a live band was playing in the square from 5:00pm until 9:00pm and it was also VIP night at Prima: VIPs get their entrees for half-price. So we had a good 45-minute wait to be seated, and it took a bit longer than normal for our meals to arrive. And, we’re told it gets even more crowded and busy towards December and through March when the ‘Snowbirds’ make their way to the winter homes in The Villages. Back at the hotel, we mingled a bit in the lobby area with other folks whom we knew from previous tandem rallies and then called it a night.
Friday: We were up, had breakfast and on-time for the rider’s meeting before heading out on the 37-mile ‘medium’ route on what was our 83rd tandem rally; our first was the Alabama Tandem Weekend at Fairhope, Alabama in 1998.
The weather was wonderful, although the ‘locals’ from Florida couldn’t believe we were heading-out in shorts and short-sleeve / sleeveless jerseys, but the high-60s and sun felt good to us. I suspect we rode a good 9-10 miles around the perimeter road of The Villages before heading off-campus and into the horse and livestock country to the north. Other than being mostly flat-riding, at times it was reminiscent of riding through Virginia horse country with large green, fenced-in horse ranches and cattle farms. We passed by Lake Weir and even encountered some ‘real’ hills with 6% and 10% grades.
We rode with three other couples for most of the route, mixing-it-up with several others as the different routes all began to converge towards the latter half of the ride. Our most constant companions were George and Marti, Art and Miriam and Philip and Beth, with the latter two having electric-assist on their tandems. But, they both used assist settings that were typically on par with our nature-assist tandems that reply only upon their human-powered drive systems. Back at the hotel, I put the tandem back up on top of our truck for the night vs. trying to take it up to our 3rd floor hotel room: that’s just not how we roll…. so to speak.
For lunch, we headed back to Brownwood Paddock Square and found some empty seats at the Harvest Restaurant and Bar outside bar on the square. We split their Harvest Burger on a brioche bun topped with brie cheese, crispy prosciutto, arugula, and truffle aioli; it was delicious.
Back at the hotel, I noticed the ‘plunger’ on one of the two ‘SeaSucker’ suction-cup/vacuum-fixed mounts that hold the rear wheel in place on top of the truck’s camper shell had ‘popped-out’ to where the orange band was showing as an indicator that the vacuum seal had been lost.
Sadly, it turned-out the 12-year-old plastic plunger had failed. I’ve always used two of these where one would suffice as a fail-safe in the event the other one ever failed and that paid-off. After doing an autopsy on the plunger assembly, I belief the plunger failed due to it’s age, and the other mount was just as old so my fail-safe approach was in jeopardy. My solution was to order a replacement ‘SeaSucker’ on line and have it over-night delivered to the hotel. Well, sadly, the earliest it could be delivered anywhere in Florida was ‘some time’ on Sunday, the day we’d be making a 200-mile, 3-1/2-hour drive over to Jekyll Island before noon. My fallback was to go ahead and order the replacement and have it delivered to our hotel at Jekyll Island so it would be there when we arrived to support our much-longer, 350-mile drive home on Tuesday. As insurance against the 2nd ‘SeaSucker’ failing, I used a few pieces of Gorilla Tape to secure the failed mount to the roof of the truck. And, as if that wasn’t enough misfortune, the small convex mirror I’d attached to the truck’s driver side mirror that allowed me to keep an eye on the tandem as we drove came loose. So, I had to get some double-sided mounting tape to address that.
With that all resolved, we opted to stay at the hotel for dinner, as our hosts and long-time friends Bob & Jan Thompson had arranged for a food truck that specialized in BBQ to come to the hotel, as well as food truck that served ice cream. That seemed like a great idea vs. heading off to find a place to eat on a Friday night in and around The Villages.
Saturday: Our day began with a 7:30am get-up so we could grab breakfast, I could get the tandem off the truck and be dressed and ready to go for today’s 44-mile riders meeting at 8:50am, We opted to stick with a group where we knew a few of the folks from Friday’s ride and our long-time tandem friends Lonnie and Carol. We also knew our friends George and Marti would be riding the same 44-mile route, and once again we had a great time.
The 44-mile ride pace was healthy, but not as competitive as what we typically found at other tandem rallies. And, as noted for Friday’s ride, it didn’t prove to be too awkward given there were quite a few tandem with electric-motor-assist systems. In fact, the electric-assist tandems helped to keep the pace high at times with a large group — without shedding teams and leaving many times riding alone — which honestly improved the riding dynamics and experience. Yes, it’s kind of weird to have folks riding at a level that’s on par with or even faster than what would otherwise be stronger and fast teams — and often times setting the pace — but by golly it worked. And, since we weren’t racing with rewards or egos on the line for finishing first, it just sorted itself out quite nicely.
Although, I will confess that during that final 8-miles before the lunch stop and back in The Villages — mostly riding on their very-nice perimeter road sometimes with and without bike lanes –– the pace did pick-up to where we were pushing it pretty hard at times, especially when we got caught at a very-long stoplight mid-pack and then felt compelled to chase down the front half of the group that had picked-up the pace, lead by the electric-assist bikes. And, as luck would have it, when we were within 100-yards of catching the group, we got caught at yet another stop light. This time we opted to just deal with the luck of the draw and rode the rest of the way to our lunch top with the rest of the group that got caught at the light at a more reasonable pace.
Lunch was served at the 38-mile mark at the Rohan Recreation Center at the southern-most point to our 44-mile ride and, once again, we probably rode at least half of the route inside The Villages. The Rohan banquet room we ate in was a lovely, way-too-nice for how we were dressed, airconditioned space with 8-seat ’rounds’ covered with white table cloths and the meal was a wonderful, buffet-style cold cut and cold salad lunch. We shared our table with our long-time tandem friends Bob & Jan, Jodi & Paul and George and Marti.
Again, just a great time to be sure, and despite having not a lot of time on the tandem under our belts since the 2023 Georgia Tandem Rallywhere our Saturday ride was cut-short at the 11-mile point when a large chuck of wire was kicked-up into our drive-chain and tore the rear-derailleur off the bike and bent the titanium rear-drop-out.
After our ride, we returned to the hotel to clean-up and then went off to explore a bit, making a trip back to the Lake Sumter Landing Market Square, the only other square we’d previously been too way back in October 2009 when the Southern Tandem Rally was hosted by what became the Panthers Tandem Club at The Villages. To say it had changed would be an understatement of the highest order. What was at that time a fairly quiet place on a Saturday afternoon in 2009 where we were able to have lunch at R.J. Gator’s bar, was now totally surrounded by tightly-packed homes on all sides with what must have been 200-people gathered outside for live music and dancing at their outside bar, at least 60-or-so who had brought their own folding sports-chairs on the far-side of the patio area.
We’d considered heading on to the Spanish Springs Town Square where our friend Lonnie had let me know they’d be having live-music and a cruise-in / car show, but fearing that too would be far-too crowded for our tastes at the moment, we opted to head back to the Brownwood Paddock Square where we found some empty seats at the BlueFin Grill and Bar — owned by the same folks as the Harvest — for dinner and had an even enjoyable time with ‘Mike’ tending the bar, a snarky-kind of fellow who has lived in and around Wildwood since before The Villages was founded. While watching college football we enjoyed their Oysters Rockefeller as an appetizer and then the Ahi Tuna steak off the Fresh Fish menu blackened with Mango Salsa & Dark Rum Buerre Blanc sauce and a side of delicious, grilled asparagus. It was hands-down the best Ahi Steak meal we could recall.
From there, we headed back to the hotel where we settled into lobby and watched the Major League Playoff games, which drew a fun crowd before heading to our room to finish up the game and read before bed.
Sunday: The day started-off a bit earlier than the past two days, as today’s rider’s meeting was being held at 8:20am, with an 8:30am ride start… 30-minutes ahead of Friday and Saturday’s ride starts.
I should note, we’ve probably skipped the Sunday ride on three-day tandem rallies for at least the last 10 years. But. we were feeling good and so enjoyed the group riding on Saturday and Sunday — never finding ourselves out in ‘no man’s land’ stuck between faster and slower groups — that we decided to hang-in there and give it a go.
We had no problem being ready to go for the ride and it was a great experience. We took our lead once again from our friends Lonnie and Carol and some new friends we’d ridden with on Friday and Saturday. It was 27-mile ride to the southern end of The Villages development and we were always riding with at least 6-10 other teams at a healthy pace with great weather on very good roads with mostly well-behaved motorists.
We opted to get packed-up and head-off for Jekyll Island right after finishing our ride and were on the road by 11:00am for the 200-mile, 3-1/2-hour drive. It was a relatively easy ride mostly on secondary highways where we by-passed Interstate-10 and a good portion of Interstate-95.
As for making sure our Calfee tandem didn’t come off the roof of the truck on the drive over to Jekyll, the Gorilla Tape held fast for the entire ride, noting that the single 6″ SeaSucker mount was probably more than enough for making sure the rear wheel of the tandem didn’t dance-around on the camper shell. We stopped at the Jekyll Island Visitor’s Center and Gift Shop on the way into Jekyll where Debbie found a Christmas ornament and we got a great endorsement for taking the Hollybourne Cottage tour from one of the folks at the store.
Our first stop once we were on the island was Tortuga Jacks, where we had a late lunch while taking in our million dollar view from the Tiki Bar before making the short drive back to the Home2 Suites by Hilton in the Village Green. As I was checking in our hostess handed me the Amazon package with the 4-1/2″ replacement Sea Sucker mount, so we’d be good to go for at least our drive home; a great relief, to be sure.
We stayed-in for the rest of the evening, with me reading my latest book on Jekyll Island during the Georgia State Parks era while Debbie jumped back and forth between the Sunday night football and Major League Baseball playoff game. All-in-all, it was another great stay at our beloved Jekyll Island where we got in another 2-days of tandem riding, about 23-miles on Monday and then another 20-miles on Tuesday, noting we extended our 2-night-stay to 3-nights and didn’t head home until Monday.
I will confess, what ever I’ve gotten into — be it poison oak or something else that has small welts all over my hands and forearms and now migrating to my chest that are irritating and itchy — had made for some restless nights and that’s starting to take a toll.
Monday: As noted, I had something of a restless night and finally got up around 6:30am and moved into the ‘lounge area’ in our room where I continued reading while Debbie slept for another 30-60 minutes before we got up, had breakfast and then got ready to begin our day with a tandem ride at 9:30am.
We headed out for our tandem ride around the island after breakfast and, all told, we rode some 22-miles exploring trails on the south side of the island, checking out the Christmas season lighting displays still being installed just as was the case in late September when we last visited.
We also took time to ‘cruise’ around the Historic District before heading off for the North island loop route where we stopped to find the Brown Cottage ruins, the Club Dairy Farm ruins, visit the fishing pier, and then find Horton Pond before finishing up our loop with a stop for lunch at Tortuga Jacks.
Brown Cottage RuinsTabbi Silo at Club DairyHorton Pond & Two Baby AlligatorsFishing PierView from Tortuga’s at LunchEnjoying our time on Jekyll Island
Our original plan was to only spend two-nights on Jekyll before heading home on Tuesday afternoon, giving us enough time to get in one more tandem ride around the island, etc. and time our drive home to get us through Atlanta after the evening ‘rush hour’ period.
However, once we were back at the hotel, Debbie opted to go and get some sun while I relaxed in the room, did some bill paying on-line and took a look at the one-night rates for Tuesday night just to see on the off-chance that they had enough cancellations that opened-up a reasonably-priced one-night rate. Sure enough, there were a handful of rooms for a much-more reasonable $171/night vs. $335/night that had been the going-rate when I last checked. After Debbie confirmed she’d enjoy spending one more night on the island before we headed home, I went ahead and booked it and also applied some of our ‘points’ that brought the room rate down to $85/night. So, we could now enjoy another full day on the island, something we were both enjoying immensely.
It was around 2:30pm when we headed over to the Jekyll Island Historic District to take a tour of the Hollybourne Cottage: wow; it well worth it. Zoe was our guide and it while it was only her 3rd week since starting to do the tours, she knocked it out of the park… and she and the other couple on our intimate tour appreciated my various historic footnotes. I have so enjoyed knowing so much more about the history of the island as I worked-through my journal entry and have been surprised at how often I’ve been able to share much of what I’ve learned when chatting with other guests, folks who work on the island and even some of the residents. Such was the case during our tour when I was able to help clarify and expand a bit on what Zoe had learned from the tour notes provided to her by the Jekyll Island History Department and other tour guides.
With regard to the Hollybourne Cottage, in 1890 it became the third of fifteen cottages built at Jekyll and the only one owned by the same family all the way through the Club years before the state of Georgia acquired the Island with all of it’s improvements for $675,000 via the condemnation process. It was designed by the owner and bridge-designer Charles Maurice with a bridge-like truss system that mitigated the need for second-story support columns in the middle of the large downstairs dining room, foyer and parlor and was the only cottage in the Club that used a concrete-like tabbi material for the exterior, load-bearing walls. As an interesting anecdote, in 2017 Charles & Charlotte Maurice’s great-great granddaughter Holly Maurice McClure was married on the front steps of the Hollybourne Cottage — something others can do — but had the unique experience of enjoying a private dinner in the partially restored cottage served on the Maurice family’s original dining room table Hollybourne that had been in storage and was restored for the occasion.
Looking East at Gould Tennis CourtsPreservation View of Wall ConstructionOne of the two Trusses in the AtticTrusses Behind WallsLarge Anchor Bolt for Truss RodBasement & Support Piers
From the Hollybourne tour, we went to the shops in the Village Green for the first time and Debbie had a grand time and came away with a cute crop-top T-shirt and a dress. From there, we headed to Tortuga Jacks for an early dinner, despite the cool temps and 20mph winds. Our surf and turf entrée was great and worth fighting through the chill factor so we could once again enjoy that million-dollar view of the Atlantic Ocean.
We were back at the hotel by 6:00pm where Debbie got warmed-up and watched the Phillies vs Diamond Backs MLB division game while I began to work on this journal, with my first entries since the last one I published on 8 October: Yikes! I had a lot of catching up to do.
Tuesday: Our day began with breakfast before we moved from our 1st floor, pool-side room to a 3rd floor room that had the best view of the ocean at the Home2 Suites. Now set for a final 24-hours, we got ourselves dressed for our second bicycle ride around the island.
In what was essentially a repeat of Monday’s ride, we headed-off with mild, upper 60F temps and a brisk 17mph wind on a lovely, sunny day.
We headed south on the paved bike trail and then jumped-off onto the sand-covered off-road trails that made their way through almost a tunnel of trees on the mostly undeveloped south end of the island. Honestly, the addition of the unpaved riding on the south end of the island has truly transformed the quality of our riding around Jekyll. While it reduced our total ride distance from 24-miles for the out-and-back ride around the north end of the island by about 4-miles, it’s just so enjoyable when we get to disappear into the very lightly-used off-road trails that meander through natural, now overgrown area that’s dotted with small marshlands and ponds.
Having done most of our exploring on yesterday’s ride, today’s ride was all about just enjoying the views and taking our time since this was today’s primary activity. The only other tours we could take were of the Roosevelt’s ‘Indian Mound’ Cottage which we’d done while honeymooning on the island back in 1993 or of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel which was a distinct possibility, if not on this trip perhaps on a subsequent trip. The latter could come as early as late November or early December as we’d very much like to see the island all lit-up for the Christmas holiday now that we’ve seen how much time and effort they put into decorating the island, never mind that the rates are reasonable.
Serendipity: The luck some people have in finding or creating interesting or valuable things by chance.
While out for our late morning, daily tandem bicycle ride and on a whim, we decided to add a stop at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel to see how much it changed since July 1993 when we spent our honeymoon there. After parking our bike next to the porte-cochere, we climbed the steps to the covered porch, walked around the club house to find the old hotel entrance and as we came around a corner much to our absolute surprise found my former boss and retired Lockheed executive Ross Reynolds and his wife Debby enjoying some quiet time reading in the shade of the covered porch above the courtyard. No, I failed to get a photo, but I will say Ross looks unchanged, they both look great, are doing well and continue to enjoy life on both the east and west coasts, with Jekyll Island being a regular place to visit now and again.
After spending a good 30-minutes catching up with Ross and Debby, we headed-off for the 2nd half of our ride, with a lunch stop at Tortuga Jacks — surprise, surprise — before the short ride back to our hotel where I put the tandem away for the last time on this trip.
Wednesday: Unlike our original plan for Tuesday when we’d get in one final tandem ride before heading home in the early afternoon, we had ourselves up and packed before we headed down to breakfast at 7:30am and were on-our-way home by 8:00am.
The road-trip home was both uneventful and traffic-free with just two-stops: one right before we jumped on the interstate after leaving Jekyll, and then at around the 1/2-way point in Dublin, Georgia 2-1/2 hours later on our 354-mile, 5-1/2-hour drive.
It was good to be home as neither of us had any desire to head-out for dinner or anywhere else for that matter. We just unloaded the truck, unpacked and Debbie ran over to Publix to pick-up some fried chicken — comfort food, if you will — for dinner.
Our thanks to Ray Murtaugh for passing this along…
11th Annual, 20-22 October with Optional Weds, 18 Oct Pedal and Paddle
Central Florida is a great location for tandem riding and the location for the 11th Annual Florida Tandem Rally held in… ‘Florida’s Friendliest Home Town’…The Villages, FL. The new Home2 Suites by Hilton Inn in Wildwood, FL, will be your host for the weekend at a rate of $129. Check out their website at https://www.hilton.com/en/attend-my-event/ocfwwht-ptc-2846bf7c-22cc-4cff-a076-fe00783f015b/ to make your reservations or call 352-913-2100 and mention the Florida Tandem Rally for this special group rate. Please make your reservations early to get your choice of rooms and to make the cut-off date of 20 September 2023.
The application for the Florida Tandem Rally 2023 is now posted on our new PANTHERS website at www.floridatandemclub.org. You can now fill out your application on line and pay via PayPal. If you enjoy riding with tandem friends from the Southeast and Central Florida, make your plans now to attend.
The Rides
Thursday’s Ride!
Plan to arrive on Wednesday afternoon and be ready to ride with the PANTHER regular weekly ride at 9:00am on Thursday starting from the Hilton Inn. Two distances will be available. Our ride will end at our local Panera Bread at Sumter Landing for pastries, sandwich and coffee. Ride leaders will be available to show you the route back to the Hilton Inn.
Friday’s Ride!
In years past, we have had a number of teams who arrived early and ready to ride. This year the rides on Friday with a short ride of 27 miles a 37 mile and a 46 mile ride. You are invited to begin your day riding with tandem couples who arrive early. This ride will begin at 9:00am and riding speed and distances will be tailored to meet all who attend. If you arrive later, route sheets will be available and you can start your ride at anytime during the day.
Friday’s Social!
All who register will be invited to attend an ice cream social at the Home2 Suites on Friday evening starting at 6:30pm. The Mystic Ice Cream mobile truck will be located at the Home2 Suites to serve all their delicious homemade ice cream. Sixteen flavors will be available and surely one of these will be your favorite. The cost is included as part of your registration.
Saturday’s Ride!
Multiple rides from 32, 44 and 52 miles will be available for Saturday and will start at 9:00am. Before the completion of each route you can enjoy lunch at the John Rohan Recreation Center that will be catered by La Hacienda Catering. After lunch, all riders will have approximately 5.3 miles to ride back to the Home2 Suites by Hilton Inn to complete the ride. The cost for this lunch is included as part of your registration.
Saturday Evening Banquet!
This year we will not have a Saturday Evening Banquet. Included in your riders pack will be a list of restaurants and sports bars that will be within a short distance from the Home2 Suites by Hilton Inn.
Sunday’s Ride!
Route for Sunday will be 27 miles in length. Start time will be 8:30am to allow you to return to the Hilton for a timely check out. Route passes by the new Villages Schools and Buffalo Stadium. Very low traffic volume on Sunday mornings.
EVENTS SCHEDULE
Wednesday – 18 October
Peddle and Paddle with Bruce Hansen Silver Springs State Park
4 pm to 5 pm – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
Thursday– 19 October
8 am – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
8:30am – Ride with the PANTHER from The Villages [28 and 38 mile]
2 pm to 3 pm – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
6 pm to 7 pm – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
Friday – 20 October
8 am – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
8:50am – Riders Meeting 9am – Ride start – Route sheets available for 27, 37, and 46 mile rides 1 pm to 2 pm – Pick Up Riders Packs and Registration at Hilton Hotel
6:30pm – Ice Cream Social by Mystic Ice Cream at Hilton Hotel
Saturday – 21 October
8:50am – Riders Meeting
9am – Ride start – Route sheets available for 32, 44, 52 mile rides 10:30am to 1:30pm – Serving Lunch at Rohan Receration Center
Sunday – 22 October
8:20am – Riders Meeting
8:30am – Ride start – Route sheets available for 28 mile ride
Peddle and Paddle
Wednesday, October 18, 2023, as part of the Florida Tandem Rally, those of you who plan on pedaling at the rally can also do some paddling on the Silver River in Silver Springs State Park. We will meet the kayak outfitter at the state park at 10 AM. Releases will need to be signed and the 8 tandem kayaks that will be available to us rent for $70. We will launch at Silver Springs head waters and paddle to Ray’s Wayside Park about 5.4 miles away. The amount of time it takes to complete this trip depends on how fast you paddle. Bring a lunch and something to drink.
The river is very pretty and has a gentle flow going in the same direction that we will be paddling. Some of the things to look for are a lot of different kinds of birds, lots of turtles, gators (they usually want to be left along), eagles, lots of jumping fish, manatees, and there is a community of monkeys which we must stay away from because of their sometimes aggressive behavior and concerns about disease. The water is crystal clear and is a steady 72 degrees.
The kayaks you will be renting are very stable and if you have any questions our outfitter, Ryan, will be glad to assist. Life jackets will be provided and I strongly encourage you to wear them even if there’s almost no chance of going into the water.
When we finish paddling at Ray’s Wayside Park and our outfitter will shuttle us back to our cars at Silver Springs State Park.
We have always had a great time of this adventure and I hope you join me this year. The outfitter only has 8 tandem kayaks but he has a number of single kayaks too which rent for $50 each.
Please email me your contact information if you would like to join us at BruHansen1@gmail.com. Again, we only have 8 tandem kayaks but lots of singles. See ya soon.
I lay responsibility, in part, on our friend Brian W. for this ‘edit’ of my new wall art in the home office as he replied to my post with a good question, “Cool, but do you still have your Double Forte Jersey?”
As I noted to Brian, yes, we do! Going further, I also began to think out-loud, “Hmmm, perhaps I need to add the DF jersey to my office wall since it too has some significance, perhaps even my first Georgia Tandem Club jersey design as well?”
After today’s bike ride and a short trip to the store to pick up another no-mar, stick-on wall hanger the collection is now complete. While I still have quite a few other somewhat significant jerseys from cycling clubs and fund-raising events, these three are indeed a bit more special since they all represent our earliest days on the tandem(s).
Like the T@H jersey, the Georgia Tandem Club, aka, PEACHES and Double Forte jerseys hold many fond memories.
Talk about a flash-back. I’m thinking this is Spring 1999 during the Saturday lunch stop at Rich Wolf and Ina Thompson’s SBL Jewell, TRA-LA-LA (Tour of Rural Alabama — Luxurious Accommodations — Late April) in Anniston, Alabama.
The 2nd or 3rd Western North Carolina Off-Road Tandem Rally shortly after the DF Jerseys were produced and delivered to around 50-couples around the world, during a group photo at the Tsali North Carolina trail-head parking lot in Fall 2004.
I’m not sure I have to thank for putting this in the hands of the ebay seller up in Frederick, Maryland, but as I was composing my last post and needing a graphic for Tandem@Hobbes, I ‘stumbled’ upon a classic and very rare 1990’s Pearl Izumi “Tandem@Hobbes” discussion group cycling jersey.
It’s like new, but as you’d expect after over 25-years, the elastic has lost its elasticity. But, since it will likely go on a wall in my office and never be worn — I’d have to have a tailor replace all of the elastic in the waist, sleeve-ends and rear pockets — its a non-issue.
Lord knows what I’m going to do with my collection of Tandem & Family Cycling Magazines, a book by John Schubert and another by Angel Rodriquez and Carla Black, as well as a complete collection of Bicycle Quarterly magazines through last year, dozens of other old cycling jerseys and now this jersey, but I’m sure someone out there will be interested when our kids and grandkids have to disposition all of “this stuff” unless I do it for them between now and, well…. ‘then.’
That said, I do sincerely miss those days back on Tandem@Hobbes in the later 1990’s and throughout the first decade of this century. We made SO MANY good friends based on my interactions on the listserver and it truly made our assimilation into the tandem cycling world so much better than it could have been if I’d have just stumbled around trying to figure out things on my own.
It would be interesting to find today’s equivalent to Tandem@Hobbes and re-post one of my old, annual survey’s to see how things have changed in terms of demographics, etc.
Back in May I posed a somewhat rhetorical question, “Have Life, Fate & Weather Conspired to Erode My Mojo…? As mentioned in that posting, it was something I had on my mind given how little I’d been riding as compared to a few years back even before I retired, I’d just completed my 63rd trip around the Sun and was struggling with a few things.
As I began to tap-out some recent cycling highlights — of which sadly there are very few — I found myself reflecting on our early days when we first joined the wonderful world of tandem cycling and how so much has changed, in light of having recently closed my life’s chapter on motorcycling, in much the same way that I did with sailing 30-years ago.
Change is inevitable, and I guess it’s how you deal with it that defines you. I’d like to think I’m not a quitter and, instead, give up one thing to move-on to another. Sadly, while I’ve done this most of my life — often times merely adding things instead of replacing others –– I fear I’ve reached a stage of life when that all changes and you begin to shed hobbies and interests and I’m just not ready to do that. But, I’m also not sure if building a woodshop in my garage, taking on a collector car project, or taking another stab at volunteering is my path forward.
However, through it all, I’d like to think I’ll come out the other side still enjoying cycling and, most of all, still cycling with Miss Debbie. Quite frankly, I’ll lay the blame for this moment of introspection on our friends Roger & Eve who I know remain avid tandemists and ride as often as they can and build travel plans around cycling. But, unbeknownst to them, I just happened to catch them in the act here at home in Georgia, out enjoying what appear to be a ride on the bike trails along Barrett Parkway near south Acworth, Georgia, as I was on my way to pick-up a pair of glasses at Costco. It’s not that I was looking for them, but when I had a rare tandem bicycle sighting while sitting at the intersection at Old U.S. 41 and Barrett Parkway on Thursday morning, I had to take a closer look to see if I might know who they were: sure enough, it was Roger & Eve.
A Short Trip in Mr. Peabody’s WABAC Machine
It all began for us on Saturday, 9 August 1997 when we ventured over to Jack & Susan Goertz’s Tandems Limited in Birmingham, Alabama “just to look” and take a test ride. After six hours or so — to include stepping away to have some lunch at a local sandwich shop — we loaded our new ‘Royal Plum Pearl’ 1995/1996 Santana Arriva in the back of our 1995 Toyota 4-Runner, our first of nine tandems we’ve since owned.
The following morning we headed-out from the house or our lightly-trafficked for a short ride and during the next 30-days we’d joined the Tandem Club of America, discovered the recently formed Tandem Club of Georgia (aka, P.E.A.C.H.E.S.), subscribed to Greg Shepherd’s “Tandem & Family Cycling” magazine, attended our first PEACHES ride, ridden our first Metric Century and started to become regulars at local charity rides we found now that we were also members of the Southern Bicycle League and started to receive it’s newsletters.
Our first of 82 tandem rallies was the Alabama Tandem Weekend in New Hope, Alabama in March 1998. It’s been a great ride ever-since where we’ve met more friends than I could ever begin to mention without leaving out at least half-of-them because there have been so-many: it was for many, many years our social life up and until life became a bit more complicated with friends moving-away, having families, closing their respective chapters on tandem cycling, etc.
Sadly, “Tandem & Family Cycling” — a great full-color publication that focused 100% on tandem cycling— only lasted from 1994 – 1999, at which point the income from subscriptions and ad revenue was not sufficient to keep the enterprise going and along with it went the very useful tandemmag.com website with its tandem rally calendar and links to on-line tandem cycling resources.
It’s demise prompted me to create TheTandemLink.com with a replacement for the tandem event calendar, tandem club listing, links to tandem resources, etc., as well as an outlet for my miscellaneous ramblings in my ‘Bulletin Board’ entries. I actively maintained TheTandemLink.com until around July 2009, and it was on 1 January 2010 when I created TheTandemGeeksBlog to capture my thoughts on tandem cycling and then began to expand it to other interests and hobbies. In July 2011 we acquired our first Harley Davidson motorcycle and by 5 October 2011 I realized I was cluttering-up TheTandemLink.com blog with far too much non-tandem cycling content and migrated that to a new blog, RidingTwoUp.com.
It was in January 2017 when I migrated my tandem cycling event & rally calendars to TheTandemGeeksBlog, followed shortly thereafter by my tandem club list in February 2017 and I essentially stopped actively maintaining TheTandemLink.com. It was on the 21st anniversary of TheTandemLink.com that I sunset the website on 31 December 2020. It was just far-too vast in content that was no longer current built using 1990’s vintage Adobe PageMill 2.0 software to create that was now also becoming obsolete so, on 26 January 2017 the site went dark and all the content was removed from the FatCow.com servers.
But, regardless, it was a great ride, to be sure and as I reminisce and write, I’m reminded of how we learned about events, shared stories and formed virtual friendships with tandem enthusiasts around the country.
Lives Are Like Books: We Begin to Write New Chapters as we Close Old Ones, and Many Overlap
So, as I continue my trip down memory lane ahead of my update, I’m reminded of how much has changed since we began writing our tandem cycling story 26-years ago almost to the day. While communications technology has given us a lot, it also seems to have diminished the value it used to provide, at a much slower and more methodical pace that perhaps now seems quaint to many, perhaps even a few of my more progressive Regular Readers.
TCA DoubleTalk and Tandem@Hobbes
When I say regular readers, I’m really speaking to the tandem enthusiasts who have been riding ‘two-up’ long enough to have been members of the Tandem Club of America founded in 1976 and fondly recall receiving their “TCA DoubleTalk” newsletter. For anyone who doesn’t know about it, DoubleTalk was a bi-monthly publication that included one or two travel logs from seasoned cycling duo’s as well as the annual tandem rally calendar and entry/registration forms that we’d cut-out from the newsletter and mail-in with checks to sign-up for the events. Receiving and reading the newsletter was an on-going ritual that we so enjoyed, as it allowed us to plan our future trips, usually 9-months to a year in advance.
And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Wade Bloomgren’s Tandem@Hobbes listserver that was stood-up in late 1992, filling our Email inboxes with digests of the dozens of back & forth Emails that floated between tandem enthusiasts from every corner of the U.S. and quite a few from overseas. Being a closed email-list, it was actually quite intimate compared to today’s forums that exist to enable wireless engagement between thousands of ‘members’ while also generating revenue for those who ‘own’ and host the forums.
While small, intimate cells of members often times develop in the sub forums, the presence of detached forum moderators who all seem to aspire to work for Facebook or Twitter censorship teams constantly remind us that ‘off-topic’ has taken on a new dimension in our current world where any hint of someone harboring thoughts that don’t conform to those deemed ‘acceptable’ by the person or persons doing the moderation are grounds for censorship, often times without notice or explanation, not that the explanations make any sense to the average sexagenarian or even more worldly and wiser elders.
The Internet’s Profound Influence
The internet’s arrival is a double-edged sword since it ultimately took-away, or made obsolete the newsletters that came via the USPS — which became snail-mail and I’m not even sure what it’s called today –– and replaced them with Emails and .pdf newsletter attachments for a while, before organic, tandem rally websites began to ‘cut out the middleman’ before going fully digital with on-line registration and payment via cyberspace. While far-more efficient some the internet-savvy, I’m not sure it served tandem cycling well, anymore than my efforts to plug the cyber-gap that was emerging after Tandem Magazine folded and took it’s web-hosted, real-time updated resources with it.
TheTandemLink.com
I thought I was doing the tandem community a public service when I stood-up ‘TheTandemLink.com’ website which initially attempted to recreate what was lost when the ‘Tandem Magazine’ website went dormant. In talking with stalwart, legacy members and founders of the TCA, I came to realize that my “little” TheTandemLink.com” or TTL website helped to unintentionally push the snail-mail-based TCA and DoubleTalk closer to extinction, all for altruistic goals. To be clear, up and until I began to offer tandem decals for sale via TheTandemLink.com,” 100% of the annual web hosting cost was on my dime, and the decal revenue while appreciated was merely a temporary and part offset. But, as noted, I closed the chapter on TheTandemLink.com effectively in 2018 and literally on 31 December 2020, 21-years-to-the-day after I began to write that chapter.
Recently Closing Some of Our Own Chapters
And now — after rambling-on about the past — I finally get to where I was headed when I sat down to to compose my thoughts as I thought about a few chapters I’d closed.
Sailing: When I moved to Georgia after living in Southern California for 10 years in 1991, I had two major recreational interests: sailing and racing Hobie Cat catamarans and recreational and club cycling, both road and off-road. I’d been an avid motorcyclist before moving to California, but partially closed that chapter while sailing and cycling remained more-or-less passions. Motorcycling was always something I enjoyed, but not so much in freeway-filled Southern California so when I did ride it was off-road in the dirt or on the track on borrowed machines.
While I brought both my bicycles and Hobie Cat sailboat with me when I moved to Georgia, the Hobie Cat never touched water before I finally closed that chapter and sold the boat sometime around 1995, pre-journal: honestly, I can’t even recall when it was. It was a great run, but I no longer had the ocean a mere hour’s drive away, and large inland lakes within 10-miles of my home and a very active Hobie Cat Association at my disposal. Moreover, Debbie didn’t know how to swim and I’d somewhat moved-on from day-sailing to racing so that would be a bad combination: it was time.
Motorcycles: When I first moved to Georgia I could see it was a great place to ride motorcycles, with relatively low traffic away from the interstates and the mountains not too far away. And, given that I typically worked from 6:00am until 7:00pm most days, beginning and ending my day at work riding a motorcycle through the National Park was quite tempting. However, after meeting and getting married to Miss Debbie shortly after arriving here and suddenly having two teenage sons, keeping a motorcycle in the garage probably wasn’t the best idea. It wasn’t until the summer of 1999 that I finally scratched my itch –– that or succumbed to a minor mid-life crisis — and bought a nearly new Honda CBR1100XX and resumed motorcycling on a daily basis.
Rather than dragging-on for a few thousand words, I’ll cut to the chase: after riding over a collective 100,000 miles on 8 different motorcycles for 24-years I closed the chapter on motorcycling on 16 July 2023 when I sold our 2017 Harley-Davidson Road Glide. Covid more-or-less was the catalyst that closed the chapter on our annual motorcycle trip down to Key West to celebrate our anniversary every July since 2014, as well as motorcycle rallies with our last Daytona and Panama Beach Bike Weeks in 2021: riding 4-5 hours was loosing its luster now that we were in our 60’s and it seemed like there were more cars and ‘civilians’ than motorcycles and ‘bikers’ choking the roads, restaurants and bars during the motorcycle rallies.
Part of me wishes we would have done like our good friend Jeff and his wife Joyce and hooked-up with one of the local Harley Owners Groups who on a weekly or even more frequent basis head off our day trips, noting Jeff has now logged over 85,000-miles in just a few short years doing-so, with hundreds of adventures to look-back on. However, such was not the case as I prefer to ride with Miss Debbie and she just lost her interest in riding for the post-Covid reasons mentioned above and due to the risks, noting we’ve had more than our fair share of bad luck with inattentive motorists over the years and motorists are getting worse not better. At some point, you just take that as a bad omen and stop trying to one-up the God’s of opportunity and fate.
Cycling: Sadly, I wish closing chapters was limited to sailing and motorcycling, but along the way even my passion for cycling has had to give way to some of the challenges life throws your way.
Off-Road Tandeming: After taking up road tandem cycling with Debbie in 1997, by January 1999 we had our first off-road tandem and would head-out on single track at least every other month, sometimes more and sometimes less often with three off-road tandem rallies and a few one-day events thrown in. However, by 2010 when we attended our last Asheville, NC, off-road event, the writing was on the wall: single track was just a bit too risky for us, given that Debbie like many women was dealing with managing the hazards associated with moderate to severe osteoporosis.
Falls were at one time, no big deal, but now in our 50’s it was becoming something that needed to be more carefully managed. However, while we effectively stopped riding our 2002 Ventana ECdM by 2013, I didn’t sell it until October 2021 after acquiring our 2018 Fandango Gravel Grinder. The latter has only been used about a dozen times, so it’s fate remains in question. Although, we do enjoy riding it at Jekyll Island so perhaps I’ll hang on to it for a few more years in the hope we get down there a couple times or Miss Debbie gives-in to one my invites to at least go and ride some of the local gravel trail routes our friends Roger & Eve introduced us to back in 2021. Sadly, after just two events our friends decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze in hosting a summer gravel grinder tandem rally in addition to the 23 annual Georgia Tandem Rallies they’ve hosted; who could blame them!
Riding Three-Up: Back in March 2012 we did our first-ever tandem rally on a triplet at Sylacauga, Alabama, with our friend Brenda — the Ragin’ Cajun — aboard her Co-Motion Periscope at a rally that her partner James was unable to attend, and we had a great time. In fact, it gave me the inspiration I needed to acquire and overhaul a Precision Triplet in April 2012 that we first used at the Georgia Tandem Rally in May 2012 with our dear friend Lisa riding tail gunner, something we’d do at least once a year at either the Georgia or Southern Tandem Rallies until 2019, when we rode both our 9th and 10th tandem rallies on the triplet with Lisa. Sadly, Covid happened and we’ve only ridden the triplet once with our friend Julie since then and have not yet heard back from Lisa who seems to have reconnected with the single-bike riding scene and is otherwise stayed busy with a new grandbaby, the bluegrass music scene in the local mountain communities, etc. So, noting our grandkids while at the right age for cycling, are far-too -busy with all their other activities, it’s fair to say we’ve closed the chapter on riding three-up and it’s probably time to sell that bike too.
Road Tandeming: I now fear road tandem riding may be reaching its twilight for us, as once again growing risks associated with sharing the roads while cycling with motorists continue to be a risky proposition. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve ridden our Calfee from the house this year, and even rides on the nearby Silver Comet Trail have been extremely rare. Our May 2023 Georgia Tandem Rally was cut short 11-miles into our second day of riding when a large piece of heavy gauge wire was kicked-up into our tandem, tearing-away the rear derailleur. Other than two post-repair shake down rides, one from the house on 31 May and another on the Silver Comet Trail on 7 June, the Calfee has remained on the storage hooks hanging from the ceiling in the garage.
Now, to be fair, I was unable to ride from 9 June through 24 July, so that’s all on me and hopefully now that I’ve got some of my cycling fitness back and we’ve made our 8-day visit with my mother in Pennsylvania, perhaps we’ll find ourselves back on the bike.
More than you wanted to know, but perhaps we’re not alone in this phase of our life’s journey which is why I decided to share this particular update. Life is Good, make no mistake about it! Our time with family, kids, many grandkids and the like are great. Museums and botanical gardens are wonderful places to spend time. Cycling is still something I do 4-5 times a week. Travel remains a possibility, but has become a harder pill to swallow given the insane jump in costs to do so, hence another reason we’ve not returned to Key West even via a short, 2-hour flight from Atlanta.
This just in from the folks in Florida and the Florida PANTHERS tandem Club: Make Reservations Now….
Our 2019 rally in The Villages was a great success. The last 3 years have brought a lot of changes to our hometown and we are ready again to present a tandem rally for your enjoyment.
Central Florida is a great location for tandem riding and the location for the 11th Annual Florida Tandem Rally held in… ‘Florida’s Friendliest Home Town’…The Villages, FL. The new Home2 Suites by Hilton Inn in Wildwood, FL, will be your host for the weekend at a rate of $129.
Two daily rides are planned prior to the rally for 18 and 19 October for those who plan to arrive early. Friday evening the Mystic Ice Cream mobile truck will be located at the Home2 Suites by Hilton to serve all their delicious homemade ice cream. Sixteen flavors will be available and surely one of these will be your favorite.
Saturday’s lunch will be served in-route at the John Rohan Recreation Center and catered by La Hacienda Catering. After lunch, all riders will have approximately 5.3 miles to travel back to the Hilton Inn to complete the ride. There will not be a Saturday evening banquet this year.
Watch our PANTHERS webpage at www.floridatandemclub/11th-annual-florida-tandem-rally/ for registration information. There will be an on line Registration Form with payment through the PANTHERS PayPal account(It’s not up yet, MPL–Added).
Due to the excellent response in the past for the “Pedal and Paddle” kayak outing on the Silver River, Bruce Hansen will again lead this event on Wednesday, October 18th, starting at 10 AM at Silver Springs State Park. Additional information for taking part in this fun event will be available prior to the event. Tandem and single kayaks will be available to rent or bring your own kayak if you wish.
Future announcements and more information as to all events will be posted on our PANTHERS webpage. Make plans now to attend the last tandem rally of 2023.
As noted in my last post, we had a piece of road debris tear the rear-derailleur (the transmission on a bicycle) off the frame of our Calfee. I did my best to straighten the attachment flange / derailleur hanger once we were back at home, but knew it was probably close, but not aligned. That gave me the motivation to purchase a rear derailleur hanger alignment gauge on Thursday night that arrived today. Worth it!!!
Wow! Somewhat analogous to looking at something under a microscope where everything is magnified, the Park Tool DAG 2.2 Derailleur Alignment Gauge does just that with the geometry of the rear derailleur hanger’s alignment with the rear wheel.
#1: You have to be sure your rear wheel’s rim & brake track is running true to the drop-outs in the frame.
#2: The DAG 2.2 once installed in the hanger drop-out in place of the rear derailleur will magnify the difference of the angle of incidence between the hanger and the wheel at the four critical points: 0° and 180°, and 90° and 270°.
#3: My MA-1 eyeball said it was pretty close, the DAG 2.2 said it was not, in both dimensions.
#4: Using the depth rod of a dial-caliper, it took all of 5-minutes to get the four points aligned to the same off-set on the DAG’s indicator rod.
#5: The adjustment’s I needed to make using the DAG 2.2 as a lever were in the single digit mm range, but out-of-alignment is out-of-alignment no matter how you quantify it. So, tweaks needed to be made, several times to get it dialed-in to zero/zero/zero/zero when double-checked with my dial-caliper’s depth rod along side the DAG 2.2’s indicator rod position.
#5: With the derailleur back on the bike, the shifting was flawless. Here’s hoping we see the same on the road, and I suspect we will.
It’s all in the attention to details, following “the book” and having both the right equipment and discipline to use it!
He knew not everyone had equal opportunities to encounter the same obstacles on a road, which is why some get flat tires while others don’t. What does it mean to live in a world with many tandem friendly roads, but guarantees nothing? Every ride is a chance to either beat the odds and have a problem-free experience, or to fall victim to an unseen road hazard that strands you on a ride in the middle of nowhere with a fatal mechanical failure.
(A twist on Death of a Salesman’s Main Point)
On the bright side, in our story the ‘House of Tandems‘ from Houston, Texas, Support And Gear (SAG) vehicle driven for something like the 9th time at the Georgia Tandem Rally by the intrepid and our good friends Ric and Marsha Becker, came upon us moments after our terminal mechanical event, giving us and our crippled tandem safe and easy passage back to the host hotel.
We owe them both a debt of gratitude and then some for their priceless assistance. Seriously, there’s a business case for doing all that they do, but it’s still a tremendous amount of effort to make a 750-mile drive from Houston, Texas, to Thomasville, Georgia, and then spend every waking hour thereafter fixing people’s tandems, listening to their problems but also their stories, driving a few hundred miles along all the different rally routes during the rides on the lookout-for or waiting for an S.O.S. call from a stranded tandem team, while remaining calm, cool and collective, never mind just being a really enjoyable couple who have a sincere desire to help folks better-enjoy their cycling experience.
And, our thanks as always to our GTR Co-Directors, Roger & Eve. Another great event, even if we only were able to enjoy 1.3 of the 3.0 rides! We’ll definitely be back for our 24th, so long as it’s within our control!
Our 2023 GTR Experience
Thursday, May 18th, began as a somewhat busy morning where domestic chores that needed to be taken care of before leaving for a long weekend needed to be attended-to. By 10:30am, the truck was packed with our luggage, tandem and the related accouterments for three days of tandem cycling and we headed-off on what was actually a very the trash and getting everything packed in the truck before heading off on a very relaxing, easy but long-feeling drive through Columbus, Georgia on Interstate 85 and Interstate 185 and other backroads instead of down Interstate 75. Some 4.5-hours and 274-miles later we arrived in Thomasville, Georgia, at the Best Western Plus, host hotel.
One of the mysteries of the host hotel was why none of the staff members could explain what the “Plus” meant, even making its way into one of GTR Co-Direct Roger S’s monologue at Saturday’s riders meeting. So, being I curious and always wanting to share what I’ve learned, “Best Western Plus is slightly more upscale than Best Western. Most of the differences lie in the exterior décor, quality of the common areas, and slightly newer guest rooms.”
We joined the other folks from the rally at Hubs & Hops for registration check-in, a meet & greet and dinner where we ran into quite a few old friends who weren’t GTR regulars. After dinner at Hubs and Hops — a very tasty meatloaf sandwich — we heading back to the hotel for an early turn-in as I’d not slept well for the past few nights and hoped to catch up on my sleep.
Friday, May 19th began early at 6:30am, given we had to be at the riders meeting 20-minutes away from the hotel by 8:30am. The breakfast fare was par for the course of similar IHG and Hilton peer-brand properties, but the hotel lobby did really have the seating capacity needed for the throughput of 100 or so guests in the space of 60-minutes.
We had a good ride, saw a lot of old friends and rode well on the 36-mile-long route where we were always riding with a few other couples. The terrain was very nice, tandem-friendly and we had zero issues with motorists, which is nice.
Following the ride, we drove back to downtown Thomasville, parked and wandered down the main drag — Broad Street, with the lovely county courthouse at the center of town –– and were pleasantly pleased to find a Mexican cantina called Coyoacana. We both enjoyed a very tasty post-ride Margarita and light but filling fare for lunch.
Back at the hotel while watching golf, the local news break at 6:00pm aired the video report produced earlier in the day at the Georgia Tandem Rally remote start, which was well-done… perhaps with some directing tips from our GTR co-directors who are both retired CNN Corp. news directors. After splitting an appetized for our dinner Longhorn Steakhouse, we headed to the ice cream social back in downtown Thomasville, Georgia. Once again, we were able to catch up and visit with quite a few friends, many we’d not seen in quite a while, before heading back to the hotel to catch some of the Stanley Cup Playoffs before turning-in.
It was on Saturday, May 20th when what started-out as another enjoyable start of the day with a convenient ride start from our host hotel went from fabulous to failure in a mere 11-miles. Being mindful of our scant riding time and miles over the past year, particularly during the first half of 2023, we opted to take the short (32-mile) route again. It turned-out to be a mixed-blessing for us.
Death of a Derailleur
We we’re actually feeling really good and riding well, that was right up and until the 11-mile mark. As we slowed while coming up to an intersection, my attention was focused on checking for cross traffic and then it happened!
In retrospect, as we transitioned from coasting to pedaling ahead of the stop-sign and turn, we apparently ran-over a large piece of heavy-gauge wire at sitting on the chip-seal road surface with the front tire. Like many things with any length laying on the road — think nails, screws, etc. — the piece of wire was kicked-up and bounced… right into our drive chain where it was pulled into the rear derailleur.
After coming to very quick stop by locking-up the rear wheel based on the carnage I was hearing from behind me, dismounting and then moving the the rear of the tandem, it was apparent we’d not even be able to convert the tandem into a single-speed based on what had happened. No, my initial assessment was, our ride was over and we’d need SAG support to get back to the the hotel.
We were very fortunate to have been riding with our friends Joanne & Alan as well as Mark and Teresa when this happened, both of whom stopped to help and support us. However, in A Stroke of Good Luck, about the time Joanne had called the rally’s SAG support folks from The House of Tandems — our friends Ric and Marsha — they just happened upon us. Our friends rode on now that we were in good the good hands of Ric and Marsha, as Ric helped to confirm our Calfee was now in roadkill status and was able to give us and the disabled tandem a ride back to the hotel. Whew, good thing we weren’t riding the triplet when that happened: another Stroke of Good Luck.
Once back my truck in the hotel parking lot, I pulled out some medium-size crescent wrenches to see if there was any hope of straightening the rear hanger before going on a scavenger hunt for an older Shimano 9/10 speed SGS rear derailleur: a new chain and cable were at hand. However, it quickly became clear this was not something I wanted to ‘react‘ to and needed to take home and look at after a good night’s rest the following day.
However, based on my triage, here’s what happened:
A 13-in long piece of large gauge wire with a hook on one end had been kicked-up and somehow ended up landing on the top-side of the bottom, return run of the drive chain…. what were the odds of that happening?
Once captured by the moving chain, it was pulled-into the rear idler wheel and derailleur cage.
As it made contact with the cage it was immediately pressed into the cage and idler wheel by the chain
The chain plates were deformed and twisted around the wire as the idler wheel end of the derailleur hanger was pushed back and left into the rotating spoke network.
The leverage and loads cause as the cage was caught and twisted by the rear wheel, added more loading to the wire/chain being pulled into the idler wheel, while deforming the jockey wheel end of the cage and also tearing it away from the derailleur body at the spring-pivot.
These twisting loads on the derailleur firmly affixed by an M10x1 bolt to the titanium hanger, in turn, bent and twisted the derailleur hanger end of the rear drop-out inward, merely deforming some of the M10 bolt’s threads in the process (Discovered when removing the rear derailleur on the road).
The twisting movement of the derailleur also bent the threaded skewer at the skewer nut (Also discovered when working to clear the rear wheel and rear derailleur parts from the frame at the side of the road).
As you’d expect, the rear wheel was also now out of true with several drive-side, nicked spokes making the future status of the wheel suspect, even with re-truing.
At left, above, is the wire that somehow found it’s way onto the drive chain of our tandem. At right is the mangled rear derailleur body, cage plates and idler wheel with the bent chain links where the wire, chain and idler wheel all met.
Given the tools we had to work with where we were and the need for an older-model Shimano 9/10 speed derailleur that was compatible with our shifters, the rest of our time at the rally was likely at an end. While titanium is more mailable than aluminum or steel, it is incredibly hard and needed to be rigidly supported above and below the bend with large levers to focus the bending forces where they were needed to reverse the damage, as well as some very sturdy bracing on on the frame during the bending process. A folding work stand and tool-box tools just wouldn’t be up to the task. In fact, my initial instinct was it might even have to go back to Calfee once I could look at it more closely and compare it to some older photos relative to some marks on the rear-radius of the hanger.
Given we were now without a tandem, there was no point in spending another afternoon in Thomasville where it was graduation day at both high schools and all of the ‘good restaurants’ would likely be packed that evening — just as we found last night — so we opted to pass on the Taco Buffet lunch at the hotel, packed-up and headed home early. Thankfully, it was another easy drive that had us back at home shortly after 3:00pm.
Sorting Out The Frame, Wheel and Replacing the Derailleur
Sunday, 21 May: I began my day early out in the garage where I believed I’d be able to straighten-out the titanium rear derailleur hanger now that I had access to my sturdy work-stand, a large and padded Lally Column for bracing the tandem’s frame and some really big 12″ crescent wrenches. Sure enough, with the proper two-point leverage above and below the bend in the very malleable, but also very hard titanium part, I was able to straighten it back out, mitigating the need to send it off to Calfee in California for repair or replacement.
With the frame looking like it may not need to go back to Calfee for repair — at least near term, I’ll have to keep an eye on that right rear-drop-out going forward — I went in search of a derailleur replacement. I found a new-in-box (NIB) 1999 Shimano RD-M952 SGS XTR rear derailleur up in Oregon to replace the one that was destroyed, but it was listed on an Ebay-like website with an asking price of $175 + $10 shipping. I’d say that seems steep, but there are some folks out there asking insane amounts for even used M952 derailleurs. I attempted to make an offer on it, but the auction system never notified the seller there was an offer pending review, something I discovered only after cooling my heels for 18-hours before sending a note withdrawing my offer. I may still go back to it if it remains out there and find I’m unhappy with my other options or what I end up with.
To make a long story short, as I searched for other rear derailleur options remembering that I’m running older Shimano Ultegra 6703 model, 10 speed shifters and HG 10-speed cassettes, I quickly discovered that a lot has changed in Shimano componentry over the years.
While I had no problem running the 1999 XTR 9 speed derailleur with the 6703 10 speed shifters, the shifting ratios were changed for mountain bike components a few years back such that I can’t use newer XT RD-M786 SGS 10-speed mountain bike rear derailleurs. It also turns out, that even the newer Ultegra RD R8000 GS 11-speed rear derailleurs use a different shifting ratio making them non-compatible with my 6703 10 speed shifters. That’ll teach me to fall behind, and I’m way behind. Thankfully, I was able to return two of the three shifters I bought by mistake and I have the 3rd listed on Ebay as the seller doesn’t accept returns.
What I ultimately ended up with was a older NIB Shimano Deore RD-M591 SGS 9 speed rear derailleur that should be here on 29 May. While not as iconic as the XTR with it’s grey/bronze finish and distinctive body shape, the lowly black Deore should work just as well for about one-third the cost… as if cost is really an object in my penny-wise, pound-foolish world.
Monday, 22 May: I spent some of my time re-sealing the tubeless tires on our Fandango fat-tire, gravel tandem in case we could find the time and energy to head down to the Silver Comet for a ride this coming week as the Calfee would still be waiting on a derailleur and out of service. This assumes that after having a chunk of skin on my scalp removed tomorrow I’ll be able to so something like go out for a bicycle ride, hike, etc.
Wednesday, 24 May: As mentioned earlier, the XT RD-M786 SGS rear-derailleur I purchased for the Calfee arrived and I discovered while it’s designated as a Shimano 10-speed model, it’s not compatible with older mountain or road bicycle shifters, so that one’s going back along with an XT RD-M786 GS model that has the same problem. So, I’m still in a holding pattern waiting for the Shimano Deore RD-M591 SGS rear derailleur that’s almost a week-out. I went ahead and also re-trued/tensioned the rear wheel on the Calfee since I had some spare time and I had the bike down and in the workstand making it a no-brainer to pull the rear wheel and put it in the truing stand. Oh yeah, no bike rides, hikes, etc. until 30 May at the earliest and I now know why: ugg.
Tuesday, 30 May: Well, I won’t suggest it’s as good as new since I still have some spokes that may need replacement, and I’ve not yet had a chance to buy or borrow a Park Tool DAG-2.2 Derailleur Hanger Alignment Gauge to check the alignment, my MA1-eyeball alignment gauge and the function of the RD after being installed suggests it’s pretty darn close to where it should be. While vanity suggested I should have dropped $185 for the NIB XTR RD-M952 SGS rear derailleur to replace the one that was destroyed, prudence suggested the Deore RD-M591 SGS will work just as well, even if it doesn’t ‘look’ as chi-chi as the XTR.
Most importantly, itshifted well in the work-stand and I dialed-it-in riding solo around the neighborhood today. I’ll be anxious to see how it does with both of us putting a load into the drivetrain in terms of shifting performance, seeing if the rear wheel remains true with its ‘nicked’ spokes and making sure the nick in the rear derailleur hanger doesn’t ‘grow’ over time. And, well, who knows what other yet-discovered evils may lurk in other parts that were ‘stressed’ by the ‘event.
Update: Shakedown Ride
Thursday, 1 June: Miss Debbie and I were able to get out on the Calfee for a 15-mile shake-down ride from the house. The shifting performance was really quite good, almost back where it was with the exception of some occasional skipping when riding in the 12T and 13T cogs which seemed to coincide with the SRAM PowerLock Chain Connector passing through the cassette. My guess was, I may have inadvertently installed a used 9-speed PowerLock instead of a 10-speed model as the new one that came with the new SRAM X10 chain went missing.
Once back at the house, a visual check and inspection of the PowerLock link confirmed its fit wasn’t as tight as I would have expected. So, I think we’re good-to-go, aside from keeping an eye on the rear wheel’s true given the 2-3 ‘nicked’ spokes, and of course keeping an eye on the rear hanger’s nick for any signs of crack propagation I went ahead and ordered a Park Tool DAG 2.2 Derailleur Alignment Gauge that will be here tomorrow (a) because I tend to come up with reasons why I need new tools, (b) it will be interesting to see how well-aligned I was able to get it based on eye-sight and instinct, (c) check the rest of our bicycle fleet, and (d) the opportunity cost isn’t all that much given the time/cost of travelling to a bike shop to borrow one.
Dialing-it-in with the DAG 2.2
Wow! Somewhat analogous to looking at something under a microscope where everything is magnified, the Park Tool DAG 2.2 Derailleur Alignment Gauge does just that with the geometry of the rear derailleur hanger’s alignment with the rear wheel.
#1: You have to be sure your rear wheel’s rim & brake track is running true to the drop-outs in the frame.
#2: The DAG 2.2 once installed in the hanger drop-out in place of the rear derailleur will magnify the difference of the angle of incidence between the hanger and the wheel at the four critical points: 0° and 180°, and 90° and 270°.
#3: My MA-1 eyeball said it was pretty close, the DAG 2.2 said it was not, in both dimensions.
#4: Using the depth rod of a dial-caliper, it took all of 5-minutes to get the four points aligned to the same off-set on the DAG’s indicator rod.
#5: With the derailleur back on the bike, the shifting was flawless. Here’s hoping we see the same on the road, and I suspect we will.
It’s all in the attention to details, following “the book” and having both the right equipment and discipline to use it!
The Catalyst Event That Brought About The Question
We just attended our 23rd Georgia Tandem Rally back on May 18th at Thomasville, Georgia. Sadly, it came to a sudden and expected end on May 20th when we had a major on-road mechanical incident where a piece of debris was kicked-up from the road and into our Calfee tandem’s drivetrain about 11-miles into our ride. The piece of heavy gauge wire invariably found its way onto our drive-chain, tearing apart our derailleur and bending the titanium derailleur hanger / rear drop-out..
I’ll offer more details in a subsequent post, but it suffices to say, our second multi-day tandem event since last year’s LaGrange GTR Pre-Tour and Georgia Tandem Rally in Carrolton gave me a lot of time to think about how little time I spent on a bicycle over the past 12-months and how easy it’s become to step-back from riding when there’s a good excuse, like the threat of rain or a mechanical that suggests I need a fresh and sustained infusion of cycling mojo.
Have Life, Fate & Weather Conspired to Erode My Mojo…?
I posed this question to myself via this blog entry for three reasons:
First, because it’s truly something I had on my mind and then quantified when I took a look back at the number of times I did get out for a ride over just the past twelve months and the related ‘reasons’ — many of which were legitimate, but others are merely excuses — why I was not able or decided against riding more often.
Second, because now beginning my 64th trip around the Sun a few weeks back, I suspect I’m not the only cyclist to find themselves on introspection island regarding the path forward.
Third, because I want to be able to look back in another year to see how I dealt with the erosion of my Cycling Mojo… to so speak.
TMI Warning:I call it my Cycling Mojo only because I had to deal with the loss of my Sailing Mojo back in the 1989-1991 when the coup de grace was moving from being less than an hour’s drive from the ocean and a 20-minute drive from our local sailing cove at Perris Lake while living in Redlands, California to Georgia in 1991. I brought my Hobie 16′ catamaran to Georgia when I moved here in 1991 with great expectations — perhaps unrealistic expectations, as it sat in my garage for a couple years before I finally admitted to myself it was time to close that chapter and sold it.
More recently,I experienced the loss of my Moto Mojo back in 2011 and began to sell-off my motorcycles, got it back in a big way in 2012 and amassed as many as five motorcycles before I began to thin the herd. That process was accelerated by motorists who ran into “us” in 2015 and then ‘”me” in 2017 that put me on a path to have just the one remaining Harley touring bike that’s gone almost unused since May of 2021, having lost my Moto Mojo again: I’m still struggling with selling it and closing that chapter. Our only ‘hope’ is perhaps finding a local Harley Owner’s Group that’s as active as the one friend’s in Tennessee belong to as the various road-trips they take which is of great interest to Miss Debbie.
Background and my Summary List of Excuses
As I thought about this past year, I honestly couldn’t decide if it was just a string of both planned and unplanned events, intermixed with far-less than ideal weather and very high pollen and mold issues over the past 12-months that have truly hindered my cycling activity, or has my innate and nurtured cycling mojo been hit with Low-C, the cycling equivalent of Low-T or TD?
In terms of the events, coming on the heels of the high-watermark of the pandemic, we’ve had more than our fair share of significant life events in recent months that have taken us away from home to visit, help-out, or deal with family matters for perhaps 10-12 of 50 weeks, intermixed with taking at least another four weeks associated with re-creational travel. Add to that a very busy and growing schedule of planned events here in Georgia, and a few personal health issues that have kept both of us down for a few weeks at a time, it begins to take its toll in many different ways.
However, with respect to cycling, given the impact to my planned, weekly riding schedule that has a narrow mid-morning window when it’s even remotely safe to take a 90-minute, 25-mile ride from the house, even when I can ride I struggle with how far my cycling fitness has fallen-off, which has shifted from being an inspiration to find more saddle-time, to creating that waning interest as my cycling fitness falls to record lows as an adult.
Coupled with that has been our lack of time spent riding the tandem which has an even more narrow-window given Debbie’s schedule attending to time with the grandkids (a good thing), her daily in-home-gym workouts (another good thing), dislike of riding on public roads around our home (a sign of the times), and concerns about riding off-road and having a fall (a valid concern given her bone-health), that has created the same set of mixed feeling about cycling –– is it still passion, just exercise, or are we nearing the end of a life chapter — when we do find time to get out, usually on our local rails-to-trails venue, The Silver Comet… about a 30-minute drive from the house.
And then, there was of course, my discovery of the Savoy Automobile Museum in May last year, followed by many, many trips and then the creation of a digital scrapbook / blog that I’ve spent way too much time on: as in, more time than a full-time job would have consumed. To make matters worse, beginning in January I volunteered to be docent which further pulled-me away from the house during my prime-riding time. I’ve since decided that wasn’t a great fit and stepped-back from that. My current challenge is trying to limit my scrapbook entries to just photos and hyperlinks to web-based sources I find on only certain vehicles of interest instead of trying to learn everything I can about all of the vehicles in each exhibit. I created my magnum opus with the 75-Years of Porsche exhibit by creating a “blog entry” with over 56,000 words and 365 images for the 13 cars on display. Yeah, I needed to step-way back from that as doing so will open-up a lot of riding and gym time.
Whatever it is, it has me scratching my head instead of getting myself on a bicycle and either hitting the road or a trail at least several times a week. I/we also need to seek-out opportunities to ride with others, attending more distant tandem rallies or even being brave enough to do a local charity ride to help feed my need to replenish my Cycling Mojo, never mind getting out of the office and away from the house to engage and socialize with other folks who share a similar interest.
So, What’s Ahead and How Do I Get my Mojo Back?
All options are available to us, notwithstanding when life once again dictates a change in plans.
Our work-around for the temporarily road tandem was taking our Fandango, fat-tire gravel tandem down to the Silver Comet Trail to see how it performs on the same 25-mile out-and-back. But, as noted, that plan was put asunder by my 10-day time-out once the weather would have permitted an outing. So, that’s on the list for either tomorrow or Friday.
Getting back into a rhythm for riding at home is a must for me, as are getting out at least once a week on the tandem, albeit most likely at the Silver Comet Trail.
We’d like to head back to Jekyll Island for a few days, but a quick look at room rates at Home2 seem to suggest this is prime-time for seasonal tourism with high room costs, and likely a lot of people which would take-away from our enjoyment of the bike trails and restaurants given they’d likely be crowded.
Then again, our October trip came on the heels of Hurricane Irma which may have explained the reasonable room rates and light crowds along the part of the Atlantic cost Irma by-passed.
I still need to sell my 1997 Ventana Marble Peak mountain bike to open-up the opportunity to replace it with a new-tech, 27.5 bike, but in the mean time I may just need to get it dirty again when I’m not able to get on the local roads between 9am – 11:30am during the week.
Even when school’s out, the same traffic patterns seem to remain, e.g., landscapers don’t go on summer break and kids need to get to and from their summer programs.
We’d like to expand our horizons and attend some more distant tandem rallies, so we’ll look closely at that option: after all, we do have a travel tandem so air travel is only a minor annoyance when travelling with a large, right-at-the-limit travel case.
And, there are the local weekday group rides and many charity rides on weekends that I need to look into.
Anyway, something’s got to give or go here, and that’s me: I need to stop finding excuses, get-off-my-butt, and get-going.
Attachment 1: For Those with an Interest…. it’s probably a lot of TMI*
*Too Much Information
A Recap of the Past 12-Months, from a Cycling Point of View
May 2022: Our very good time at the 2022 Georgia Tandem Rally Pre-Tour and Rally did get voluntarily cut-short when we opted to pass on the final, Sunday ride. We’d been away from home for six-days and would be making a very-long drive very-early on the coming Tuesday morning, and we needed some time to take care of things at home on Sunday afternoon and Monday.
June: Other than a few home projects, it was primarily my existing allergies coupled with sky-high mold-counts that was creating all kinds of issues for me, e.g., coughing, being tired, chest congestion, etc. So, rather than getting out for a vigorous workout and ingesting all of that junk, we spent quite a few days visiting local museums or taking fitness walks during the month instead of getting out and cycling, even on the ‘safer days’ after rain storms when pollen and mold levels tend to fall,.
July: For our July visit to Pennsylvania, it was a combination 4-day mini-vacation / 29th anniversary trip to Washington, D.C. to take in quite a few sights over three nights and days before travelling to Annapolis, MD, where we celebrated our Anniversary and spent the night before heading to Pennsylvania once again for a week-long visit.
Back at home I was able to get in a couple rides from the house before and after our trip when it wasn’t raining or the pollen & mold levels weren’t high-enough to cause some respiratory issues to fester, but not logging the 75-100 miles a week that I needed to sustain my basic level of cycling fitness… and cycling mojo.
August: I got off to a great start during the last week of July with a couple of bicycle rides from the house in the morning before it got too darn hot to be good for my health. As it was in June & July, our biggest problem with outdoor activities had been high humidity pushing the heat index (how hot it feels, regardless of the air temperature) into the 100°’s before noon, and to 110° by mid-afternoon, coupled with those extremely high levels of mold throughout the latter part of Spring and now all of the summer. I suspect it was mold that was my downfall in terms of keeping me inside instead of getting out for more bike rides and hikes. I was hoping for a break in the mold counts, as I could otherwise deal with the heat.
We also had more than our fair share of afternoon showers and a few strong storms pass through during the month on what were typically mostly cloudy or overcast days with a few hours of sunshine now and again. The latter afforded me two days and 50-miles of riding on 8 & 9 August before the weather turned against me during my 9:30am – 11:30am ride-time window.
Although there was a Georgia Tandem Club ride scheduled for the 28th, with rain in the forecast, neither Debbie nor I were anxious to jump in the car for a 3-4 hour, round trip drive through Atlanta area traffic for a 3-hour ride — one that could potentially be rained-out — for lunch in Newnan, Georgia, so we opted to pass on that ride opportunity. Instead, we paid another visit to the Booth Western Art Museum since it was raining in our area, even though it turned out to be a pretty nice day for a tandem ride down in Newnan: go figure.
September: We had showers on-and-off over late August & early September that sometimes came through overnight, or in the early morning, right after noon or in the late afternoon… sometimes all in the same day. So, it made outdoor activities a bit of a challenge, even our afternoon window for hikes up the mountain. However, despite the limited windows, I was able to get out on my single bike and ride from the house during the last week of August then we gave the tandem a try from the house on a Saturday morning, even though I try to avoid riding from the house on weekends. Traffic was, well, not great and somewhat dampened our spirits, both during and after the ride. We gave it another shot on our single bikes Sunday and it wasn’t much better. Motorists have just gotten to so distracted and use such poor judgement these days, putting us, other motorists and themselves at risk for absolutely no reason beyond lack of consideration, tolerance or prudence.
However, it may have been on Wednesday, 7 Sept, when we were able to put the tandem in the truck and head down to the Silver Comet Trail for the first time since early May. We had a really good 25-mile, out and back ride on what was a damp trail given all the rain and shade that lets it stay moist in our humid climate.
Dirty GTR: As planned, we headed down to Forsythe, Georgia, on Thursday 8 September for the “Dirty Georgia Tandem Rally.” For Friday’s ride, it was overcast with a threat of rain but we were able to get in 25-miles of our 26-mile ride before the rain began to fall. It was great to be out riding again with other folks, even though we essentially rode by ourselves most of the time just to keep it safe while riding at our own tempo given it was still off-road riding that can at times spook Miss Debbie, and for good reason: a fall could be very serious for her.
On Saturday, as we headed out to the truck for the 20-minute drive to the remote start, it looked like it had been raining with a light rain still falling. In fact, we were standing inside a cloud, with the same effect as a light rain. Given we’d be riding on dirt and gravel roads, Debbie was quick to turn-around and say “I don’t think so,” so we let our friends and hosts know we’d be heading home, as Sunday’s forecast was still iffy. We later learned everyone else went ahead, did the ride and had a good time despite the damp conditions: Sunday turned out to be nice and sunny for them. While I would have really enjoyed getting in those two extra rides, I know we made the right call for us: happy wife, happy life!
Back at Home: As always, ragweed and other weeds began popping again such that getting out for a bike ride or hike become double-edge sword activities: while they’re enjoyable and a good form of exercise, we end up with runny-noses, sneezing, coughing, rubbing our eyes and all of that stuff. And, if to make that point to myself, on Wednesday, 14 Sept, I was able to get out for a ride from the house, which felt good and traffic behaved. If the allergy forecast had been accurate, I “should” have had had a few more good days for riding… as the pollen counts weren’t too bad. Yeah, well… the pollen counts were wrong and I didn’t even need to check the numbers to know: I could feel it my chest after Wednesday’s ride from the house.
October: Knowing we’d be making a couple trips back to Pennsylvania before the end of the year, we decided to take a quick, mid-week, 4-night trip to South Georgia / North Florida coast with a night in Savannah, two-nights on Jekyll Island and a night in Jacksonville, Florida. While there were a few highpoints during the trip — e.g., our architectural tour in Savannah and a visit to see ‘The Brumos Collection’ of cars in Jacksonville — the most rewarding and one of the primary motivations of our trip were two days of riding our Fandango fat-tire, off-road tandem at Jekyll Island on 5 & 6 October. The mixed paved multi-use-path, bike-lane and packed-sand-trails that made up our 25-mile out-and-back ride both mornings was exactly what we needed.
As for the rest of the month back at home, and as mentioned, while the weather had “looked lovely” with lots of sunshine and very little rain throughout the summer and then into fall, we still had the same extremely high mold counts we’d seen all summer, followed by ragweed and other weed pollens exploding again in the fall, which made getting out for a hike or bike ride a mixed-blessing. While both mentally and physically beneficial, it came with hours of itchy eyes, sneezing, sinus issues and coughing… we’ll let’s just call it increased levels of those things. Even staying inside except to run errands and do some yard work seemed to bring about the same symptoms, at least for us here in Georgia. And, we’d also had a cold front move-in, which sent the early AM temps in to the upper 40’s which on many days never made it out of the mid-50’s. Coming on the heels of recent 90 degree temps, 40’s and 50’s felt pretty darn uninviting, especially when mixed with 12-20 mph winds stirring up dust and what not.
November: We had a somewhat mild start to November where I was able to enjoy getting out for a 25-mile bicycle ride on a lovely, sunny day with 77F degree temps, albeit with a lot of wind early-on. However, our weather then plunged into cloudy days with overnight temps falling into freezing levels and rain… lots and lots of rain. And, as we looked forward to the Thanksgiving holiday at home with the kids and grandkids and perhaps some post-holiday cycling while people are napping or glued to TVs instead of out driving on our local roads, we unexpectedly found ourselves headed to Pennsylvania at 2:00am on Friday, 18 November to help with a family matter. It would be 10-days later before we were back home.
December: Even though we were back at home, let’s just say prevailing events both planned and unplanned that sent us to Pennsylvania a few weeks early and what I’ll just call a ‘life event’ kept cycling out of the picture until late December.
In fact, it was on Thursday, 29 December, that we suddenly and unexpectedly had warm temperatures and I was finally able to get my day started with a short, 15-mile bike ride from the house. It was the first time I was able to ride since 8 November, due to weather, the trip to Pennsylvania, more weather delays, family matters, etc. The first part of my ride felt good, but that may have been because I had a slight tail wind that I had to ride into on the way home, drawing down my enthusiasm a bit as I realizedmy cycling form had not somehow magically remained unaffected by not getting in much exercise, eating out-too-much and putting on a few more pounds and inches than I was happy with.
January 2023: The month did not begin well for us when we unexpectedly had another ‘life event’ with a family member here in Georgia. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it was about a week after the services that I began to feel like I was coming down with the flu… or something with flu-like symptoms. Sure enough, despite the vaccines and boosters, I tested positive for Covid. It was mild-flu-like, and not nearly as bad as what many others had to deal with. It was a few days later that Debbie also tested positive, even though she’d had Covid in July 2020, been fully-vaccinated and also had a booster. So, before long, January was quickly coming to and end. Moreover, we needed to make a trip back to Pennsylvania as soon as we were both deemed “over Covid and non-contagious” before doing so, remembering we didn’t want to put family and others at risk.
February: We were back from Pennsylvania on 3 February, and after taking a day to do laundry and re-pack, we headed to Ft Lauderdale, Florida to catch a much-needed / almost cancelled five-day cruise on 6 – 10 February. Back at home, a variety of things, plus winter weather kept me off my bicycle until the weather finally improved and I was able to get our for my 1st ride of 2023 on the last day of the month while Debbie was spending a day with one of our granddaughters. It felt good to get out, as the last time I’d ridden was two-months back on 29 December.
March: I was encouraged when just a few days later on 6 March I was able to get out for another wonderful, much needed 25-mile ride. Once again, weather and pollen quickly re-entered the picutre and began to figure into my riding plans — along with other demands placed on our time — and in short order it was about time to make another week-long trip up to Pennsylvania.
April: We were home for almost a week when our presence in Pennsylvania would be needed again near-term. We headed up on 16 April and were on our way home on 23 April. However, we’d have just a day-and-a-half at home before we had to once again drive to Orlando, Florida, on 25 April as we were booked on a 6-day ‘birthday cruise’ for Debbie from 26 April to 1 May. So, as you can see, it was another month where cycling was not front and center.
May: It was on 7 May when Debbie joined me for a bike ride from the house on our single bikes, remembering we were scheduled to be at the Georgia Tandem Rally (GTR) for three days of riding between 18-21 May. On 13 May I headed out for a ride on my own and on 14 May, Debbie joined me for a short, 15-mile ride on the tandem from the house in part to get in some saddle time before GTR. On 16 May we packed the tandem in the truck and made the 30-minute drive down to the Silver Comet Trail for a 25-mile ride, upping up our total tandem-riding miles for the year to 40.
GTR: On Thursday, 18 May, it was around 10:30am when we began the 4.5-hour, 274-mile drive to Thomasville, Georgia, for GTR. On Friday, we had a great ride where we saw a lot of old friends, felt we rode well on the 36-mile-long route despite our scant mileage individually and collectively, were always riding along side at least one other couple, often with a few others, but were prudent in taking the shorter of the three route options.
On Saturday, we opted to take the shortest (32-mile) route again — noting yesterday’s ride left us both with sore sit-bones — and were actually feeling really good and riding well. In fact, we’d reminded ourselves while talking with another couple during Friday’s ride of the importance of taking ‘butt breaks’ every 10-15 minutes or so, never mind staying hydrated using the same intervals and having a wonderful, strong-feeling ride on what was shaping-up to be a great ride.
That was, right up and until the 11-mile mark when, as we were slowly riding up to an intersection and my attention was focused on cross traffic, we apparently rode over a large piece of heavy-gauge wire hiding in the cracks and crevices of the chip-seal road surface. It was apparently kicked-up by the front tire and bounced into our drive chain where it was pulled into the rear derailleur. It essentially tore the derailleur off the frame while also bending the titanium derailleur hanger on our frame, ending our ride as well as the rest of our time at the rally as it was not ‘field repairable’ and might have to go back to Calfee once I could look at it more closely.
If you’ve read this far, thanks for your interest! I’m putting the slightly more detailed account of our GTR experience and the rest of the tandem repair saga into another, standalone blog entry as this one is way too long already.
Back at home, my latest impediment to cycling was a medical procedure on 24 May that came with a 10-day ‘time-out’ from hiking, biking, other strenuous activity, which is why I have all of this extra time in the office at home here on Day #9 to work on this ‘article.’
Several of these events have upcoming deadlines or key dates, and FWIW… The Georgia Tandem Rally is about to close registration as it has surpassed it’s 80-team limit.
Please advise of any other updates or known, regional tandem events that should be considered for addition to our webpage.
COWs Spring Rally: 19-21 May 2023, Fitchburg, Wisconsin. $95 for COWs Membership + Two Rally Banquet Tickets; Host Hotel is The Wyndham Garden Inn @ $129/night + tax but 50 room block expires on 18 April..(608) 571-6326 — Mention “Couples in Wheels” to get the $129 + tax rate (note: if prompted, select option #2 when calling to be connected with the local hotel to make your reservation).
Eastern Tandem Rally: 4-7 Aug 2023, Simsbury, CT. Registration Opens 11 April. The registration cost is $245.00/per person, $490.00/per team. The host hotel is the Simsbury Inn, a small boutique-style hotel where a block of 80 rooms has been set aside: Fri/Sat $234.50 / night (taxes included); Sun-Thur $177.10 / night (taxes inc). The Simsbury Inn has a “sister hotel” about 4 miles away with additional rooms if the main hotel fills up.
I did a quick check of the traditional rallies that had not yet posted updates and was pleased to see several had posted either SAVE THE DATE or event information and links to registration, as follows:
COWs Spring Rally: 19-21 May 2023, Madison, Wisconsin. SAVE THE DATE, Details forthcoming.
Canadian Tandem Rally: 26-29 May 2023, Welland, Ontario, “The Niagara Region of Ontario.” Registration can be found HERE. Cost is $275/per couple, plus lodging on your own. The host hotel Best Western City Suites block of rooms has been filled; however, additional rooms should be available at the Holiday Inn, Welland. For additional information Email: canadiantandemrally@gmail.com
SHAMELESS PROMOTION FOR FRIENDS SELLING ATOC TANDEM TOPPER, $175
ATOC Tandem Topper, including side brace, normally used for triplets and quads, but adds stability to a tandem.
The ATOC Tandem Topper is designed to haul a tandem bicycle on the roof rack of a car (either Thule or Yakima bars).
The fork mount swivels, allowing the tandem to rest the rear wheel on the ground while attaching to the fork to the rack. Then just lift and swivel the bike up on the roof.
We used the side brace to add stability by attaching it to one of the seat posts and then to the roof rack bar. The side brace extends from 25″ to 45″.
The Tandem Topper comes in 2 pieces. You can use just the front tray for a single bike. The front tray is 50.5″ long and the rear extension tray is 29.5″ long. Overall length with both pieces connected is 76″.
Minimum spacing between roof rack bars is 22″. The front mount is stationary, while the rear can be positioned anywhere along the 76″ long rack.
We are currently in Florida for the winter, but will be back in the Stone Mountain area in early April, 2023
Link to Stone Mountain Craigslist site with more photos and reply link.
Now added to both the Road and Off-Road (i.e., Gravel) Calendars
SAVE THE DATE: Fayetteville Tandem Weekend – 29 Sep – 1 Oct 2023, Fayetteville, Arkansas, hosted by Roxanne & Hank Theiss with support from TEAM HOTT – Houstonians on Tandems Together. See Flyer. Registration to be open early April 2023 at: https://hott.wildapricot.org/. For more information before please email Roxanne Theiss at r28moody@yahoo.com or Houstoniansontandems@gmail.com
I just checked and, sure enough, the Florida Panthers have posted-up additional details regarding their planned club weekend. Note that this is a “club member event;” however, non-members can become members by joining the Panthers and paying their very reasonable $20 membership fee. You can find their membership page here: http://floridatandemclub.org/join-us/
As for the Veterans Day Weekend event, you can find the information on their website at the following link: http://floridatandemclub.org/event/florida-tandem-rally-2022/ And, just to make it easy, I’ve also copied the content and posted it below.
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Florida Tandem Ride 2022 – UPDATED
November 11 @ 8:00 am – November 13 @ 5:00 pm
=============================== PLANT CITY TANDEM WEEKEND
The Florida PANTHERS are back with statewide gatherings, beginning with a weekend of organized rides In November in Plant City. Any member of the PANTHERS can attend and any bicyclist can join the PANTHERS.
Plant City is about 25 miles northeast of Tampa and well known for luscious strawberries and less-traveled roads for biking. The dates are Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend. The weekend will start with organized rides Friday morning and continue with an ice cream social Friday evening. Unlike a rally, the bike weekend is free to members.
John and Barbara Heineken will host the weekend, assisted by Art and Miriam Nordlinger. Group rides with set start times will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday, ranging from 20 to 44 miles in length. If anyone is interested in pre-rides, please let the Heinekens know via the PANTHERS Facebook page.
Weekend headquarters will be the Hampton Inn Plant City and the TownePlace Suites Plant City across the street. Fifteen rooms in each hotel have been reserved at rates ranging from $134 to $149 for club members. The rates are valid Thursday, Nov. 10, through Sunday, Nov. 13, and are good until Oct. 12.
. To join the PANTHERS, Click on TO JOIN, and then “Panthers Application 2020.” New PANTHERS will be emailed the link the special hotel rates.
Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted A 3-Foot Passing Lawwhereby motorists are required to afford cyclists 3-feet of distance between the cyclist and the mirror or any other part of their vehicle and any trailer being pulled-behind the vehicle when passing. 9 other states have variations on safe-passing laws pertaining to cyclists.
Only six states –– Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, New Mexico and Texas –– have no specific law pertaining to passing cyclists.
So, what does the 3-foot safe passing distance look like in practice?
Passenger Vehicle Visualization:
Here is a depiction of a scaled passenger vehicle — a late model Honda Accord — on roads that fall within the basic road design criteria used by state Departments of Transportation when approving road construction for secondary roads, i.e., having a width of between 9 to 12 feet per lane, with or without improved shoulders or curbs on some of the more common widths and types of roads many cyclists use and that are common where we live and cycle as well as drive:
Note the lane position of just a 6-foot-wide passenger car in all three different scenarios relative to the center line on a two-lane road. Even on the most generous roads with 12-foot-wide lanes, to afford a cyclist the legally required, minimal 3-feet of safe passing distance, the vehicle’s left-hand tires must be on the double-yellow center line. And, for both the 10-foot-wide and 9-foot-wide lane roads, the driver’s steering wheel must either be in-line with the double-yellow center line, or even well to the left of it.
Full-Size Truck Visualization:
These are the same scenarios, but with a late model full-size truck: a Chevrolet Silverado Crew Cab. Again, the only difference here is the size of the vehicle passing and overtaking the cyclist with on-coming traffic present.
Once again, note the lane position of just a 6.6-foot-wide full-size truck with wider mirrors in all three different scenarios relative to the center line on a two-lane road. As you’d expect, there is no scenario even on the 12-foot-wide road where the driver can “stay in the lane” and pass the cyclist while affording them the legally-required, 3-feet of safe passing distance.
Dually & Larger Truck Visualization:
The same scenarios again, but now with a larger truck, or in this visualization the ever-more popular and common dually crew cab: a late model, Ford F-350 dually.
The 8-foot-wide dually with even wider mirrors requires the driver to have the steering wheel of the truck lined-up with the centerline on a 12-foot-wide road: there is no way for the driver to “stay in the lane” and pass the cyclist while affording them the legally-required, 3-feet of safe passing distance. Once again, on the 10-foot and 9-foot lanes, there is no way to execute a safe pass with on-coming traffic present and even the 12-foot-wide road demands a lot of driver skill and judgement by the driver(s) in the oncoming lane, never mind being a no-go with a full-size truck or larger vehicles.
Bike Lanes, Vehicle Size and Some Additional Context
Bicycle Lanes: Even if we add-in a 6-foot-wide Bicycle Lane to the 12-foot-wide lane scenario, or any scenario, that does not exempt motorists from being attentive to the presence of cyclists and affording them the legally required 3-feet of safe passing distance. Moreover, if the bicycle lane is obstructed by a stopped or parked car as they often are, the cyclist will need to be afforded the same 3-feet of safe passing distance when they enter the through traffic lane.
Size Matters: When you’re riding an 18lb bicycle and have a combined weight with your bicycle of something under 170lbs, knowing that your “sharing the road” 3,500lb Honda Accords, 5,400lb Silverado’s and 8,000lb F-350 dually trucks, they should make the cyclist a humble road user who understands it’s “sharing the road” not owning the road since a cyclist is not going to “win” in a head-to-head contest of who’s right or wrong, it may just make you “dead right.”
Context Matters: Finally, here’s what an 18lb bicycle looks like with three-feet of space between it and a 3,500lb sedan: it’s really not a lot of room in the big scheme of things.
Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted A 3-Foot Passing Lawwhereby motorists are required to afford cyclists 3-feet of distance between the cyclist and the mirror or any other part of their vehicle and any trailer being pulled-behind the vehicle when passing.
Only six states –– Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, New Mexico and Texas –– have no specific law pertaining to passing cyclists.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, have adopted a 4-Foot “safe passing distance” standard for their law, noting Georgia where we live uses the 3-Foot standard, as well as requiring a motorist passing a bicycle to change lanes if the traffic conditions allow, including passing on a double yellow line (if they can safely do so).
Delaware, Kentucky, Nevada, Oklahoma and Washington State’s safe-passing distance laws require motorists to move into an adjacent lane if one exists when passing a cyclist.
There are a variety of other passing standards, everything from North Carolina’s 2-Foot passing requirement except in marked no-pass zones where the motorist is required to leave 4-Feet of clearance.
South Dakota also has a two-tiered passing law where a 3-Foot passing requirement applies on roads with posted speeds of 35 miles per hour or less, but is increased to a minimum of 6-Feet separation for roads with speed limits greater than 35 miles per hour.
The following attempts to summarize it in visual manner:
There is, of course, the challenge that exists with a motoring public that is likely unaware such laws even exist in their states unless they’ve had to recently take a written driver’s exam in order to receive their license, never mind self-enforcing the law if they were aware in a world where even the basic laws are ignored regarding:
coming to a complete stop at stop signs,
knowing what yield means and yielding at yield signs,
slowing and preparing to make a safe & controlled stop when a traffic light turns yellow instead of speeding-up
for those who don’t know, yellow caution lights are timed to cycle based on the posted speed limit of the road, e.g., a second of time is allotted for every 10-mph of the posted speed limit, such that on a road with a posted speed limit of 40-miles/hour the light will switch to yellow for 4-seconds before it switches to red…. the time needed to make a safe and controlled stop.
abiding by hands-free electronic devise usage laws,
making modifications to vehicles that are illegal, from window tint that’s too dark, to anything other than DOT-approved headlights and amber turn-signals or auxiliary fog lights on the front of a vehicle, excessive suspension lift, modifications to exhaust systems, etc.,
and the list goes on.
However, beyond that, far too many people are simply lousy at understanding concepts based on measures of distance, time, speed and apparently even money based on the amount of debt people rack-up, likely following the government’s example of budging and living within your means. But, I digress…
So, what does the 3-foot safe passing distance look like in practice?
I’ve had that on my mind many times over the past few years and motorists continue to drive with greater haste, aggressively or — worst-of-all — driving while distracted or otherwise impaired. While I’m unable to “fix” most of these problems, the one thing I’m trying to break the code on is how to remove ignorance, lack of knowledge or context from the equation by attempting to educate.
I’ve written a few Op/Eds on cycling safety over the past year, and I’m slowly learning through some of the other things that I have an interest in and write about, that far too few people have time to read, or an interest in reading anymore.
No, the entertainment and infotainment industry has won the game played by the tobacco, alcohol and like industries of getting people “hooked” on watching to be entertained and possibly informed but only in a way and with information that confirms their biases and appeals to their interests instead of reading for comprehension of new information and ideas that challenge and expand the thought process.
So, I’ll bring this Op/Ed intro to a close and introduce my visualization tools for the 3-foot passing law that answers the question, what does 3-feet look like in practice?
Passenger Vehicle Visualization:
Here is a depiction of a scaled passenger vehicle — a late model Honda Accord — on roads that fall within the basic road design criteria used by state Departments of Transportation when approving road construction for secondary roads, i.e., having a width of between 9 to 12 feet per lane, with or without improved shoulders or curbs on some of the more common widths and types of roads many cyclists use and that are common where we live and cycle as well as drive:
Note the lane position of just a 6-foot-wide passenger car in all three different scenarios relative to the center line on a two-lane road. Even on the most generous roads with 12-foot-wide lanes, to afford a cyclist the legally required, minimal 3-feet of safe passing distance, the vehicle’s left-hand tires must be on the double-yellow center line. And, for both the 10-foot-wide and 9-foot-wide lane roads, the driver’s steering wheel must either be in-line with the double-yellow center line, or even well to the left of it. I used the double-yellow-line to make two points: at least in north Georgia where we still have undeveloped areas with lots of trees and twisting, hilly roads where nearly all of the secondary, two-lanes roads use a double-yellow / no-passing line; however, the updated Georgia 3-foot passing law to specifically address and require a motorist passing a bicycle to change lanes if the traffic conditions allow, including passing on a double yellow line, yielding to on-coming traffic until they can safely do so. Note that on the narrowest of the roads, it is clearly unsafe to pass when on-coming traffic is present, but we see it all the time… with near accidents and a lot of angst demonstrated via the use of horns and, sadly, motorists who blame the cyclist instead of the driver using poor judgement and making unsafe passes.
Full-Size Truck Visualization:
These are the same scenarios, but with a late model full-size truck: a Chevrolet Silverado Crew Cab. Again, the only difference here is the size of the vehicle passing and overtaking the cyclist with on-coming traffic present.
Once again, note the lane position of just a 6.6-foot-wide full-size truck with wider mirrors in all three different scenarios relative to the center line on a two-lane road. As you’d expect, there is no scenario even on the 12-foot-wide road where the driver can “stay in the lane” and pass the cyclist while affording them the legally-required, 3-feet of safe passing distance. And, it’s not just the added 6″-width of the full-size truck, it’s the compounding effect of the truck’s larger mirrors on both sides of the vehicle that require the truck to cross the yellow line and encroach on the on-coming traffic lane far-more than was needed to execute a safe passing maneuver with a full-size car. Sadly, the desire to add massive, oversize tires and wheels with excessive positive off-set creates even more of a problem when the width of the tires exceeds even the width of the mirrors on some of these trucks. Bottom Line: on the 10-foot and 9-foot lanes, there is no way to execute a safe pass with on-coming traffic present: period!
Dually & Larger Truck Visualization:
The same scenarios again, but now with a larger truck, or in this visualization the ever-more popular and common dually crew cab: a late model, Ford F-350 dually.
The 8-foot-wide dually with even wider mirrors requires the driver to have the steering wheel of the truck lined-up with the centerline on a 12-foot-wide road: there is no way for the driver to “stay in the lane” and pass the cyclist while affording them the legally-required, 3-feet of safe passing distance. And, if like so many of these near commercial-sized vehicles it is used for towing 8-foot-wide trailers, the addition or extension of the massive towing mirrors further exacerbates just how far into the on-coming lane something like a dually would need to be when passing. Once again, on the 10-foot and 9-foot lanes, there is no way to execute a safe pass with on-coming traffic present and even the 12-foot-wide road demands a lot of driver skill and judgement by the driver(s) in the oncoming lane, never mind being a no-go with a full-size truck or larger vehicles. Yet, we see this far too often and many times while pulling the 9-foot-wide trailer.
Bike Lanes, Vehicle Size and Some Additional Context
Bicycle Lanes: Even if we add-in a 6-foot-wide Bicycle Lane to the 12-foot-wide lane scenario, or any scenario, that does not magically exempt motorists from being attentive to the presence of cyclists and affording them the legally required 3-feet of safe passing distance. The white line that separates the bicycle lane from the through-traffic lane is just that: it’s the fog-line for the through traffic that also helps to define the bicycle lane. Sadly, bicycle lanes are not routinely swept clean of debris and often times become littered with road debris that makes the outer portion of the lanes unsafe to use by cyclists, so the cyclist has no other choice but to ride along the fog line, next to the through traffic. And, therein lies the need for motorists to still afford 3-feet of safe passing distance by moving towards the centerline and, if needed, straddling it with the left wheels. Moreover, if the bicycle lane is obstructed by a stopped or parked car as they often are, the cyclist will need to be afforded the same 3-feet of safe passing distance when they enter the through traffic lane: there are no laws at least in Georgia that require cyclists to use a bicycle path or lane.
Size Matters: As a long-time motorcyclist as well as a cyclist, I’m reminded that as a “biker” we referred to motorists as “cagers,” people who were insulated from the world driving around protected by their steel cages. And, the bigger the steel cage, the more protected they felt and acted in terms of how they drove. “Might makes Right” when it comes to the open roads, where little people almost magically feel emboldened, entitled and enabled when they drive a vehicle that’s bigger than the others they encounter. So, when you’re riding an 18lb bicycle and have a combined weight with your bicycle of something under 170lbs, knowing that your “sharing the road” with Triple-E type personalities in their 3,500lb Honda Accords, 5,400lb Silverado’s and 8,000lb F-350 dually trucks do tend to make you a humble road user: it’s not like you’re going to “win” in a head-to-head contest of who’s right or wrong, it may just make you “dead right.” Sadly, most motorists don’t appreciate the responsibility they have driving these 1.5-ton, 2.75-ton and 4-ton vehicles around while talking on the phone, texting and otherwise feeling protected in those big steel cages. The only thing worse than an 8-ton steel cage being driven by a motorist in a hurry on the phone, is one towing an 8′-wide trailer who never, ever got one of those mathematics word-problems right, e.g., if Johnny was travelling 45mph in a 25mph zone with an 8-ton truck pulling an 8-ft wide, 20-ft long trailer and swerved around a cyclist riding 20mph, how close would the trailer come to hitting them?
Context Matters: So, as my get-off-the-stage photo, here’s what an 18lb bicycle looks like with three-feet of space between it and a 3,500lb sedan: it’s really not a lot of room in the big scheme of things, especially when we defined “social distancing” as a 6-foot separation for nearly 18-months.
Saranac Lake Tandem Rally, 26-28 August hosted by Gear-to-Go Tandems. Pre-Registration is underway at $90/tandem for the full-weekend and limited to 30 tandem teams per day. Lodging is on-your-own and available from multiple sources. Your hosts will provide the main course such as hamburgers, hot dogs, pulled pork BBQ, vegetarian lasagna, etc.; as well as a range of drinks, and picnic necessities.
Dirty GTR, 8-11 Sep, Forsyth, GA. The cost is $125/team and lodging is on your own, as are all meals. Hampton Inn Forsyth is the host hotel at a $124/night rate, plus taxes. See the GTR Website for further details regarding the event, registration and other information.
Fall 2022
Eastern Tandem Off-Road Rally (ETOR), 7-10 Oct, Pocahontas State Park, VA. By popular demand EOTR will return to the site of the 2021 EOTR that features both single-track and gravel roads. Cost is $30/team for incidentals plus your cost of lodging.
Florida Tandem Rally, 11-13 Nov – “Save the Date” for Veterans Day weekend, Nov. 11-1, in Plant City, Florida. Hosts John & Barbara Heineken will be providing additional details in a few weeks.
About the only thing tandem related we’ve done in a month was the Georgia tandem club ride back on 12 June. In fact, I haven’t done much cycling during the past month, mostly because I’ve been battling what I suspect is the high mold counts here in Georgia that replaced the high pollen counts, both of which play havoc with my ability to breath. Add to that, oppressively hot June weather, and I’ve been somewhat disinclined to get outside during the middle of the day, other than for a couple hikes up Kennesaw Mountain with Miss Debbie and to do yard work once or twice a week.
So, I’ve been spending way too much time in my office on the computer, mostly digging into local history and creating blogs to document in words and photos what I’ve learned about a few things. This is actually something I started a few months back with regard to Kennesaw Mountain, but more recently began to focus on our local county and the nearby city of Marietta, which is the seat of Cobb County. And, having done that, I was re-introduced to the history of the “Bell Bomber Plant” where I worked from 1991 until I retired in 2018, and that became a 2-week long project that culminated with the publication of 22,245-word article on The Bell Bomber Plant: A Chronology & Image-Based History Trip, with nearly 350 photos.
So, sorry there’s not been much to report on, to include no additional rallies to announce for the summer or fall, beyond what’s already on my calendar. But, if it’s raining and you need something to read, you’re welcome to visit my growing collection of history-based blogs.
[5.27.22] 14-Min Read: There were a number of subjects I was tempted to add to my already too-long Rally Report on the Georgia Tandem Rally Pre-Tour and Georgia Tandem Rally (GTR), but resisted. As regular readers may have already discovered, I struggle with the Rabbit Hole syndrome, in that while trying to focus on one subject, I constantly find myself stumbling into other subjects and such was the case with my GTR Pre-Tour and Rally Report.
Instead, I decided I’d just move those sub-topics into a companion piece since they may not have been all-that interesting to readers who were expecting just a rally report so they might see the event from our perspective (that would likely be those who also attended) or just enjoy a virtual tandem rally experience from what was essentially a travel log, the kind we used to enjoy in things like the old Tandem Club of America newsletters, albeit mine tend to be a bit more wordy. But, hey, I did cover two, back-to-back events which did make it longer than most of my past rally reports.
So, with that in mind, here we go… and it somewhat covers the landscape of some personal observations, opinions and prognostications.
How’d We Do Now That We’re Medicare Age?
Santana Asheville Rally, 1998
It was so good to be back at yet another tandem rally. As noted in my Rally Report on the GTR Pre-Rally and GTR, this was our 82nd tandem rally since we first discovered tandem cycling in August 1997, some 25-years ago. Back then, when we were in our late 30’s and early 40’s, we were the “kids” at tandem rallies in the Southeast and were otherwise very active cyclists who individually rode solo or or collectively rode our tandem bike several times a week, often on regular weeknight or weekend single bike club rides at a healthy tempo.
Moreover, early-on, we would joint 3-4 other tandem teams for a regular Sunday ride of 30-50 miles in and around the Atlanta area. So, racking-up 3,000-5,000 miles a year wasn’t a stretch. Included in our riding plans would be 2-3 trips a year up to Dahlonega, Georgia where we’d ride “The Three Gap 50,” a 52-mile ride with 6,000ft of climbing that we’d finish in under 4-hours, including stops at the top of Neil’s, Wolfpen & Woody’s gaps. So, it’s somewhat telling when, as I wrote-up last week’s tandem rallies, that racking-up 95-miles and 5,000ft of climbing over 3-days has been a bit of a challenge for us, given how little riding we’ve been doing and, for various reasons, none of which was the inability to ride due to health or medical reasons. No, it has become weather, the time of day or the amount of traffic and risky motorist behaviors that keep me and us off our once-safe, local roads, so we go for hikes at our nearby National Battlefield Park instead.
24-Years Later at GTR in LaGrange, Georgia
So, we’re now in our mid-60’s, me in my 63rd year and Debbie now 65, and given we’ve not been putting in a lot of miles on our tandem, and when we do most of them and the ones we ride are what was called “junk miles” back in the day — just getting out by ourselves instead of riding with other cyclists or groups that would push-us to ride harder or even using our own time/distance benchmarks to make sure we were “building” our endurance and stamina, never mind upping our performance — we did OK, but rode a bit harder than we should have on the first day of the GTR pre-Rally and paid for that over the next four days of riding. Instead of riding at our level, we were trying to ride at what we wished was a level we could sustain day-after-day, and that came back to bite us with sore sit bones and muscle-fatigue in our legs that we no longer instinctively, proactively address with post ride care and attention they way we once did.
So, What Is the Median Age of Folks at Tandem Rallies Now?
That’s a good question, and I’m not really sure since, unless someone actually brings-up their age or we just happend to know how old they are from past discussions, I’m merely left to guess. There was a time at GTR’s when Roger would ask for the “team age” of folks when they registered, e.g., the mathematical sum of the captain and stoker’s ages but I don’t think he does that anymore. And, these days it’s hard to know how old some are, becasue there are a lot of folks who simply don’t look their age. However, that said, when we first discovered tandem cycling and tandem rallies back in 1997 and 1998, I’d have put the median age of teams at that time somewhere in the mid-50’s to mid-60’s with a few outliers in their 70’s or even one or two in their 80’s: our dear friends the late Bob & Ruth Husky come to mind. Well, now we’re in our mid-60’s and have a much-better appreciation for how we were probably perceived as the “youngsters,” but are definitely wondering where are the youngsters? And, is this unique to the United States, or is it a world-wide challenge?
While we definitely encountered teams who we suspect were in either their late-40’s through mid-50’s at this year’s Pre-Tour and GTR Rally, they were the exception. No, most folks at the events had adult children and many had grandchildren, with some even in their late teens and 20’s like us, or even older. As Roger Strauss noted in his GTR post-rally message with links to the photos, as they watch the number of participants drop year-over-year and hear the same from other regions and rallies around the U.S., there is some concern that tandem rallies could go the way of 8-speed bikes in the not too distant future without an infusion of younger tandem teams.
That said, I will note that the fledging off-road tandem scene that we were part of as we entered the new millenium 22-years ago continues to grow, albeit at a very slow and gradual pace and is also well-represented by seasoned-citizens. However, the median age does appear to be a bit lower at these gatherings, noting that mountain biking, in-general, has been where I believe the most growth and interest in cycling has been vs. the riskier option of sharing the road with less-than-accommodating or attentive motorists.
So, my sense is, there’s more at play to the graying of tandem rallies at least here in the United States. And, to be honest, we haven’t been riding at the more widely attended, single-bike charity or fund-raising rides the way we did early-on when we first began to ride our tandem in 1997 to know if those events are seeing the same greying proces and declining numbers. As for overseas, I’ll have to do some checking and see how the Tandem Club UK is fairing now that it’s celebrating its 50th — perhaps now its 51st or 52nd year given the pause — but I’d be surprised if its that different except in places like Denmark where cycling continues to be more about transportation than recreation.
Electric Assist: Shimano Steps Systems, Bafang EA Retrofits& Others
So, this is probably a good place to make mention of the proliferation of Electric Assist (EA) retrofits with the Bafang BBSHD conversion and new bikes designed around the Shimano Steps systems. I don’t know if Roger, the GTR statistician collected the numbers, was able to snag the number of tandems with Electric Assist systems this year, but my recollection is that it has definitely been proliferating. In fact, the growth in numbers has only been limited by supply chain shortages in the conventional bicycle components needed to build a new bicycle these days, something we’ve learned all of the tandem speciality dealers have been encountering, road tandems as well as off-road tandems and their uniquely different components.
The Bafang BBSHD: In talking with some of the folks at GTR with the retrofitted, EA tandems, our long-time friend, southern gentleman, renaissance man and techno-wizard at The Villages near Orlando, Florida, Bob T., has purportedly retrofit over two-dozen (if I recall correctly) tandems with the Bafang BBSHD systems, including his own Seven tandem and we saw at least two or three of the retrofitted, EA-tandems at the Georgia Tandem Rally Pre-Tour and Rally.
The retrofit Calfee tandem pictured at right is one that I believe is owned by some friends in Illinois. As you can see, it’s a rather tidy, bolt-on retrofit that enables folks to add the ~16lb installed, Bafang EA system to their already bought and paid for tandems for under $1,500, at least based on what I found at the Bafang website today and with the more popular accessories we saw on the retrofitted bikes. But, great news, right now the BBSHD system is on sale for $301 off the MSRP.
From the Bafang website, “This BBSHD 1000W motor kit is SERIOUSLY POWERFUL! Technically speaking it is only for off-road and private property use. Some riders are able to achieve speeds of 40+mph! Our 750W BBS02 motors meet the power needs and wants of the majority of riders. It is your responsibility as the rider to follow applicable local and federal traffic and ebike laws. Consider yourselves forewarned.”
You can find more information on the Bafang BBSHD system HERE.
The Shimano Total Electric Power System, aka, STEPS E8000 System: Althought I don’t believe Shimano was the first to the party with EA systems, its STEPS system does seem to be a bit more refined & fine-tuned than the Bafang and other integrated and bolt-on, retrofittable systems. And, although I’ve focused here on the E8000 MTB high-output system that has been adapted for tandems, Shimano has 3 different models of STEPS for urban, touring, & trekking systems as well as 3 different models for MTB systems including the E8000. And, like all things Shimano, the integration factor while expensive, does make for a more streamlined, well-engineered final product. But, it does require a significant investment in the EA technology since a bicycle frame has to be designed-around the motor which replaces the normal bicycle’s bottom bracket and drive axle.
STEPS E8000 & the Hawthorne EA Tandem
While Ric & Marsha Becker at The House of Tandems weren’t the first to add EA to a tandem, they’ve taken integration to perhaps the highest, most integrated level with their Hawthorne brand, custom designed, all-carbon tandem frames made by John Slawta that fully-integrate the Shimano STEPS E8000 system, to include a very well-designed, integration of the battery down-low on the frame where it needs to be preserve the frame’s handling while taking advantage of the boob-tube’s size and volume: it’s a brilliant integration that even Shimano has jumped-in with both feet in supporting via their own STEPS website.
We saw I believe at least three of the Hawthorne EA tandems last week, including “the woody” pictured above, with it’s faux woodgrain finish and faux burned-in branding and other graphics: the photos don’t do it justice and really highlight their builder, John Slawta’s, skills as a trained artist as well as a celebrated, well-known and respected bicycle frame designer and builder since the 1980’s.
While the STEPS E8000 system is only 250 watts vs the Bafang’s 1,000 watts, like most things Shimano they’ve got it about right for what the system is designed to do: deliver up to 60-miles of power-assisted support to tandem teams who want to continue to ride at a compatible level with other teams when then encounter hills, headwinds or other conditions where a little help is needed.
As for the added weight of the system, as best as I can tell the motor weighs 6.2lbs, with either a 504wh battery that weighs 5.7lbs or a 630wh battery that weighs 7.7lbs, so the net weight of the system — remembering the motor replaces the rear bottom bracket and shell — is perhaps a couple lbs less than the Bafang system. It’s also worth pointing out the Shimano system truly is an EA system that requires the rider’s input to function, unlike the Bafang that can be used to turn a bike into an electric powered vehicle with 4x as much power: they’re very different animals.
As for the cost, remembering that the Hawthorne EA is a cutom, all-carbon tandem to begin with, then add-in perhaps $1,100 for the motor & $600 for the battery, other options and upgrades never mind couplers that we’ve seen on at least one of the bikes, and you’re probably in the $18,000 – $20,000 range, or even higher as you get into custom paint and other top shelf options. I didn’t ask, just assuming.
You can find more information on the STEPS system & Hawthorne EA tandems at these links:
STEPS E8000 & the Land Shark Electro Shark Tandem from Tandems East
I would be remiss if I didn’t note the Hawthorne is by no means the only tandem fitted with the Shimano STEPS E8000 system. Tandems East offers an all-composite tandems also fabricated by John Slawta under his own, long-time brand name Land Shark that integrates the STEPS E8000 EA system in similar fashion to the Hawthorne, at least from an engineering standpoint. However, The House of Tandems’ Hawthorne brand and designs take the aethetics to an arguably more-refined level. TandemsEast does provide some pricing on it’s Land Shark Electro Shark page that’s generally in line with my assumptions on the Hawthorne, e.g., starting at $15,750, with an upcharge of $3,300 for couplings.
By all means, contact TandemsEast directly to find out more about their EA tandem offerings….
Co-Motion’s Bosch & Rohloff System Approach: Bosch may have been one of the earlier EA systems, if memory serves, and Co-Motion has designed its Metolius — named for a central Oregon river of the same name — around Bosch’s Cargo Line of EA motors and systems.
I’ve not seen one of these in the wild, or at least if I did I didn’t realize what I was seeing. But, in looking at the specfications, it is similar to the Shimano STEPS system in that a bicycle frame has to be designed and fabricated around the motor, while making provisions for the batteries. The power is also more in line with the Shimano’s 70Nm, putting out about 85Nm whereas the Bofang BBSHD max’s out at 150Nm. In terms of power-assist, the Shimano generates 250% max power assist, whereas the Bosch produced 350% max power assist and the Bofang 400% power assist. Co-Motion shows this model with an MSRP base price of $16,295.00.
You can find more information on the Bosch system & Metolius tandem at these links:
As I came to the end of my observation and recollection of the encounter, I wrote, “So, this is how cyclists in the 1900’s felt once motorized bicycles began to appear?!” And then I wondered how I’d react if these electric assist bikes began showing up at the large cycling fund-raisers like a Tour de Cure or MS150 ride…. or perhaps even a tandem rally? To be honest, I’m still not sure how to feel about it even after thinking about it for more time that it deserves.”
Well, I’m still not sure as we observed two methods of using the EA during the rallies. Some of the folks on the EA tandems used them to do what I’d always thought they were designed to do, allow the teams to continue riding along side their long-time tandem friends at events, even when the terrain became a bit more challenging than the team on the EA tandem was still able to manage at the same level of effort/performance as their friends. So, in my mind, that looked to be a reasonable approach. Another encounter occured where both of teams were riding Bofang retrofitted-tandems that caused me to once again recall a scene from the movie, “The Pricess Bride” as I did when we had our first encounter with a single E-Bike appearing in my mirror and, incredibly, closing on us on a hill like a USCF Cat-1 on a training ride:
“He’s gaining on us,” Anigo Montoya said. “That is also inconceivable,” the Vizzini replied, going further. “Before I stole this boat we’re in, I made many inquiries as to what was the fastest ship on all of Florin Channel and everyone agreed it was this one.” “You’re right,” Anigo agreed, staring back. “He isn’t gaining on us. He’s just getting closer, that’s all.”
To be fair, they had no benchmark to manage their pace by since they were riding side-by-side on their EA tandems, analagous to to couples out for a ride on their motorcycles. However, it was on a long climb when I first notice them in my rear-view-mirror and was reliving “The Princess Bride” moment described above: who were they, why were they riding so much stronger than we were and would “the catch” happen before we reached the crest of the hill. Well, as they got closer I could tell they were riding EA-fitted tandems which explained the speed of the closing gap. So, while I’m not afflicted with excess hubris, I sometimes don’t “get” the EA bike protocols for people riding EA bikes alone, or in EA-only groups, as I just don’t “get the point” of riding a powered bicycle.
Edit: A reader offered a much-appreciated comment regarding EA tandems that is definitely worth sharing, as it offers some perspective that I clearly didn’t have until I read his comments:
We recently bought a Hawthorne e-assist tandem and want to offer a slightly different perspective on reasons for riding one. Team age is 151, about to be 152. Closing in on 50 years of tandem riding – just slightly more than the length of time married. We almost never ride in groups, nearly always alone, so keeping up with others was not an issue. But there were more and more hilly rides that we have enjoyed over the years that had just become too hard for us as a team. The electric assist allowed us to get those rides back again. On the flat, we keep the assist off almost all the time, save for monster headwinds. You can get some idea of our use of it from the fact that we’ve averaged about 350 miles to a charge for our first 2000 miles with the bike. Even on hilly rides, the assist only gets turned on for the longer or steeper hills. We have found a few unexpected bonuses to the e-assist – like crossing a wide busy street from a standing start, or when I want to “take the lane” for a couple of blocks in downtown traffic, but mostly it’s just those scenic hill rides that had faded away the last few years.
FWIW, it was in 1885 when the first powered bicycle was invented in Germany and the first battery-powered bicycle was built in the U.S. in 1895: yes, it’s been that long.
Sharing the Road & “Car Back”
I’ll try to be brief here, as this is something of a subdued-rant.
Back-in-the-day, when we called-out “Car Back” it was a subtle reminder for everyone riding in “the group” no matter how large, to move from two-abreast to single file as our way of “sharing the road” with motorists. After all, a road literally is a two-way-street and sharing is a quid-pro-quo. You don’t run us down or run us off the road, and we’ll do our best to let you pass us safely.
For years I’ve not held back when it comes to being critial of wanna-be Tour de France peloton’s of weekend warriors who would tie-up rural roads in and around Atlanta and frustrating, if not infuriating motorists. All this does is make sure those motorists would always hold a negative view of cyclists, usually “getting even” when there was just a lone cyclist (or tandem team) who they could use their 4,000lb car to intimidate by passing closely, as their way of demonstrating road dominance and pay-back for being inconvenienced by cyclists using public roads to pursue their recreational pursuits.
So, with that as background, I feel inclined to remind our fellow tandem teams that we are not immune from “pack mentality” when riding in large groups. However, during several of our rides while we were still in larger groups, and even groups as small as 8-tandems, we’d call-out “car back” so the cars being patient and stacking-up behind us might be able to pass on the hilly, rolling and narrow two-lane, no-passing lanes when it was safe to do so. Sadly, very few of the teams riding two-abreast ever even flinched or considered “breaking formation” and a lot of riders were even going 3-abreast or riding in the on-coming lane to pass when “car back” had been called. That was disappointing.
In my humble opinion, it’s a short-term benefit to cyclists for a long-term loss in goodwill from motorists, especially in rural areas where most motorists are still willing to give cyclists a break in the quid-pro-quo, share the road proposition.
Disco’s Back – Daytime Tail & Headlights:
I was both surprised and impressed by how many of the tandem teams had daytime taillights on their tandems, something I wrote about back in 2010 under the title, Daytime Tail Lights: Good Idea or Overkill? It was actually Bob & Jan Thompson who first captured my attention with a DiNotte LED taillight at the 2010 GTR that was bright-enough to even be attention-getting in the daylight easily a quarter-mile away. It was at that point when I acquired our first of two or three DiNotte LED head & tailights and began running them on both our tandem and our single bikes.
Of course, the trick with the first and second generation of LED taillights was making sure they were aimed correctly, which is to say… they were perpendicular to the ground instead of pointing upward or downward, as the older LEDs were very directional and still are. So, while a lot of tandem team were running taillights, only about half of them were correctly aimed based on their age to be effective. The others were, more or less, placebos.
Ignoring the effectivenes and correct aimng issues, I’d bet 80% of the tandem we saw on the road were running some type of LED taillights and, by golly, it’d be hard to explain how a motorist didn’t notice a group of bikes on the road when most of them were using flashing, LED taillights if they ran into them.
Perhaps 30% of the these same tandems were running LED headlights, which is also a good thing and something we too have adopted for dayight rides. Once again, it’s important to understand what your headlight looks like from a distance — 100yds, 200yrds, 440yrds (1/8-mile) or 880yrds (1/2-mile) away— to know if it’s actually attention-getting or not.
As those who follow this blog will know, I finally upgraded our bicycle lighting systems back in August 2021 to the newer, less directional and brighter Cyrolights LED lights: a 90 lumen taillight and a 520 lumen headlight. These are very compact systems that have newer battery technology that allows them to be a fraction of the size, bulk and weight of our old systems, with the same brightness and even better running time that are charged using a USB cable plugged into any available USB outlet. The photos below illustrate just how compact these rechargeable lights are compared to what they replaced, noting that compact and simple is good since it makes them far easier to use.
It’s defintely something to think about, as effective daytime lighting may actually be the most effective safety feature someone can add in a world filled with distracted drivers who rely on peripheral vision and attention-getting things to pull their eyes away from their smart-phone screens and other electronic, attention-demanding devices in their vehicles.
Travelling & Hoteling After the Pause
While this has not been our first trip since March 2020 when we stayed in a hotel, our impression of the impact on the hospitality, tourism and restaurant industry remain a bit of a wildcard and mixed bag.
We had a wonderful opportunity to purchase an older, 2006 Tifton Diesel Pusher “Bus” in July 2021 and passed on it, as we just couldn’t wrap our head around being nomads, and didn’t have a vehicle we could tow-behind it, a place to store it, work-on-it, or know how much work it needed, but it was likely minimal as we knew the owners. If just one of those things had not been an issue I would have likely bought it and, in retrospect, we’d have at least been able to flip-it for a 40% profit in the current leisure travel world we now inhabit.
To be fair, we didn’t full appreciate the “value” an RV offers in terms of a “visit experience” to any destination, even considering the effort required to secure space at RV parks, do the hook-ups, set-up, deploy your dingy and pay a daily/weekly/monthly fee to occupy a space. Again, in retrospect, there’s something to be said for being self-contained in a transportable living space that can be maintained and cleaned to your own standards and that is only occupied by you and yours, to include all of the storage space and the all-important bathroom, shower and kitchen spaces.
I say all of this because what we’ve learned in the post-Covid pause world is that staying in a brick and mortar hotel is anything but a sure thing, in terms of having a great lodging experience. So, in that regard, and taking a look back at the five hotel-experiences we’ve had since March 2020, here we go:
Harrah’s Resort & Casino in Cherokee, North Carolina, where we stayed for our 28th Anniversary in July 2021: Given the $300+/night cost of this room, we wrongly assumed it would be a first-class experience, especially being first-time guests to a Harrah’s resort and the one in Cherokee. Sadly, no so. Unlike my mind-blowing, positive experience checking into the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas in 2019 where I had to verify I was in the right room, what with the 20′ ceilings, a dining room, full kitchen, living room and massive bedroom — and lets not even get into the bathroom suite, the Harrah’s Resort room was not much nicer than your average, Hilton/Holiday Inn room, there was no daily housekeeping service and the lobby receptionist didn’t mention that during our check-in process. No, we made our own beds, reused-towels, etc, but paid a premium price, but somehow they had time to leave a tip envelope with the name of our housekeeper who otherwise never entered our room. So, no…. we’ll likely avoid a repeat of that experience and steer clear of high-end and casino hotels, especially since we have no interest in gambling and gaming.
Hilton Garden Inn, Tifton, GA, for the Dirty GTR in Aug 2021: This may have been the best lodging experience of “the pause” that we had. Our room was new, fresh and very clean. Even though we didn’t have daily housekeeping service, it was made clear that was the case when we checked-in so it wasn’t a surprise. I have no problem making my own bed and do-so every day at home. But, it was a fresh-smelling room, with a great HVAC system where the temperature you set was what you got, and the lobby amenities, hotel kitchen and bar were wonderful. It’s now the benchmark for a Holiday Garden Inn.
Holiday Inn Express, Tupeplo, MS, for STR 2021: It was a Holiday Inn and the room smelled and felt dank — disagreeably damp, musty, and typically cold-– and it clearly was: I had breathing issues for 2-weeks after our stay. The lobby was too small to accommodate both beign a lobby and also being their breakfast buffet room, but it was the air quality of the room that really made for a bad memory and blowing cold air into the room could not hide the odors.
Hilton Hotel2, LaGrange, GA, for the GTR Pre Tour in May 2022: Everything about the hotel was about what we expected, e.g., there wouldn’t be daily housekeeping service, etc. However, whiile I had no problem making our bed-up every day, once we turned the temperature up to something tolerable like 76° vs 68° the room revealed its dank nature and it was evident neither the carpets nor the fabric-covered sofa had been cleaned in a while, never mind the “nooks and crannies” in the bathroom. It was otherwise a very nice hotel, but the lingering, musty-smelling room was a bit of a challenge.
Holiday Inn Express, Carrollton, GA, for GTR 2022: The staff was great and attentive and we were very much surprised to find after the first day that the housekeeping staff visiting and servicing our room every day. They may have also been making-up beds, but I was already into my daily bed-making routine. But, like the other hotels, when we ran the temperature up to a more tolerable 76° the room quickly began to smell musty and a close look around the bathroom suggested it too was in dire-need of a deep, proper cleaning. And, then there were the problems associated with the inoperative, larger #1 elevator when we arrived. That left us with just the one, smaller #2 elevator for a weekend at a 4-story hotel where elevators are essential and, sure enough, by Sunday morning the #2 elevator was also inoperative when we went to check-out: I’m glad we were only on the 2nd floor.
So, in summary, at least based on what we’ve seen just in these few stays suggests it’s probably too soon to embark or a cruise or do too many hotels as they are all plagued by staffing shortages, especially in regard to housekeeping and maintenance. So, perhaps that RV would have been a good idea that would have encouraged us to travel more during the past two years where we’ve, instead, being on a near-permanent “staycation.”
[5.26.22] 15-Min Read: On 16 May we headed off on a 7-day trip with 6-days of planned tandem cycling here in west, north-central Georgia. Our first destination on Monday was La Grange, Georgia, about 90-miles to the south where we’d be participating in in our first Georgia Tandem (GTR) Rally Pre-Tour. From there, we’d head north, back towards home, and drive 46-miles to Carrollton, Georgia for GTR on Thursday afternoon, and then drive the final 47-miles back home on Sunday.
While we’d not be all that far from home, this would still be our longest social / vacation trip we’ve taken since our Caribbean Cruise in October 2019. Other cruises and trips we had planned in 2020 were obviously cancelled, and the 10-day cruise we’d booked for this past April also ended-up being cancelled.
GTR 2019 with Lisa on the Triplet
Thankfully, we had the first-ever Dirty GTR last August and STR in September 2021 to feed-our-need for tandem rallies, but it’s been a long-time since then and the subsequent Southern Tandem Rally 2021 in Tupelo, MS. So, this was a very-much needed get-away as well as an opportunity to catch-up with a lot of folks we’d not seen since May 2019 at the last-held GTR — #21 — in Covington, Georgia, where we teamed-up with our dear friend and tail-gunner for the triplet, Lisa. Sadly, we did not even broach the subject of doing the triple with Lisa at this year’s GTR, as Debbie and I felt like we needed to get at least one or two rallies under our belts before even considering putting a 2nd stoker / 3rd rider on the triplet for a group ride with a collection of other tandem riders who’d also not been at a tandem rally in 3 years.
Regardless, heading-off for a week of tandem riding will be interesting, in that we’ve actually adapted too-well to being homebodies and are very comfortable with our “staycation” approach to retirement life, notwithstanding short trips. There’s just something about being at home, sleeping in a familiar bed and not having a schedule, other than the need to attend our granddaughters activities or the need to help-out with the grandkids. And, given how little saddle time we’ve had on the tandem, trying to pull-off more than 3-days of cycling in a row might have been overly ambitious. Again, this was going to be interesting.
Monday: Our Week-Long Tandem Cycling Adventure Begins
It was not the best start to a week that would be dominated by 6-days of cycling, as I found myself awake at 4:00am on Monday dealing with hay fever, which tied directly to the mold levels being extremely high along with high levels for tree and grass pollens here in Georgia.
I used my early morning wake-up to take care of my every-Monday morning routine, and then turned my attention to reading-through all of the information on the upcoming tandem cycling events and downloading the 12-different route maps for our cycling computers/GPS devices. By mid-morning, Miss Debbie had completed her morning routine and was taking care of her pre-departure ‘to-do list’ of things.
It was after lunch when we had to remember how to pack for a 7-day long cycling trip — that would be cycling apparel, cycling gear and street clothes for social events — so I could start packing the tandem, tandem-bike-related gear and then our clothing in the truck for our planned 6:15pm departure for La Grange, Georgia. We had dinner at home and left right on time at 6:15pm for what Google Map’s GPS software predicted would be somewhere between an hour and 45-minute and two-and-a-half hour’s drive. Thankfully, it turned out to be a very easy drive with no traffic slowdowns, despite several that our Google Maps GPS software indicated we “should” have encountered but that didn’t exist.
It was about 7:45pm when we arrived and realized we were staying in a Hilton Home2 hotel right across from the Great Wolf Lodge, a resort/waterpark that Julie and Wesley take our four granddaughters to several times a year. We didn’t go and explore the lodge, as we’re fairly confident it’s not a place for folks who don’t have kids, but had enough photos of the kids and grandkids enjoying it to know what it looked like and, well, smelled-like: chlorine!
It didn’t take us long to get checked-in and settled in our rooms, after which we headed down to the social gathering and rally check-in event on the hotel’s outdoor lobby patio & fire pit. We had a nice time and spent about an hour meeting other folks attending the GTR Pre-Tour, some friends we knew from prior events and others who we’d met for the first time. The latter is the beauty of tandem cycling events in terms of how they draw-together people with widely diverse backgrounds, but a common interest in tandem cycling.
Tuesday: Day One of Riding & Exploring Lafayette Square in La Grange
As we expected, our life-at-home habits were hard to kick, so having to be up at 6:30am, then dressed for a cycling event and out-the-door to drive to the remote start by 7:45am was a bit of a shock to our systems, but we did it. The hotel’s breakfast was fine, about what you’d expect for a self-serve, courtesy breakfast meal… and still a far-better option than anything else we could think of, never mind a full-service hotel with a pricey breakfast buffet that neither of us need: we’re both light eaters who split most of our meals.
We were finished-up at the hotel, had our gear in the truck and were on the way for the short drive to the remote start 7-miles east of our hotel. I believe there were 18 other couples at the event, including our hosts, so the ride start gathering was a lot smaller than we were used to, which isn’t a bad thing at all. I’d guess two-thirds of the couples/tandem teams opted to ride the long-route, about 44-miles with 2,400′ of climbing, to include the climb up and over Pine Mountain which isn’t the tallest mountain in Georgia by any stretch, more in line with our Kennesaw Mountain at around 900-ft. It felt good to get out and ride with other folks again, really enjoyed the many miles we spent riding with Alex & Stacy who we rode with several other times durng the week, on what was a a great but challenging ride given how little saddle time we’ve had.
Remote Start & Remembering How…On The Road Again!1st Store Stop
The top of Pine Mountain
We made a couple of short stops on the ride, the first at a small country store, an impromptu second one when the couple we’d been riding with had a mechanical issue with their tandem, and a third one for a scenic photo at the top of Pine Mountain, and then a fourth in the little city of Pine Mountain at a bakery. We were finished by about noon.
We discussed the lunch options back in La Grange with some of the other couples and several of us decided to head to Brickhouse Grille in downtown La Grange as it looked to be a safe-bet for a contemporary “bar & grill” restaurant, not knowing what everyone might be interested in. Well, like many restaurants, while it had great promise it was short-staffed both in ‘front of the house’ and ‘back of the house’ positions, which made for less than enjoyable experience. Our party of six that grew to twelve received sparse attention by the overworked hostess/server and it was over an hour’s wait for our meals after ordering, meals that ‘could‘ have been very good with more/more-attentive back-of-house staffing.
After grabbing a shower and relaxing a bit at the hotel, it was around 4:30pm when we headed back to the La Grange town square, renamed the Lafayette Square back in 1976 after the square was redeveloped and a fountain and statue were installed in the center of the square honoring French general Lafayette, noting La Grange is named after his estate back in France. Our actual destination was the Wild Leap brewery where we had a social gathering that was very nice and accommodating to non-beer drinkers like Debbie and me, as they also ferment and bottle their own brand of corn-based vodka, on par with Tito’s which is also corn-based.
Lafayette Square & FountainA Converted Tire DealershipVisiting with Friends at Wild Leap
From there we wandered down the street to Mare Sol, a Mediterranean restaurant, where we had a very nice dinner with our friends and hosts, Roger and Eve, and another couple, Grant and Susan. We were back at the hotel by 9:00pm where we retired to our room for the night.
Wednesday: Day Two & Hog Heaven
We were up and at breakfast by 6:30am, and then on the way to the remote start by7:40am, about a 14-mile drive to the south at the West Point Dam on the Chattahoochee River, where we’d be having another 8:30am riders meeting and ride start.
A Drone Cam PhotoRide Co-Director & Drone Pilot RogerWest Point Dam
It was a lovely area, with light traffic and some more moderate climbs. While we were undecided when we started out if we’d ride the entire 42-mile route with 2,400-ft. of climbing or opt to take the shorter, 29-mile route with 1600-ft of climbing, when we reached the cut-off for the short route, we made-up our minds: short it was. We joined our friends and hosts Roger & Eve, as well as friends Walt & Kathy, and Kevin & Amy on the shorter route, and were joined by George & Mary as well as Rob & Mary on the last 3.5 miles after a couple of “photo ops” towards the end of the ride. Taking the shorter route was the right decision, given we still had four days of riding ahead of us.
Rob’s Photo of our GroupWe Were In & Out of AlabamaGroup Photo at the Dam
We didn’t linger at the end of ride and, after loading the tandem back into the truck, we headed to a local place called Hog Heaven for lunch. It turned-out to be a far-less-than-fancy, good-old Southern BBQ joint, co-located with a Southern meat & three restaurant called the Red Rooster. It was a VERY enjoyable eating experience as the gal taking care of us was very attentive, clearly a long-time employee — if not part of the family that owns the place — who had great answers to all of our questions and was in a great mood. And, about the time we finished our lunch, our friends Roger & Eve walked in and joined us for their lunch while we kept them company: a perfect lunch, by any measure!
After our BBQ at Hog Heaven we returned to our hotel to grab showers and relax. Well, I say relax: Debbie decided to do her workout while I spent my time catching up on news and updating some of my blogs.
It was around 5:00pm when we headed to another brewery for dinner; the Beacon Brewery. Despite some issues with the brewery logistics, we had a surprisingly great meal which is probably why they’re such a highly-rated local brewery, right behind Wild Leap. If I had to guess, the folks at Beacon Brewery were more interested in taking-care of their local regulars who frequent the local “dive” more so than a one-time visit by a group of tourists… so I got it, even though it’s bothersome.
It was around 7:00pm when we returned to the hotel where we joined at least half of the folks who were at the pre-tour next to the pool for a bit of an impromptu social hour. It was a lovely time and we really enjoyed getting to know more about the folks whom we’d not met before. We headed up to our room a bit after 8:00pm, picking-up a pint of Hagen Das ice cream on the way up for something of a private ice-cream social.
Thursday: Day Three & Discovering Carrollton & Adamson Square
The alarm went off at 6:30am and we both sort of felt like passing-on Thursday’s ride by just enjoying a relaxing morning, then moving on to Carrollton for a few more days of riding. However, it was around 7:00am when we finally got up, headed down to breakfast and with a little food on our stomach, we were OK with sticking to the original plan and heading off for today’s 24-mile ride with 1,600ft of climbing.
In retrospect, we’re glad we did, as it has been good to be back on the tandem and enjoying the rural roads around La Grange, riding with a good group of folks at a measured pace as we went past the Kia final assembly plant in La Grange. This Kia plan is the one where they produce their Telluride, Sorento, and the K5 midsize sedan, noting Kia is now the only final vehicle assembly plant in Georgia. General Motors, who opened its Lakewood Assembly plant near Atlanta in 1927 where it assembled Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobile’s, Buicks and Chevrolet and GMC trucks, shut that one down in 1981. GM also opened the Doraville Plant in 1947 as part of the Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Division, and closed it 26 September 2008 as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures. Ford opened and operated the Hapeville plant from 1 December 1947 and shut it down on 27 October 2006, at which time it was rated as the most-efficient U.S. automobile production plant in the U.S.; go figure….
We were back to the hotel by 10:00am after an enjoyable ride with a good-size group of other riders, said our “see you laters” and then showered, packed and were on our way to Carrollton, about 45-miles due north by 11:00am.
We decided to see if there was an Applebee’s in Carrollton where we could have lunch and, sure enough, there was one just a half-mile from our hotel: we were both needing something familiar. It was shortly before noon when we arrived at Applebee’s, had the same wonderful won ton chicken tacos we always get for lunch at one of three Applebee’s we frequent on our drive to and from Pennsylvania, and it’s exactly what we needed. From there we headed to our hotel and were able to check-in at 12:45pm.
While Debbie did her workout routine, I made contact with a friend who has lived in Carrollton his whole life to get some restaurant recommendations. It was around 3:45pm when we headed to Adamson Square, named for Charles Adamson, a local lawyer, judge and Congressman born in 1854. We went to the Irish Bred Pub& Grille for the Georgia Tandem Rally meet & greet and had a wonderful time catching up with many, many friends who we’ve not seen since the last Georgia Tandem Rally back in 2019. We also had another chance to spend some more time with the couples whom we’d met at the Pre-Tour in La Grange and met several couples who were attending their first Georgia Tandem Rally. Even though it wasn’t on our friend’s list of the best places to go in Carrollton, the club sandwich Debbie and I shared at the Irish Bred Pub was excellent.
We were back at our hotel by 7:30pm where we ran into our friends Marsha and Ric from the “House of Tandems” near Houston, Texas, who we became fast friends with many years back at the Georgia Tandem Rally in 2013 at Covington, Georgia. From there, and not seeing anyone hanging-out in the hotel lobby from the rally, we headed up to our room and called it a night.
Friday: Day Four of Riding & Even More Smitten with Adamson Square
When the alarm went off at 6:30am, neither one of us were anxious to get-up and get-going. However, we persevered, got dressed and the Holiday Inn Express breakfast was good, with a much wider selection that we had at Hilton’s Home2 in La Grange, including a pancake machine instead of a Belgian waffle iron, and one of my favorites: sausage gravy and biscuits.
We made it out to the ride start in plenty of time and, after the rider’s meeting, we were off. Our original plan was to ride the 42-mile option with 2,250ft of climbing, but I agreed to take the 54-mile option with its 2,950ft of climbing route sheet with us at Debbie’s request if we found we were feeling especially strong on the 42-mile route. However, in all reality and based on how we felt on yesterday’s 24-mile ride, I thought the more likely, wise-choice would have been the 30-mile route with its 1,550ft of climbing. While we didn’t take that route sheet along, I had all three of the routes loaded in our Garmin Edge 705 cycling computer/GPS devices and am glad I did.
We found and rode with our friends Eric & Linda as we’d began today’s ride so we could catch-up on what they’d been up to. However, right from the start, I could tell climbing was going to be a challenge for us today, as Debbie was needing to stand after just 5-miles, then in 4-miles, and nearly every mile before we even got to the 13-mile split where the 42 & 54-mile routes headed west, with the 54-mile route heading into Alabama, while the 30-mile route headed north and stayed in Georgia before heading back east toward Carrollton and our hotel. Fortunately, by the time we reached the point where the shorter, 30-mile route split-off from the two longer routes, we’d been joined by a few other teams Eric & Linda knew so we’d not be leaving our friends in no-man’s land if we opted to cut our ride short and do the 30-mile option, which was what I did and it was the right choice for us.
Again, as feared, our 95-miles with some 5,600-feet of climbing over the past three days had taken a lot out-of-us in terms of endurance, and Debbie was struggling with sore sit-bones, as our longest ride of the year was only 43-miles in a single day, with no back-to-back rides this year. So, as I said, taking the shorter 30-mile option allowed us to ride without trying to chase anyone, or slowing anyone down as they waited for us… just at our own pace with as many stops just to get off the bike as necessary.
Thankfully, there were only two of those “get off the bike” stops and I made sure we used every downhill to ensure we both stood and coasted, giving us “butt breaks” during our on-bike time. Even though we encountered other riders on the 30-mile route while we were at the 2nd store stop on the short-route and chatted with them for a few minutes, we opted to stick to our plan of riding alone and at our own pace and that worked well. We weren’t ever passed by anyone, so we apparently continued to ride at a reasonable tempo despite our lack of endurance and sore body parts.
We were back at the hotel by 10:30am and, after grabbing showers, we headed back to Adamson Square and the LocoMex restaurant suggested by our friend and long-time Carrollton, Georgia resident, Charlie: we were not disappointed. It was our kind of place, from our wonderful barkeeper, Sofia, to the delicious Fish Taco’s, never mind the ambiance of the 100+ year-old building where it’s located. Of course, we came when it wasn’t busy and that made all the difference in the world. No telling how the experience would be when they’re hopping on a Friday evening instead of lunch time.
After lunch, we walked around Adamson Square and even found a business with an interesting name: at right is Debbie in front of her namesake business: Nama, what our 1st grandchild, Jacob now 22-year-old, coined as her grandmother reference name. I always thought it was Namaw, but she says Nama… so it is.
It was around 3:00pm when we headed back to our hotel’s lobby where we visited with others attending the rally ahead of an in-lobby tandem dealer demo-event by Ric & Marsha, and then returned to our room a bit later to get ready for the evening.
We timed our arrival at the Brown Dog Eatery quite well: it was another place recommended by our friend Charlie. We secured a couple of seats at the bar just before it got really crowded and our biggest challenge turned-out to be be figuring out what to have for dinner. The Brown Dog is a “farm to table” restaurant with a Charleston flair and their menu was filled with all kinds of very, very amazing entrees. We opted to go with the Golden Adler Wood Grilled Salmon, an 8 oz salmon fillet, wood grilled on an alder plank topped with fig glaze and Mexican Street Corn & Sauteed Green Beans as our side dishes: it was amazing. Another group of four long-time tandem friends and then another group of six long-time tandem friends came in for dinner a bit later and all agreed, everything there was great.
Debbie Couldn’t Resist…
It was around 7:15pm when we left The Brown Dog and headed next door to the Ice Cream Social at “The AMP,” Carrollton’s intown amphitheater adjacent to Adamson Square where the movie Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade was being shown at no cost to anyone who wanted to come and see it. Our hosts had arranged for one of the local ice cream parlors, butter’dudder, to have their “Blue Cow” ice cream truck at The AMP where anyone from the rally could get homemade, hand-dipped ice cream while socializing and watching the movie. It was great fun and we were back at the hotel by 9:00pm.
Saturday: A 30-Mile Ride, a Visit to a Covered Bridge & Lots of Wonderful Eats
We were both feeling our four-prior days of riding and missing our very casual morning routines when we first got up; however, by 7:00am we were up and moving so we could have some breakfast and be at the rider’s meeting by 8:30am.
Having successfully gotten ourselves up, dressed, fed and ready to ride, we joined the 60-some other tandem teams for the rider’s meeting at the hotel parking lot where we had already decided we’d only be riding the 31-mile route today with 1,500ft of climbing, as both Debbie and I were “feeling” the prior four-days in the saddle. We’d be joining our friends Eric & Linda again, along with Ryan, Christian and their daughter Audrey on their triplet for what we planned to be a leisurely ride with a stop at a covered bridge, a short ride on the Carrollton Greenway Path and then lunch at “The Depot,” Carrollton’s former train station that had been converted into a conference center back in town, hopefully arriving about the same time lunch began at 11:30am.
We had a nice ride with our little group and did a lot of catching-up on the way to the Shiloh Covered Bridge and biscuit stop. We opted to pass on the biscuits since we’d not had breakfast too long ago and would be having lunch in another hour. But, we did go and explore the little covered bridge. The 42-foot-long bridge is located on the Shiloh United Methodist Church walking track sitting over a drainage channel in the Burwell Community. It was built in 1994 using an authentic Town Lattice design using timbers from another old bridge that was nearby. While being one of the least visited covered bridges in Georgia, it made for an enjoyable stop on our ride.
Our friends opted to partake of the biscuits and lingered a bit longer at the stop than we did, which worked-out well as we needed to ride at our own pace and coast down most of the hills so we could stand and give ourselves a bit of a break from being seated on what were now very sore sit bones. The 18-mile ride to the old depot was lovely and we collected a couple of other long-time friends along the way — Steve & Eva as well as Al & Heidi –– and our other friends whom we started the ride with arrived perhaps 10-minutes after we did and joined us at a table for lunch. The catered BBQ chicken, pulled-pork, green & pasta salad meal was delicious, as were the chocolate chip cookies: no doubt, I will not be looking forward to stepping in the scale when we get home!
The DepotThe Decor Was LovelyThe Food & Company Were Great
It was a short, 4-mile ride back to the hotel where we grabbed showers, and relaxed a bit. Looking forward to tomorrow, there was a pretty good chance we’d pass on the 24-mile Sunday ride and head home early, given we’ll be headed to Pennsylvania on Tuesday, which doesn’t give us too much time at home between trips and far too much seated time.
It was round 3:00pm when we decided to head back to Adamson Square where Debbie ran an errand before we headed back at LocoMex where we chatted with the Sofia and enjoyed some margaritas before heading to yet another social event at Printer’s Ale Brewery some 3-miles north of town. We spent a good deal of our time visiting with the same friends we’d been riding with for the past few days.
LocoMex & MargaritasPrinter’s Ale Brewery Social
From Printer’s we headed back to Adamson Square and to the Brown DogEatery where we split their version of a Philly Cheese Steak — their Fresh Prince Philly with shredded sirloin, bacon aioli, peppers, onions, mushrooms, provolone, American cheese on a baguette — with Mexican Street Corn as our side dish for dinner: it was wonderful, and were back at the hotel by 7:30pm and relaxed in our room for the balance of the night after a very full day of riding, eating and, well, more eating.
Sunday: We Pass on The Ride so we can Get Ready for Tuesday’s Trip to PA
As planned, after five-days and 157-miles of riding with 8,600-feet of climbing or there abouts, we opted to pass on today’s ride today, were packed-up and on our way home just after I attended the rider’s meeting at 8:30am so I could say good-bye to friends we’d not seen in a while. It was just over an hour’s drive home on back roads, e.g., GA & U.S. highway routes 113 and 120 for the most part.
About Our Hosts, Roger & Eve
As you can see, 16 of 41 photos on my write-up came from the “official” GTR photo collection. All 250 of the photos were taken by our amazing GTR hosts and dear friends Roger & Eve at both events, and every other GTR.
I believe I can even recall the event when their desire to host a tandem rally — one that met their expectations for what all a tandem rally should be able to deliver at a good value — while having a plastic-wrapped sub sandwich sitting in the median strip between a two-lane county road and a service station / small restaurant without any shade on a hot and sunny say in April of 1998.
Quite frankly, at that point in my life I didn’t have great expectations for a “tandem rally” as I’d not been to more than one, but had been to quite a few fund-raising, one-day cycling events by myself, so I tended to be overly gracious and appreciative of anyone volunteering their time to put on a tandem cycling event when even a “small turnout” was a lot of people since everything about tandems is a multiple of at least two.
Regardless, since then, and in general, the quality of tandem rallies in the Southeast was progressively improved after the GTR experience re-set expectations, and for that were deeply appreciative of not only Roger & Eve, but of everyone who has hosted a Southern Tandem Rally, an Alabama Tandem Weekend or the 10-year run of the Tennessee Tandem Rally hosted all but one year by our friends Tim & Sharon who we first met at the Santana Tandem’s “Mother’s Day Weekend” rally in Asheville, North Carolina in 1998.
Getting back to Roger & Eve, they are truly one-of-a-kind in regard to their commitment — if not an unusual devotion of their personal time and energy — to the Georgia Tandem Rally experience, one that has been setting the bar for well planned and executed tandem rallies since the first one held in Madison, Georgia, in May 1999. And, I can say this with total objectivity as of the 82 tandem rallies we’ve been to, 22 of those have been Georgia Tandem Rallies. That they are also personal friends whom we first met at our first Georgia Tandem Club (aka, PEACHES) ride back in August 1997, a mere two-weeks after we bought our first tandem, had truly had an amazing a positive influence on our lives, both on and off the bike. They are and always will be dear friends.
Anyway, that was a long way of getting around to telling you that you can find all 250 photos from this year’s pre-tour and rally at the following link: Photos on Shutterfly
[5.13.22] 8-Min Read: The other day when we were out doing a single-bike ride from the house and having to deal with a few motorists who just don’t seem to get it when encountering cyclists on the road — and most likely many other driving situations that require more than meeting the minimum score to pass a driver’s test — I spent the last quarter of our ride trying to come up with categories for the different motorist dysfunctions. What I came up with was a long list, but after further consideration I was able to bundle several into just four:
The Overly Cautious & Unaware Motorists
The Passive Aggressive Motorists
The Aggressive & Apathetic Motorists
The Distracted & Heedless Motorists
I expand on those in a moment, but will say of the four groups it’s still the last category, Distracted and Heedless — showing a reckless lack of care or attention — that make me feel the most at risk when cycling on public roads.
Medical Studies:
But, just out of curiosity I wondered, are we now dealing with 2nd or 3rd generations of “bad drivers”who grew-up riding as passengers with their parents who were made either uneasy or upset when they encountered cyclists on public roads and, unintentionally, passed along their uneasiness and angst towards cyclists to their children via their comments and actions during driving encounters.
“It can be hypothesized that children inherit their parents’ driving habits both through genetic disposition and model learning. A few studies have shown indeed that parents’ and their children’s traffic convictions and accidents correlate which, however, may be due to life style and other exposure factors. This study aimed at investigating the relationships between parents’ and their children’s self-reported driving behavior. The subjects were 174 parent-child pairs who independently completed a questionnaire. Driving behavior-driving style-was evaluated by means of Manchester driver behavior questionnaire (DBQ), while data about driving exposure, life style, accidents, and traffic tickets were also collected. A series of regression models indicated that parents’ self-reported driving behavior explains their children’s respective self-reported behavior, even when exposure and demographic and life-style factors are controlled.”
That’s according to new research suggesting individuals born with a certain variant of a gene don’t stay on the road as well as their counterparts. If the results do in fact hold up, and this gene equals bad driving, 30 percent of Americans would fall into that category, according to the study scientists.
The study involved only 29 individuals, 22 without the so-called bad-driving gene and seven with it. The participants drove 15 laps on a simulator that required them to learn the nuances of a track with difficult curves and turns. The researchers measured how well participants stayed on course. The drivers repeated the simulator test four days later. Participants with this particular gene performed 20 percent worse on the simulation test compared with those without the gene variant. Similar results were found in the follow-up test. Such a small study would need to be replicated by other research, but here’s what the researchers think is going on.
The gene in question limits the availability of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) during activity. This protein strengthens a person’s memory by supporting communication among brain cells and keeping them in peak shape. When a person is engaged in a particular task, BDNF is secreted in the brain area connected with that activity to help the body respond.
“These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away,” said lead researcher Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor at the University of California, Irvine.
In fact, past research has suggested that when individuals with this variant complete a task a smaller portion of the brain gets stimulated compared with individuals carrying a “normal” type of this gene. The gene variant isn’t always bad, though. Studies have found that people with it maintain their usual mental sharpness longer than those without it when neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and multiple sclerosis are present.
“It’s as if nature is trying to determine the best approach,” Cramer said. “If you want to learn a new skill or have had a stroke and need to regenerate brain cells, there’s evidence that having the variant is not good. But if you’ve got a disease that affects cognitive function, there’s evidence it can act in your favor. The variant brings a different balance between flexibility and stability.”
While a test to determine whether someone has the gene variant is not commercially available, there’s a real-world experiment going on.
“I’d be curious to know the genetics of people who get into car crashes,” Cramer said. “I wonder if the accident rate is higher for drivers with the variant.”
So, with that in mind, and expanding Steven Cramer’s question to, “I’d be curious to know the genetics of people who are involved in cycling-related collisions to see if the rate is higher for drivers with the variant.” It would be really interesting, but one that will likely never be conducted as shared-use-roads are within a few decades of becoming transit corridors exclusively reserved for autonomous, self-driving vehicles where “hazards” such as pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles driven by people” will be prohibited to make it “safer” for everyone. In other words, humans will become a hazard in a software-driven world, so the simple fix will be to remove the minority of people who still walk and want to use an alternative form of transportation.
My Four Categories:
So, getting back to my four categories of motorists who present a risk to cyclists and other users who opt for modes of transit that are anything but a conventional, enclosed powered vehicle, e.g., pedestrians, pedal-cyclists, mopeds, scooters, motorcycles and the like, here’s what I came up with:
Overly Cautious & Unaware: These are motorists who are not at ease when driving and also not necessarily knowledgeable about all of the “Rules of the Road” that apply to all road users.
Included in this category would be motorists who are unaware of things like the “3-Foot Passing Rule” that requires motorists to yield a safe passing distance, or even to use the right lane of a two-lane road, when passing a cyclists or other road user on a much-slower moving method of conveyance. After all, there are still motorists out there who don’t know that it’s technically illegal for a cyclist to ride on a sidewalk instead of the road, hence two other categories of motorists who are not at all bashful when it comes to rolling-down the window of their vehicle to demonstrate their ignorance of traffic laws by yelling-out, “Get off the Road” or “Get on the Sidewalk where you Belong” when finally passing a cyclist who has gotten in their way.
There are also the motorists who don’t understand that, part and parcel to the 3-Foot Passing Laws, it is legal to cross a double-yellow line to pass a slower-moving road user, so long as it is safe to do so. Sadly, there are quite a few road users who just don’t understand this allowance for passing in a no-passing-zone who will back-up traffic when there is no oncoming traffic that would otherwise preclude them from executing a legal pass of a slower-moving vehicle, e.g., a bicycle, scooter or even a pedestrian, and in so-doing, causing the backed-up traffic to be upset with the cyclist “obstructing traffic” instead of the motorist(s) who don’t know the finer details of the traffic codes and laws. Sadly, this often times has yet another unintended consequence when those “obstructed drivers who were unnecessarily delayed” include motorists who fall into at least two of the three following categories.
This category of motorists would also include people who drive well-under the posted speed limits, are likely no longer as “sharp” or cognizant of the world around them or even of their skills and limitations as motorists, and this is a growing demographic, especially in areas that cater to our more-seasoned citizens such as Florida and Arizona.
Passive-Aggressive: Someone who is Passive-Aggressive acts out their anger in ways that are hidden or buried in what they do when presented with a “confrontation” and, without a doubt, when a motorist encounters a cyclist on a public road who is perceived to be “in their way” that’s a form of confrontation.
These types of motorists ‘hide‘ the small acts of aggression towards cyclists in plain sight, which makes them uniquely insidious and destructive. Many of their behaviors are similar to how aggressive drivers engage other, lesser-entitled road users by passing too closely, calling-out or yelling as they pass to express their displeasure with cyclists who they assume they’ll never have a future face-to-face encounter with. It’s a midway point between the overly cautious and aggressive drivers who are actually easier to deal with since both can be ignored since their behaviors are consistent.
However, the Passive-Aggressive motorists tend to act more like the overly cautious ones, then behave like the Aggressive ones when they finally decide to pass a cyclist, often times passing far too closely and cutting-off the cyclist as then return to the protected safety of “their lane” on a two-lane road with a double-yellow, no-passing centerline marking. And, God help-you if you find yourself at a stoplight or stop sign a few hundred yards up the road sitting next to a Passive-Aggressive motorist. The Overly Cautious ones might even wave or at least acknowledge you while the Aggressive ones will ignore your, the Passive-Aggressive motorists tend to “freak-out” or simply “hide” when faced with the person they’d hoped they’d be able to avoid direct confrontation with, at least confrontation in their mind.
Aggressive & Apathetic: The best way I know of describing Aggressive or Apathetic motorist who encounters a cyclist or other road user who is “in their way” is acting as if they’re a “non-person” much the same as they’d deal with an animal in the road. Now, if they were a dog- or cat-lover, they might yield for a moment out of compassion, or if it was a large animal like a deer, yield for a moment out of self-interest, but when faced with someone riding a bicycle they’re certainly not “a person” who warrants compassion or empathy. This is why the second word is so important in this category since it conveys the underlying justification for aggressive driver’s acting hostile towards other road users who are merely “in their way” and delaying them from getting-to…. it doesn’t really matter. Apathy, for those who don’t know, is when someone shows no feeling, interest, enthusiasm, or concern for something, including other people. It’s the apathy that enables aggressive behavior.
On the bright side, aggressive and apathetic motorists tend to take deliberate actions and weigh those actions on a risk-reward basis even as they carry-out their actions. So, when an aggressive motorist acts like a 3-year-old race horse who just won the Kentucky Derby and feels the need to demonstrate their dominance over other road users like a cyclist, they use intimidation techniques like crowding the cyclist as they pass, needlessly accelerating and, if it’s a diesel-powered-vehicle “rolling coal” to leave the cyclist to deal with the black cloud ofunburned diesel fuel and traces of engine lubricant, as they look in their rear-view mirror to see if their actions had the desired response. And, yes, you can always tell who the aggressive and apathetic motorists are because they always look in their rear-view mirror to see if their actions had the desired-effect of intimidating a cyclist via some type of non-verbal response, e.g., a flip-off or other hand gestures.
Distracted & Heedless: While “Distracted” is fairly-well understood, it’s the second word “Heedless” that truly conveys the level of risk involved with this category of motorist: showing a reckless lack of care or attention. It’s a vicious circle where to be “Distracted” requires someone to be “Heedless” and that’s why at least in my mind, these are the types of motorists who put cyclists at the greatest risk. And, just to be clear, this is a category that can easily encompass and be mistaken for the other three.
The mere fact that someone is engaged in “Distracted Driving” has predisposed them to be “Heedless.” This category not only includes the people who are on their “smart phones” — talk about an oxymoron — texting, catching-upon Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or any one of many other time-sucking applications designed to keep people entertained and distracted from what they should be doing, but the other Driving Under the Influence (DUI) Categories associated with the consumption of alcohol, use of legally prescribed drugs that impair driving skills, the illegal use of drugs and narcotics, and I’m surprised that social media-addiction hasn’t been added to this category.
However, the underlying enabler is the heedlessness of people: it’s all about me and I don’t care about anyone else. These are perhaps the most dangerous people in the world today, be they driving a vehicle or being engaged in any form of work where others are dependent upon their need or care, attention and concern for the well-being of others.
What’s Sad About All of This:
The world has become a very self-centered place, even among those who consider themselves to be tolerant and respectful. Honestly, some of the most harried morists I’ve encounted in my many years of cycling on the road are the ones on their way to or from religous services, especially on Sunday mornings. And, yes, it’s easy to tell who is headed to or from services when you’ve been cycling on public roads when it’s before and after services time for 45-years.
But, what’s always amusing in a cynical way is how any motorists these days “thinks” they’re being delayed on non-interstate, public roads when they encounter a cyclist and actually yield way for a few moments until it’s safe to pass, when within a few more minutes they’ll arrive at a stoplight that will require them to stop and sit for 1.5 to 3 minutes, far more time than they “lost” when they had to wait for an on-coming car to pass before they could get-around the cyclist.
Now, I get-it when a motorist relates an encounter with a large group of cyclists who are riding two-to-three abreast on a recreational group ride, be it on a weekday evening or weekend morning, never mind an organized charity event that ties-up traffic. The latter are clearly issues when they are recurring traffic problems in crowded, urban areas. But, invariably, it seems like much of the pent-up angst that motorists have for cyclists are expended when they encounter just one or two cyclists who are trying to do everything right, which is probably what makes them “easy targets” for that pent-up aggression.
But, as I already said, I’m actually less bothered by drivers who have focused intent when they encounter a cyclist versus the motorists who are so distracted by their phones, etc., and don’t even notice the cyclist on the road until they hear the “thud” of a collision. And, trust me, we’ve got two generations of future motorists sitting in cars while their parents are checking their phones for messages, texts and posts to their preferred social media fix, engrossed in phone conversations and ignoring everything else around them, and a dozen other bad habits including serial-speeding on secondary roads, driving-through stale-yellow/red lights, and always being in a hurry and impatient with other road users, especially that lone cyclist near noon-time on a weekend when all of landscapers, parents and tele-commuters get on the road just before noon every day creating two-way streams of traffic on what used to be lightly travelled roads that are bookended by lengthy stoplights. But, yeah, it’s the cyclist that’s the real source of your angst… or at least the easiest target for it.
Enough said, it was just something that was on my mind from our ride earlier this week.
[5.06.22] 6.5-Min Read: Once again, it’s been longer than I originally expected between updates. I’ve written a few things, but nothing that offers insight into what’s been going-on in our own, personal cycling and tandem cycling world since my last such update on the 1st day of Spring, 20 March. So here we are, halfway through spring, and while we’ve not been riding as much as we’d like, we’ve ridden a few times and are definitely looking forward to a week of tandem cycling in mid-May. Tandem Rallies have somewhat hit their plateau in terms of coming back from the pause. And, I’m still trying to downsize my cycling equipment holdings as most of it enters antique-status given how much has sort-of changed with cycling and tandem technology. Electronics and Electric-Assist seem to dominate the landscape, while I’m still quite happy with cable-shifters we’re still able to keep the pedals turning without an assist.
Have We Been Riding…. More than Before?
Well, we did get out for a 25-mile on the Silver Comet Trail today, despite some iffy weather. The temps were delightful, but with a front coming through, the day began with a morning with rain that caused us to push our ride into the afternoon, betting the 30% chance of afternoon showers would not materialize. Thankfully, they did not, but we get buffetted by 10 to 20 mph with gusts up to 35mph whenever we left the confines of the tree-covered sections of the trail and with the wind kicking up pollen and dust, the air quality was not great. However, it was good to get out, just the same and we’re glad we did it.
Last Sunday on May Day, we were up and out the door a little after 8:00am for our hour-long drive over to Covington for the first Georgia Tandem Club ride of the year. There were four other couples on hand for the ride when we arrived. It was a 43-mile loop that we’d ridden a few times in the past, and it felt so good to be out riding again and with other tandem teams for a change. The weather didn’t look too promising on the drive out to Covington as the skies were overcast and there was even a light drizzle in a few places, but once we arrived at the Covington Square the skies cleared and we had lots of sun, a bit of a breeze and warm temperatures for our ride.
Photo by Roger S.
After the ride we had lunch at Your Pie pizza, then the traditional ice cream stop at Scoops down the street where we also celebrated Debbie one of our other friend’s birthdays this past week, John’s, with a balloon and cup cakes. The drive back home through Atlanta wasn’t as awful as usual, which was nice for a change.
Beyond that, as it was back in April, there are lots of excuses for why we haven’t been riding more often, but instead of being weather-related it’s had more to do with pollen. Moreover, Miss Debbie developed a serious case of the Spring crud back in early April, with me nursing a more mild case over the same period of time. It’s actually good-old Hay Fever, and getting-out for vigorous, out-door exercise and drawing all of those pollens into your lungs and sinuses are not always things that trade-off the good vs. the bad consequences.
On the bright side, the pollen levels were not nearly as high as they were last year, but for some reason the effects of the lower pollen levels were as bad or worse… which is odd, as our immune systems should — in theory — be pretty darn strong in light of all the additional antibodies that have been introduced or stimulated in our systems over the last year.
While we have only ridden our tandem a couple tiimes since my last update, I’ve gotten out on my single bikes a couple times a week from road rides from the house and even an off-road ride at the local MTB trail. And, Debbie continues to enjoy getting out on her single bike with me on mine for psuedo-tandem rides, i.e., we get to ride together even though we’re not on the same bike and I’m good with that! In fact, that’s exactly what we did back on Debbie’s 65th birthday last week.
Again, while I’m not riding as much as I’d like, I am getting out a couple times a week, usually for a road ride from the house. When time is not an issue or the pollen-levels were tolerable, it was usually a 25-mile loop ride. But, when I had less than an hour to get a ride in my 9:30am – 11:30am window when motorists are not as bothersome, I’d settle for a higher-tempo, 15-mile ride, or change it up. I also blew the dust off my 1998 Erickson Signature climbing road bike with a compact triple and 13x28t rear cassette to do an 18-mile loop from the house. That ride included a climb up our 1.8-mile long, nearly 700′ climb to the summit of Kennesaw Mountain, a road we normally do a fitness walk up at least once a week until the temps get into the 80’s when we go back into the woods and hike trail to the top of Kennesaw Mountain. The out-and-back ride to the mountain’s summit made for an interesting Rorschach Chart-like profile on my antique Garmin Edge 705.
There was only one day when I decided to risk being immersed in pollen and headed-out on my Ventana Marble Peak on our local Allatoona Creek Mountain Bike Park trails, which was in part to help me decide if it’s time for me to fish or cut bait and get a newer, full-suspension mountain bike. Our local trails have just become so torn-up and worn-down with large, exposed root and rock fields on the shorter climbs where the Strava-crowd and lots of races have made riding a 2.25″ wide, 26″ wheel mountain bike with 3.5″ of travel a less than enjoyable experience. So, I’m thinking a 27.5″ and 2.8″ wide tire, full suspension bike with 3.5 – 4.5 of travel might be a better option if I want to enjoy riding these trails, given they’re only 5-miles from home.
TandemGeek Blog Posts & Rally Updates
For regular readers, I probably don’t need to rehash the six posts I’ve made to TheTandemGeek’s Blog since Spring began, so I’ll just put a snapshot of them here.
I will note, I did get some inspiration from the Facebook Tandem Cycling Groups for three of my posts: the ones dealing with Share the Road signage, at home bicycle storage and transporting tandems using hitch-mounted systems, the latter being one of the more popular / well-read things I’ve posted in a while by a large margin.
As for tandem rally updates, there were only two added since Spring began and they were both for off-road events:
(SOORTA) Breckenridge MTB Blowout -17-23 July173 Glen Eagle Loop, Breckenridge, CO. See SOORTA Page on Facebook for lodging options, from camping to glamping, RV, resorts and hotels.
Dirty GTR, 8-11 Sep, Forsyth, GA. Details forthcoming with registration beginning in July. This year promises to be all-gravel, no sand or clay… but with more hills.
In regard to tandem rallies that have been held since Spring began, there were just two that I’m aware of:
I’ve not yet come across any write-ups for photos from the UK Tandem Rally, but the hosts of the HOTT Coldsprings Tandem Weekend shared out a group photo taken at the event and the following note on Allen & Laura’s ColdSprings Tandem Weekend Facebook Group:
Laura and I cannot thank or tell everyone enough how much your attendance at Coldspring Tandem Weekend 2022 meant to us. All of you blessed us so many different ways. We only wish we could have spent more time with each of you. Until next year here are pics from the weekend that YOU made so memorable and fun!
We making separate post for each event over the weekend so you can copy and save each of your idividual favorite pics.
We love and miss all of you and cannot wait for CTW 2023, March 23rd thru 26th.
There are still a few long-standing tandem events and rallies that have not yet updated their websites with future event information, they include TandemsEast, the Florida Panthers Tandem Club, Gear-to-Go Tandems in Upper New York State. I’ll continue to keep checking their sites, but if anyone has any insights they could share in a comment or via a private message, I’d welcome it.
As for our rally plans, we’re still on track to attend the Georgia Tandem Rally (GTR)Pre-Rally and Rally here in just a couple weeks and looking forward to a solid week of tandem cycling as well as catching-up and vistiting with friends and perhaps making some new ones. And, we’re also planning on attending The Dirty GTR in September and will sign-up for that as soon as registration opens in July. But, thus far, that’s it. Perhaps 2023 will be out break-out-year when we begin to venture-out and travel more widely that we have been during the pause.
As for Thinning the Herd
As mentioned back in December, I decided it was time to sell-off some of my single bikes and I successfully sold my 2005 Bianchi Pista. The new owner restored it to it’s track bike configuration and did an outstanding job, making it look like a bike that should have been sold for a lot more than I asked!
Encouraged by the success with the Bianchi, I listed Debbie’s 1998 Ritchey Road Logic frame-only for sale on 6 March and on 17 March I also listed my 1998 Bianchi Mega Pro-L Marco Pantani tribute bike that I finally built-up in September 2020. They didn’t generate much interest until a potential buyer for the Bianchi came out to the house on 23 April and ended up buying both the Ritchie and the Bianchi Mega Pro-L. He’d also inquired about my Dean Scout hardtail mountain bike that he saw hanging in the garage, took it for a spin and suggested he might be interested in buying that too. However, I suspect by the time he thought more about it, it was more bike that he needed.
So, I’m still need to get both the Dean and the Marble Peak cleaned-up, collect all the component and spec data and get those listed for sale.
Once those have new homes and are replaced, I’ll have to turn my attention back to thinning one more road bike out of the stable and perhaps the Triplet, but that’s definitely a TBD. We need to find out if our friend Lisa is still intersted in riding the triplet at tandem rallies and events a few times a year as we were doing before the pause since that’s real reason we have it. I’d like to think we’d be able to get our grandkids interested in riding with us on the big bike, but they’re so darn busy with their other activities, I’m just not sure there’s an opportunity that warrants hanging onto the Triplet.
And, then there are the parts: far too many and, once again, older stuff.
I still need to get motivated and begin listing things like my daVinci cranksets, CNC’d timing rings, more conventional cranksets and lots of chainrings, brake sets, derailleurs, rims and wheels. However, I probably missed the mark on when I’d do well to sell my set of Kreitler rollers with new, all-aluminum drums and extension links for tandems as well as a single bike set of Inside Ride E-Motion Rollers, all of which are just collecting dust.
Me and My Blogging
The majority of my time is probably being directed to the blog I originally named Getting It Off My Chest which was, more or less, a vent for things that were bothering me.
However, it’s turned into an outlet for writing about things that have captured my attention in a positive way, mostly the history of things, that caused me to re-title the blogOnce More, Down the Rabbit Hole We Gowith the sub-title, Miscellaneous Ramblings From Someone Who Thinks Too Much… which is much more-accurate.
So, while I’m still doing my weekly updates on the price of oil and Covid metrics, the vast majority of my time is being invested in digging into things like the history of Georgia, Cobb County and Marietta Georgia. These broad topics seem to lead me to dive into all knids of rabbit holes that further consume my time. Now, if I can only channel that energy to something productive as I suspect the 20+ hours I spent working on the History of Georgia,et al, will likely be read by… well, no one at least in its entirety. Hey, I’m a realist.
[4.30.22] 7.25-Min Read: While it pales in comparison to my old “TheTandemLink.com’s” web traffic over the years before I sunset the site on 31 December 2019, I thank those who have “visited”The TandemGeek’s Blog since I launched it with my first post on 1 January 2010. I suspect the latter was, more-or-less, the beginning of the end for TheTandemLink.com.
Up and until I discovered blogs, I was writing articles and publishing them on “The Bulletin Board” at TheTandemLink.com. But, that all came to and end as we began 2010 and I launched this blog at WordPress.com. During the next two-and-a-half years, The TandemGeek’s Blog received over 200,362 visits, which was pretty amazing.
Looking back on the two blogs,The TandemGeek’s Blog is clearly where I invested alot of my spare time between 2010 and 2012. With 15-35 posts per month, a traffic to theblog peaked as the tandem cycling season got underway in the spring of 2011 and, by July 18, 2012 the blog had received 200,362 with as many as 991 views on May 16, 2011.
What I Used To Write About…
Many of the things that have received the most views since launching The TandemGeek’s Blog came from those early days, to include the much-viewed “TANDEM EVENTS 1 / ROAD” Page with the calendar of events, I’ve been producing this annual calendar since first-launching my former website, TheTandemLink.com, in January 2000 as we began the new millennium. I migrated the calendar to The TandemGeek’s Blog in January 2017 as I looked-ahead to eventually sunsetting TheTandemLink.com, as I did back in January 2021. As I look at the titles of the most-viewed blog posts of all-time, below, I vividly remember writing those things early-on:
Why Did Things Change?
TheTandemGeeksBlog July ’11 – Feb ’13
I suspect I made the mistake — at least in retrospect it was a mistake — of beginning to blend my interest in tandem cycling with our new-found-interest in riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles in August 2011, having wandered off the sports and sports-touring motorcycle reservation and into the dark-side of the cruiser and heavy-touring Harley-Davidson motorcycles with the purchase of a 2011 Wide Glide on the last day of June 2011.
I’d been riding motorcycles since the early 1970’s and had owned and ridden motorcycles for many years, actually becoming a full-time motorcycle commuter as part of an early “mid-life-crisis’ as I was approaching my 40th birthday in May of 2000. So, it’s not like motorcycling hadn’t always been in the background, but the “Harley thing” definitely diverted my attention away from tandem cycling. And, with that, there was definitely a change in what I was writing about, as I was somewhat neglecting my tandem cycling readers during the summer of 2011, never mind blending tandem and motorcycling content to the majority of readers who likely had very little interest in motorcycling.
Seeing this was happening, I decided to split the tandem cycling and motorcycling content on 30 October 2011 when I created my second blog, “Riding Two-Up” that started-off as my motorcycling enthusiast blog and morphed into my “everything but tandem cycling” blog since then. And, sure enough, there was an immediate fall-off in the number of things I was writing and sharing on The TandemGeek’s Blog during October 2011 through March 2012. And, it’s not like I was writing-up a storm over at “Riding Two-Up” as it got off to a slow start with infrequent posts that hovered between 0 and 3 for the first year and between 2 and 6 in the second year with a burst of writing energy in March 2014 which had more to do writing about changes I made to the 2013 Road King CVO we’d bought in August 2013 ahead of Bike Week at Daytona Beach Florida and then 4 posts regarding the Bike Week motorcycle rally.
Riding Two Up Oct ’11 – Jul ’14
It was our immersion into the world of 3-seat tandems, aka, triplets, in March 2012 and the acquisition of one in early April 2012 that caused me to do a lot more writing on the The TandemGeek’s Blog and saw views and readership increase accordingly. But, it was somewhat short-lived as my postings with tandem-only content fell off during the summer of 2012. Other than tandem-event-related postings and calendar updates, I just wasn’t addressing the reading-needs of my tandem audience, and I knew it.
But, getting back to July 2012, I tried to give myself a kick-in-the-pants using the 200,000+ view milestone as an injection of interest and focus back on The TandemGeek’s Blog the day after posting a mea culpa on my significant fall-off in posting, something a few readers acknowledged they too had seen via their comments: these are snapshots of those archive summaries from July 2012, below:
Trends and Numbers, January 2010 to Present
So, this was the “landscape” during those first 2.5-years of The TandemGeek’s Blog, in terms of page views per month that were actually quite strong from the git-go, and eventually reached 10,000 views a month by April 2011.
TheTandemGeeksBlog Feb ’20 – Apr ’22
Going forward from there, by 2013 view counts were still averaging above 8,000/month with 43,000+ visitors, but slipped a bit in 2014 before falling-off in 2015 and then again in 2016. By then, visits to the blog had dropped to a somewhat consistent page views of 3,600/month with 23,000 visitors/year for 2016 through 2018. For 2019 and then 2020 when the world was put on pause, they dropped to 2,300 page views/month with 15,000 visitors/year and then slipped again in 2021 to just 882 page views/month and just over 5,000 visitors for the year.
Once again, part of the low page visit counts and numbers of visitors is clearly a lack of content, where the majority of the traffic coming to The TandemGeek’s Blog is visits to the tandem cycling rallies and events pages. I look at this as a hopeful sign that many folks who remain tandem cycling enthusiasts look forward to resuming tandem events as various mandates are lifted and life attempts to return to some resemblance of normal before the pandemic pause.
Where Do I Go From Here?
As to ever getting back to writing as much as I did back when I first started this blog in January 2010 through August 2011, I doubt I’ll ever reach that level again. Quite frankly, most of the things that get written about cycling aren’t all that new unless they’re based on personal experiences and that’s always been evident in bicycle magazines like Bicycling. So, if the coming cycling season yields our ability to attend a few events, perhaps I’ll be able to find a few more things to write about based on getting-out, seeing old friends and what’s changed in the world of tandem cycling.
One thing I know that I’ll probably be writing about will be the growth in popularity of electric-assist tandems, which were just beginning to make an appearance before the pause began in March 2020. We’re told by some of the folks who’ve been travelling more than we have and who’ve gotten out to more than the two tandem cycling events we attended last year that they’ve seen quite a few of the “E-Bike / Tandems” as folks who live in relatively flat places like Florida still have an interest in venturing north to the Georgia Tandem Rally, for example, where they know they’ll need some assistance in getting up and over all of our hills. So, that should provide me with a wealth of new information and, Lord knows, I’ll be forming and sharing my opinions on how-well E-Bike/Tandems integrate with those riding with only pedal-power.
So, looking forward, I’m mulling-over a variety of different things I “could” write about, to include diving back into the many articles and things I wrote and published on TheTandemLink.com, as I still have the original Adobe PageMill content I created as far back as January 2000 on my equally old PowerMac desktop computer that is somehow still running.
Talk about doing a Throwback Thursday, I can only imagine what I was writing about and sharing news items on when we were hot and heavy into off-road tandem riding and attending our 9th tandem rally back in 2001 — that would have been the Alabama Tandem Weekend hosted by George & Judy Bacon in, Auburn, AL — as we get ready to attend our 80th tandem rally in just a few weeks, The Georgia Tandem Rally (GTR) in Carrolton, Georgia, which will also be our 22nd GTR.
Just in looking at some of the more-recent things I’ve written about since January of this year, I can also see what subjects drive views by the 291 or so folks who “follow” The TandemGeek’s Blog, or who find my blog via Google Searches. For example, tandem equipment and bikes will always generate a lot of interest and, as already noted, the tandem rally and event calendars bring a lot of traffic to the site, remembering this is a personal site not one that generates revenue. Any ads visitors might see are only generating revenue for WordPress since I’m a cheapskate and still use four different “Free” WordPress pages to express my thoughts and interests.
I was surprised at how much traffic the “How Wide is Too Wide” article about transporting tandems was but, then again, it really is one that would be of interest to a lot of folks who use rear-racks to transport their tandems.
The one shown as “unknown or deleted” was a somewhat edgy article I wrote after being “buzzed” by a few cars on a recent ride from the house entitled “Safe Passing Laws: The Least Followed & Enforced Laws on the Books?“ I moved to a different blog I’d just created to “vent” about things that were on my mind called “Getting It Off My Chest.” That article spawned another one that I probably should have posted to this blog entitled, “Pet Peeves & “Share the Road” Signage“ and may still re-post here.
Of Course, Some of this Could Just Be a Sign of the Times
Years back, when I was still maintaining TheTandemLink.com website and actively engaged on the beloves listserver Tandem@Hobbes, I’d conduct an annual survey regarding the levels of interest and engagement in tandem cycling using an on-line, free survey tool. The results were always interesting, but there was clearly a year-over-year declining trend in the things like membership in The Tandem Club of America, ridership, rally participation and the like even back in the first decade of the new millennium.
This was at a time when cycling itself was seeing shifts away from road cycling to off-road cycling and when it was rare to see children riding bikes on public streets, even as a way of getting to and from school. This was far different from when I went to school in the 60’s and 70’s and bike racks dominated the landscape right at the front entrance to Rolling Meadows High School: I suspect that’s no longer the case.
Anyway, perhaps it’s time for me to do another survey and check the pulse of tandem cycling, or at least to dig-up the old survey results and graphs if that might be of interest, before launching a new survey. Regardless, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life and my interest in history, nothing remains the same for long.
Trends come and go, and cycling’s had a very-long run, beginning in the late 1800’s where, by the turn of the century, all of the best and brightest mechanical engineers had made an indelible mark on the the machine we call a bicycle before they moved-on to things like engineering flying gliders, the steam and internal combustion engines and applying those along with electric and battery power to motorize bicycles, carriages and gliders. A check of the bicycle catalogs from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s clearly shows most all of the basic mechanical technology associated with a convention bicycle had by then been invented — to include both battery-and electric powered bicycles patented in 1895 — that have been merely tweaked ever-since to keep the cycling industry fresh and alive, e.g., changes in wheel diameter, frame material, frame designs, suspension and tire technology, shifting systems, brake systems, saddle comfort, you name it.
So, at the end of the day, it will be interesting to see if tandem road cycling will remain a vibrant, niche industry as younger generations come along, ones that didn’t grow-up riding a bicycle to school, on a paper route, as part of a local racing club and all done on public roads.
Over the years, I’ve definitely observed an on-going trend with cycling migrating to dirt from the time BMX bikes were first introduced in the mid-1970’s, followed almost immediately by the introduction of the mountain bike in 1978 by Joe Breeze, and that’s what “kids” from those times forward grew-up with. So, it’s no surprise to see mountain biking and, more recently, gravel grinding gaining in popularity.
I saw where a new Self-Organized Off-Road Tandem Adventure (S.O.O.R.T.A.) event was added in a post to a Facebook Group I follow and added it to the Off-Road Tandem Event calendar yesterday, but am also sharing it here:
(SOORTA) Breckenridge MTB Blowout -17-23 July, 173 Glen Eagle Loop, Breckenridge, CO. See SOORTA Page on Facebook for lodging options, from camping to glamping, RV, resorts and hotels.
Please check-out the linked info site if you’re a member of the S.O.O.R.T.A. FB Page, but if you’re not…
Details
173 Glen Eagle Loop, Breckenridge, CO 80424-5760, United States
Duration: 6 days
Public · Anyone on or off Facebook
SOORTA made a big splash in Breckenridge 3 years ago with 15 couples riding some of the sweetest single-track in the country. This July we’re going to do it again!!
You won’t want to miss this spectacular opportunity to ride with all your buddies in the clean Breckenridge air. With hundreds of miles of trails, this storybook mountain town has something for everyone.
Nine couples are already planning to attend and all we’re missing is YOU!! Make reservations at your favorite campground, AirB&B or hotel and get ready to play hard with all your buddies!
Rides will be announced each day with opportunities to go “long” or “short.” Campfires and dining will be suggested throughout the week for all to attend.
Pine Cove Campground has “first come first served Tent and RV spots that have million dollar views on the shore of Lake Dillon. If you want to go a little upscale, Ranahan Resort is centrally located with views, pool and hot tubs. At $168 per night it won’t break the bank. There are many other opportunities for lodging in Frisco, very close to all our rides.
This Brek Blowout will be a great chance to rekindle old friendships and make some new ones. Click “Going” so we know you’ll be there…!
Email, Messenger or call me with any questions. (Jeff – 501 984-1212 cell, jeffhollansworth@sbcglobal.net)
Photo taken on Jackson Street, the main drag of Dublin.
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