Off-Road Tandems: Perhaps We’re About To Open a New Chapter!

A Brief Background:

As any regular readers will know, we were actively engaged in both road and off-road tandem riding from the late 1990’s until around the end of 2010 when Debbie had a change of heart regarding the off-road riding. We tried it once again in 2014 and while it was a good ride and Debbie liked being in the woods, she just wasn’t comfortable on the Ventana. We tried in again in 2016 with the same outcome. Back in November 2020 our friend Alex who founded and operates MTB Tandems in nearby Canton, Georgia, encouraged us to demo a Fandango GiGi with the idea of perhaps embracing “gravel and dirt road” riding as an alternative to the road. While it was and is an amazing machine, we really never gave it a fair test before returning GiGi as our experience with it just didn’t make us think we had enough places where we could ride it often enough to justify the addition.

However, this past June Debbie decided we’d give the gravel and dirt road riding another chance as our friends Roger & Eve were going to host a dirt-road tandem rally in Southern Georgia at the end of August. In an effort to make sure the Ventana would be suitable for that event, we rode it on local trail and it went really well. Then we rode it with two other friends on Sunday, 15 August, who had 29″ wheeled tandems on some honest-to-goodness hilly dirt and gravel road. While Debbie enjoyed the riding experience, the Ventana — while well-suited for technical single track –– was not the right type of bike to use for gravel and dirt roads, at least when riding with rigid tandems sporting taller, faster and more efficient 29″ wheels.

So, following that experience on the 15th, it was clear we’d need to find a more appropriate tandem, something our friends Alex (once again) and Michael (who is well-versed in all facets of off-road tandem riding) had already said and offered to help us with.

A Quick Trip to MTB Tandems The Day After:

On Monday, 15 August, at the top of my to-do list was reaching-out to our friend Alex to see if I cold once again secure an off-road demo tandem we could try-out ahead of our trip to south Georgia at the end of next week: nothing like waiting until the last minute! It was about an hour or so after I sent off my note to Alex when he replied and we’d arranged a meet-up at his shop around 1:00pm.

After making the 30-minute drive to MTB Tandems I arrived to find Alex busy packing up recently built, new tandems being shipped to customers — not an easy thing given the massive supply-chain shortages in the bicycle industry — and chatted a bit as he was doing so. Anyway, to make a long-story short, after talking about what I had in mind and seeing which models of tandems Alex had in his “demo-fleet” I decided to give the black Fandango DC-9 off-road tandem a try first fitted with what are called plus-size wheels / tires and a suspension fork. If that didn’t work out as hoped over the coming days, we might still have time early next week to give a Fandango GiGi a second try.

Back at the house, I pulled the Fandango DC-9 out of the truck bed where I’d merely laid it on it’s side with the tailgate down for the drive home, after getting the pedals installed and front saddle adjusted I took the big black tandem with meaty tires for a quick ride up and down the street and it rode far more smoothly and was quite a bit more stable than the Ventana, which was a good thing. On Tuesday while it rained I spent the day working my way around the tandem and, as I did so, tried to make a quick study of all the new technology I was not very familiar with to make sure I knew what I was working on or adjusting so I didn’t screw anything up. I also gave the Fandango DC-9 a deep cleaning, to include the drivetrain, as that’s another trick for putting your hands on a new-to-you bike that offers some learning experiences.

In the background, we were making plans to head-off and try a 27-mile gravel & asphalt route our friends Roger & Eve had mapped-out and ridden a few times in nearby-Cartersville, Georgia, a mere 30-minutes from the house. They’d told us about this route back on Sunday, 15 August, during our Ventana’s test ride on the trails at Murder Creek about 90-minutes away, near Covington, Georgia: who knew we had gravel roads this close! Our plan was to ride it on either Thursday or Friday morning, weather dependent. Sadly, the weather pushed this ride to Sunday.

Our First Spin in the Fandango Goes Very Well & Pre-Driving Sunday’s Ride Route:

Given all the rain we had over the past two days, never mind other appointments and such, it wasn’t until Thursday, 19 August, when Debbie took her first test-ride on the Fandango DC-9 shortly after lunch. It was just a short ride at home around the neighborhood to make sure I had her riding position from the other bikes correctly replicated on the Fandango DC-9. Debbie like me found the bike felt really good, stable and the very wide tires didn’t seem to hamper it’s ability to roll-along quite nimbly on the pavement or climb the 8% and 10% hills in our neighborhood. Based on what we’d seen when we pre-drove the 27-mile gravel and asphalt route we’d be riding on Sunday, we felt very confident about our upcoming ride based on how the Fandango DC-9 was equipped and rode.

But, We Need To Transport This Tandem…

As mentioned, I brought the Fandango DC-9 home laying down in the back of our 2017 Tacoma with the tailgate down, a far-less than ideal approach. I’d previously transported both the Fandango GiGi and our Ventana on the tandem transportation fixture I’d designed around the dimensions of our Calfee road tandem and for both of the larger, off-road tandems it was less than ideal fit where either seats had to be lowered or handlebars loosened and moved so the tandems would fit in the truck with the A.R.E. camper shell closed. With that in mind, after getting the Fandango DC-9’s riding position sorted-out and the bike cleaned-up I did a “test fit” of the big bike in the back of the truck using the Calfee’s fixture and, sure enough, the saddle on the Fandango DC-9 needed to be dropped and the front handlebars had to be loosened and rolled-back to get it through the door: it was just too tall. And, even though there would only be a few times when this particular demo Fandango DC-9 would need to be pulled-in and out of the truck over the next week, I was cautiously optimistic we’d likely be replacing the Ventana with a Fandango in the not too distant future, I went ahead and fabricated a 2nd tandem transportation fixture, but one designed with the taller off-road bike geometry in mind. More on that in a subsequent entry to follow, along with details on a wheel caddie I also fabricated.

I also needed to drop-by REI to pick up a spare inner-tube for the 27.5 x 3.00″ tubeless tire to make sure we could deal with the unlikely, but always possible flat tire during Sunday’s ride or, assuming that goes well, next week’s Dirty GTR. While there I also picked up a set of SKS mud guards for the Fandango DC-9: I find being prepared for wet weather seems to help keep wet weather at bay.

Sunday’s Test of the Fandango DC-9 on Gravel Roads:

Although unrelated to Sunday’s gravel road ride, I should make mention we and our friends Roger & Eve and John & Mitzi had just attended a Georgia Tandem Club “road” ride on Saturday. It was a 35-mile ride over in Cumming, Georgia, where we finished just as the rain returned. But, more importantly, it also put us riding back-to-back 30ish-mile tandem rides… something we’d not done since the Southern Tandem Rally at Greenwood, South Carolina in September 2019.

Anyway, the weather gods smiled upon us for the 2nd day in a row as we confirmed with our friends today’s “gravel grinder ride” was still on: it had only rained lightly overnight, and it didn’t look as though today’s rain would come in under afternoon. We were a little late to the ride start and when we arrived at 8:30am, we could clearly see our friends had been there for at least 15-minutes and waiting on us as we pulled-up. However, we made quick time of getting ourselves ready and we were all rolling by 8:45am…. so it wasn’t a terrible delay, just an awkward one since we lived 15 minutes closer to the ride start location than our friends Roger & Eve, at least 40-minutes closer than John & Mitzi.

It was a great ride; 27-miles on about 1/2 gravel and 1/2 asphalt roads with about 2,066 vertical feet of climbing and descending which is even hilly for a road ride. However, the demo Fandango DC-9 was outstanding! Riding a tandem with the larger wheels and tires made all the difference in the world, and the “plus-size” tires were a pleasant surprise. We only had one issue where Debbie’ seat post slipped down during the ride and which screwed-up her riding position for at least 10 miles before she mentioned something. I’ll have to see if I can keep that from happening again. Despite the one issue, Debbie really enjoyed riding this tandem, probably more so than any of our previous three off-road tandems and more than the Fandango GiGi demo we tried last November. In fact, she’d like to just keep this one, but I’m pretty sure Alex would prefer to keep this in his demo fleet so me may end up ordering a nearly identical, new one after next week’s Dirty GTR.

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More to follow….