Our first ride was yesterday! My husband and I rented two tandems. We had planned on putting our 14 year old daughter and 11 year old son in back of each one, but our daughter woke up with a nasty cold, so she stayed home, and we scrounged up another 11 year old boy to go along. Ours were mountain bike tandems. We did about 20 miles on a combination of roads and bike paths. We were impressed with how easy it was to power up the hills and how easy it was to carry on a conversation. The bike used by my husband and son allowed each rider to pedal independently, whereas my bike was the more typical synchronized pedal setup. We all had a great time, although some of the seats were too hard for some of the riders. We got one flat that only required pumping back up, thank goodness. We will probably do this again, and may look into buying a couple of used tandems to ride while the kids are still living at home.
Fun day!