Tandem Cycling - Tandem Wannabe's Question

My wife and I started riding again in our early 60's after a 20 year hiatus from bicycling. We bought two Giant OCR 1 road bikes and have beene riding together twice a week or so. I'm more serious about cycling and am working hard to get fit and faster at least relative to my age. We started discussing a tandem as a means to really enjoy cycling together.

I would certainly want to start with a used tandem. I'm 6' tall and with long legs (My Giant is a large with a lot of seat post showing). My wife is 5'7" and average proportioned. We're 80 miles south of San Francisco (50 miles from San Jose, CA) and it seems the best approach would be to find a bicycle shop which deals in tandems and has some rentals. Aside from a test weekend confirming that we can survive on a tandem, is this the best approach to sizing or can be determine approximately the sizing on a tamdem from our road bike measurements?

Any help/encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

The shop with tandem expertise closest to you is probably Bicycle Outfitters (http://www.bicycleoutfitter.com/).

Check Craigslist for used tandems (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=tandem%20bicycle), and then enlist the forum here for opinions on specific finds.

Ooooh, this one (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/scz/bik/1129012850.html)is interesting, and not too far from you in Santa Cruz. Would be hard to go too wrong for $350. If you find one, you can take it to Bicycle Outfitters to get spiffed and tuned up.

http://images.craigslist.org/3m53o53laZZZZZZZZZ94id65bdccb8b8012c0.jpg

As far as the age thing goes, check out the results of the Mount Diablo Challenge (http://results.active.com/pages/displayNonGru.jsp?orgID=218713&rsID=70768) hill climb. At least one guy in his 60's won the coveted one hour tee shirt (finishing the climb in <60 minutes) and plenty over 50 had very good times. There is plenty of scope for decent performance in road cycling over 60.

The Bicycle Outfitter is a nice shop as well as Cupertino Bicycle for tandems. There is a new shop called Crank 2. http://www.crank-2.com/store/ I have not been there but others have spoken highly of it.

Thanks all for the quick response. I'll stop by Bicycle Outfitters later this week. My wife and I are not at all concerned about the "age" thing and I could easily see doing centuries together on a tandem. Wife finished a 100K last weekend with less than a 1000 mi. base and almost no work on hills; the 100K had about 2700 ft. of climbing. I'm no great shakes, but have ridden quite a bit more with a lot more hill work. Riding for 5 hours at someone else's pace can be difficult, but a tandem would seem to be a perfect solution.

We started tandeming in our 50s with the goal of being able to exercise together, in spite of different levels of fitness. Been at it 10 years and bought our third tandem last year. We both wear heart rate monitors and work toward a target, individual HR, not speed. The nice bonus is the time together without TV and other distractions. No matter how fast I go, she's still back there. We've made the observation from our tandem club, that there all kind of pepople enjoying tamdeming. But there are very few teams made up of couples that don't get along and trust each other.
We've found group and club rides more fun on a tandem; tandem riders usually build some socializing into their rides.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Another great tandem shop is Crank 2 performance in Pleasanton http://www.crank-2.com/store/
They have a large selection, and are nice folks as well.