Tandem Cycling - NTWR - New Calfee's first big ride

I finally found time to sit down and post a ride report. Today marks one week of cycling on my new Calfee, and it has been one fantastic week of cycling. My wife and I arrived in Seattle Monday, and built up our new Calfee Tetra Tuesday morning. We started cycling on our new ride Tuesday afternoon with a short ride on the Soos Creak trail, and expanded our mileage to 80 mile rides by the end of the week. We capped the week at the Northwest Tandem Rally in Victoria BC. Attached is a photo taken of our tandem once we completed the build. The other photos were taken at the NWTR.
The NWTR Saturday ride was quite an event to see 250+ tandems in one parking lot. The ride started with a mass start. At the 19 km rest stop my wife and I had grouped up with three other tandem teams to finish the 100 km ride with an average speed of 28.5 kph. The weather was beautiful all weekend.
Cycling this week in Seattle and Portland in preparation for the STP ride next weekend.

More pictures of the scenary, please! I am so jealous of the riding you got to do in that beautiful area. My wife and I will definitely be there next year. Like the tandem also, of course, but we love our new daVinci, our first-born tandem.

Beautiful bike!! I'm jealous of the weather and the company. It would be a lot of fun to get out with 200+ other tandem couples. Just got back from a 53 mile ride in a little over 3 hours. 65 degrees, and about half of the ride in the rain.

I am planning on ordering a Calfee later this year.
What tandem did you have before and how does it compare?
What crankset is that and did you get the Gates belt drive?

Thanks

We didn't go to the NWTR and I have been looking for photos of the event. Do you know where there are any other photos?

We will be attempting STP also. There shouldn't be that many tandems there so maybe we'll see you at the start line.

I recognize these two bikes (they're both Rodriguez's); I've met the people who own the stars-and-stripes one and I have seen the purple one around but don't know the owners.

[QUOTE=swc7916;9235432]We didn't go to the NWTR and I have been looking for photos of the event. Do you know where there are any other photos?

QUOTE]

My apologies for the slow reply. I am currently on vacation and travelling, so Internet time is limted. I have not found any websites with photos, but I'll start looking next week.

I hope you have a great STP. I'll be riding the STP with one other tandem team; look for the two blue tandems.

I am planning on ordering a Calfee later this year.
What tandem did you have before and how does it compare?
What crankset is that and did you get the Gates belt drive?

Thanks

My team rode a Santana Rio before buying the Calfee. The crankset is FSA SL-K Mega; not belt drive. I saw a few belt drive bikes last weekend. I'll probably be wishing I had sprung for the belt drive.

We missed the tandem rally this year.
:-(
Did they announce the location for the 2010 rally? The NWTR.org website hasn't been updated.

2010 will be held in Medford, Oregon. An amazingly beautiful place to ride full of climbs, plateaus, flats, rivers and low traffic country roads.


KRhea

2010 will be held in Medford, Oregon. An amazingly beautiful place to ride full of climbs, plateaus, flats, rivers and low traffic country roads.


KRhea

Awesome - we'll definitely have to make this one! We were bummed with missed this years!

I hope you have a great STP. I'll be riding the STP with one other tandem team; look for the two blue tandems.

I saw you fly past us on Lake Washington Blvd, but I didn't see another tandem with you.

Congratulations Geocyclist. Great choice of colors. Looks almost identical to ours. See post on the PNW site. We were riding a Calfee tandem also and never saw another one. What a great ride. I rode the STP with a good riding buddy of mine. It was on my bucket list to ride STP with him on the back. He is about an inch taller than my wife, so I could get the fit almost perfect.
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=561805

I saw you fly past us on Lake Washington Blvd, but I didn't see another tandem with you.

Yep! My wife and I had a really good time at the STP hammering down the road. Our friends (on the other blue tandem) decided to ride the STP at a more sedate pace.

Wife and I are new to tandeming, but we're definitely going to Medford next year; it's within spittin' distance of the San Francisco bay area. Since it's an easy drive there might be a greater draw from this area.

Finally getting around to posting our 2009 NWTR album.

With the 247 pic album, we were able to capture at least a third of the 613 participants while they were riding. Album begins with the group pic of our Seattle area tandem club which was taken prior to the mass start and then follows sequentially through the Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Three Ferries) riding. The team doing their stretching following the Saturday lunch was an interesting capture. We were also happy to discover the Mile 0 sign. The Three Ferries outing was such a great ride for us, we really enjoyed it. We had never been to Vancouver Island or Victoria. When we reached downtown Victoria on Sunday during the ride, we had to stop and look and look and look. We had no idea, what a nice setting and the entire town was wonderful to ride in.

Our team photo IMG_8103a among the set, is a self portrait from the store window reflection in Sidney, BC. The following IMG_8104a shows a smiling stoker checking out their team reflection.

Our hats are off to the rally's volunteer staff, just a great, great time.

A tip about the slide show setup - if you hover the mouse near the bottom of photo, a pop up bar will appear to change show speed or advance even faster with the click of the right arrow.


NWTR Slide Show link:

http://sports.webshots.com/slideshow/573626529kBIxjI;jsessionid=abcbjMiayJIM16QPhFwks (mhtml:{A25D63CA-CF5D-4E28-8F4B-00A6826E9797}mid://00000603/!x-usc:http://sports.webshots.com/slideshow/573626529kBIxjI;jsessionid=abcbjMiayJIM16QPhFwks)

NWTR Full album:

http://sports.webshots.com/album/573626529kBIxjI

Randall and Barb
www.TeamAngell.com (mhtml:{A25D63CA-CF5D-4E28-8F4B-00A6826E9797}mid://00000603/!x-usc:http://www.teamangell.com/)