Tandem Cycling - Two new Periscopes hit the road

Some of you may have seen a thread I posted last fall (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/671363-Tandem(s)-for-family-of-4) discussing the the pros and cons of two tandems vs a triple and single for me, my wife and 4 year old twins. Well, we pulled the trigger today at Mel's place down in South Jersey and, from the title of the post, you can see what we decided. Two new Periscope tandems for me and my wife.

She test rode one alone and with a girl on back and decided that she was comfortable and excited about captaining one half of our dynamic duo. Pull the rear mast out of the seat tube, drop the seat post all the way down to the bottom, put on crank shorteners, and our girls just fit on the back. Yaayyy, no stokid kit!.

Mel is building up the bikes this week and we'll swing down next weekend for the pick up. I'm happy that my wife agreed to captain one, but at the same time a little worried that when I want to go out without her that I'll have to trade off girls on the back rather than bringing them both with me. A convertible triple just wasn't in the cards this time. Good times ahead!

John

Great Tandems....congrats on your family's new rides!

Bill J.

Congratulations!

This should be terrific. You might be surprised how often your wife will decide to take out a kid without you as well. My wife used her tandem to take our young son to many events over the years in place of taking the car. Our kids are not twins, so they have more separate destinations than yours might. While it did not work out so well for us at the time, you might want to consider a wireless bike intercom system so that the two captains can talk easily to eachother. There are many more options for this now than when we tried it. The biggest problems we had using two tandems for the entire family were related to pacing and communication. The wireless intercoms (like the Blue Ant units) have gotten much better over the years and can work over surprisingly good ranges should you need them to.

Have fun!

David T.

2 more dynamic duos on the road!
Congrats!
Enjoy the ride TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

The periscopes are great, versatile bikes - your family will have a blast with them - congrats!

tie dye--I'm afraid a system like that would encourage me to ride too far ahead of my wife like I usually do on my single. She would get seriously PO'd! I know that's not why you suggest them but I know what I'd end up doing.

Thanks all for the encouragement, we're excited to get out there and have a few short destination rides in mind for the kids. They're excited now and we don't want to dampen their enthusiasm by pushing too hard.