Johnny Mullet

This will be my last chance at getting the wife to ride bikes with me. I have tried everything possible and never, ever pushed her into doing anything. After I recently started cycling she was excited for a bit and I bought her a new big box bike. She rode it less than a mile and that was it for a few months. I then bought a basket to mount on her bike and even trained the little dog we have to ride in the basket. She rode the dog 3 times and that was it. Poor dog begs me for rides all the time now

I was browsing bikes on craigslist as usual and the wife seen a pic of an old tandem and said "Oh! That looks like fun" and I then started thinking about buying a tandem. I went to critical mass last month and wifey took me there in the car and we brought the dog. Everyone loved the dog and we met 3-4 others with dogs who were actually taking their dogs along for the ride. The wife was wanting to do something like this with me and the dog but knows she can't ride 10 miles.

My boss at work asked about my trip to Cleveland and I told him about Critical Mass and meeting people and then I told him about wanting to take the wife and dog on a tandem. He said "I have one of them. Before you buy one, borrow mine and see how it goes".

Today he dropped off this "Caddie Up" tandem bike. He said the front chain keeps popping off and the tires only hold air a few weeks and the brakes suck. He said that if I fix anything that needs parts he would supply them. Well anyway, here it is as it sits. I got some work to do and hopefully the wife and I can ride together. I don't care if I have to do all the work or not. I will consider it as training................

Team Fab

My advice change the inner tubes. Check that the chain is aligned/no stiff links/chain tensioner works.

Find a nice community path and have at it. Bike to an ice cream shop.

chojn1

My wife was never a biker and still isn't. But she will go almost anywhere with me on the tandem.
Make it fun. She will love it.

P.S. you cannot ride a tandem unless you like fixing bike.

zonatandem

My spouse has been riding tandem since 1975 and we've covered over 240,000 riding TWOgether. We are now on tandem #5 .
Our advice: quite trying to convince her to do what she do no really want to do.

Johnny Mullet

Well I got most of the issues fixed on the bike and sometime today we will go for a ride. When I brought it home she said to hurry up and fix it so we can ride.

Paul J

Hope all goes well, have a great ride.

Johnny Mullet

Who knew I could load this 60+lb folding tandem on the strap rack on the back of a Geo Metro.......................

JanMM

Guess I'll quit complaining that our Screamer weighs north of 45 pounds.

So......how does it ride?

mtnbke

Zona I'll throw out my two cents. I'd probably seen tandems around before but the first time I ever noticed one I was trying to get my ex into cycling in the late 90s. We were in Minnesota in a little shop in Rochester, and a guy rides a tandem in to have something done to it. He is just raving, not angry, not raising his voice, but just if its possible, calmly raving. It turns out he had a fat wife and he was a pretty avid cyclist. They bought the tandem to kind of converge his passion for cycling and to get her some freakin' needed exercise. Anyway he'd never really rode the tandem alone without her on the back. He was climbing a hill to get to the bike shop and could not believe how much easier it was to climb without her on the bike. It was pretty simple, she was more fat than the wattage she was contributing to the climbing. He was just shocked. He kept asking how that could be possible that she wasn't even contributing equivalent to her own weight. I thought it was pretty funny at the time because he was just flabbergasted. He basically just kind of figured out that she wasn't doing much.

Now I had bought my ex a gorgeous Lemond Maillot Jaune with the Olmo three-color fade. The bike from the Lemond Cover shoot. It had full Dura-Ace and we were just both getting into riding road bikes. We were at the shop that day getting her bike completely overhauled. I didn't realize how significantly I was getting ripped off that day. In the late 90s they charged us something like $175 before shop fees and tax. Now that I work on my own bikes I realize all they did was adjust the cones on the front & rear hubs, put some grease in 'em, and maybe did the same for the BB. I doubt that though. They maybe greased the bearing race in the Headset and they tuned the rear derailleur. We got a sweet deal on the Maillot Jaune and we were happy to get the bike ready to ride, so I didn't care at the time. That Maillot Jaune was built with the classic Italian geometry that Lemond liked, but for her it had too long of a top tube. It was the wrong bike for her. We bought her a Klein Attitude Comp that year. She would complain when we were riding it, she couldn't' figure out the shifting (she had some learning disabilities). That too was the wrong bike, as it also had too long of a top tube for her.

Later we moved to Boston and I caught the tandem bug. I was enamored with Santana tandems after reading all of their marketing rhetoric. To this day the Santana catalog is probably the best marketing I've ever experienced. One test ride on a steel Santana cured me of their claims though ("our steel tandems are stiffer than the competitions aluminum ones"). On my first tandem experience ever I hated that steel Santana. It flexed like it had a hinge in the middle and I was crushed. We actually went to the bike shop that day to buy it. It was the most horrible riding bike I've ever been on. They had a really old stock Cannondale tandem that was huge, that had never been built up. It was too small for me, but everything was going to be.

In the end the Cannondale was amazing compared to the Santana. Riding the tandem with her was a nightmare. At the end of the day she just hated riding on the bike, and being on the tandem was a microcosm of everything that was dysfunctional in our relationship. They had mentioned that at the fitting. That tandem couples go one of two ways. Either the couple has a good relationship and good communication in which case the tandem becomes an amazing together experience…or the couple that has problems and poor communication will discover the tandem being a nexus of everything that is wrong in the relationship, riding together.

That relationship ended catastrophically. One of the *****iest things she ever did was keep my custom titanium Stoker suspension seat post in the breakup. What she was going to do with a stoker suspension post was beyond me. She just didn't want the next stoker to use it. I discovered an old female friend and we put a lot of miles on the tandem, and I had some of my best rides with her on that bike. We were riding a lot, including some really steep hills 8-9% grades. The problem was that there was just no chemistry, for me, with her. I regret that because I had more fun riding with her than I've had pretty much since. When I met my wife my friendship with the stoker/friend ended. My wife entered the relationship talking about wanting to backpack, ride bikes, go cross country skiing essentially all the things I used to love to do but hadn't done with the ex. I bought her a Specialized Epic mountain bike, and also an Ultegra road bike with paired spoke wheels. I really wanted to get back into cycling. Low and behold the women's specific frame we bought wasn't, and the bike had a much too long top tube for her to be comfortable. I put my Look Ergostem on the bike and she wasn't comfortable until the faceplate of the stem was behind the headset bolt ( a true "zero" stem!). We sold that bike and she has a Schwinn Suburban now. She loves it. It weighs more than the Cannondale tandem. It doesn't even have 100mm front forks so I have to kind of spread the steel fork just to fit it into the roof rack for every ride.

We had a big blowup the other night. I finally realized I was miserable. I miss riding bicycles. Cycling is a HUGE part of my life and not something I'm willing to live without. My wife would rather sit on the couch and watch TV until Type II diabetes strikes. The thing is, I think not riding bikes is a deal breaker. This is my first marriage but my third relationship of at least eight years. My wife has given me two beautiful children. However, if I had to do it over again, and I told her this, if I had known that she was being disingenuous at the time, and that she had no intention of being active, would never be "a cyclist" or want to go backpacking or skiing, well I wouldn't have bothered. We live in Boulder County and every night families are out on the bike paths riding together. Husband, Wife, & kids. My wife wants to just watch TV.

I'll be honest. I'm past the point of tired with all the passive aggressive behavior and avoidance strategies she employes to not go on rides. We haven't ridden 200 miles TOTAL in twelve years. That's between the mountain bikes, tandem and road bikes and her Suburban all put together over that entire timeline.

My thought is this, to anyone that is thinking about getting together with someone, if they aren't a cyclist: move on. There are somethings that are just not ever going to be negotiable. For some people its their religion and spiritual community. For others its alcohol or drug abuse. To me, I now realize that the single most dominant factor in my marriage is simply that my wife isn't a cyclist. That's probably not ever going to change, however, I'm at the point where we are going to ride together as a family, or its time to rethink the marriage. We had a long talk and I'm not sure she still understands how important this is, for my physical health (I'm 400lbs), my mental well being, and for our marriage.

I feel bad for anyone that is partnered with a spouse or girlfriend that doesn't support the passion for cycling. To me cycling is like breathing, I actually need to to do it to be happy. It would be like for some people they couldn't fathom not going to church, or not watching their favorite college or NFL team.

I love my kids, and they are the most precious things in my life. However, if I had to do it over again, if I could somehow have my kids still, I never EVER would have married my wife. That may sound harsh, but her not being a cyclist, I've learned is too big a chasm for the relationship to span. My advice for anyone is that if you are a passionate cyclist, find yourself a cyclist. There are a billion little biker chicks in the world, don't make my mistake and end up with a non-supportive spouse. Life is just too short to spend with someone that doesn't want to ride bikes.

To the OP - I don't care how fat the wife is, or how out of shape. I'm 400lbs and haven't done over a fifteen mile ride in years. If you get her properly fit to a bike with an appropriate position and women's saddle, ANYONE can ride 10 miles. Anyone.