Retro Grouch 

Anybody going to the Midwest Tandem Rally over Labor Day weekend?

Trsnrtr

Of course.

Retro Grouch 

How can I find you to say "hello" in that crowd?

We ride a Santana Noventa with shadeshifter paint. On Saturday we'll probably be wearing Mule Team jerseys. Car is a gray Honda Element with Byke4-2 plates.

BloomingCyclist

We'll be there too. I think we will get there fairly late Friday night. We are riding a Santana Niobium, vertical green to blue fade with a black Phil Wood hub / 40 spoke wheel on the rear (Sweet 16 just broke a spoke) and probably a Sweet 16 on the front (unless I go ahead and put the Phil on the front too). We'll be wearing mostly blue Alaska jerseys on Saturday.

Bloomington, IN

Trsnrtr

Good question, considering the mob of tandems.

All I can say, is that we are a short team in our 50s, red diamond finish Sovereign with a silver '05 Honda Odyssey van, IL plates as there is a silver ody there with TX plates usually, also.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for the rest of you guys.

blwyn

We'll be there. Red Trek T200 that has a trunk bag with a small orange foam semi-truck as the zipper pull. I don't know what we will be wearing, but I do know that it will not not be a matching set!

blwyn

Has anyone received a registration confirmation for the ride? We registered last spring and have never received a confirmation or schedule. Any idea where and when the ride begins on Saturday (we will not be staying at the motel)? The web site doesn't provide any details. Thanks,

caadman

Yep we'll be there also, this is the big one!! It's very fun!!....We'll be on the green cannondale with a birdie as the mojo on the front, 26 inch velocity wheels, I can't remember which day is club day and which is rally jersey day, but club day, we'll be in the "wolveriens sports club" kit, and rally jersey day, it'll probabaly be the rally jersey from last year in Cedar rapids Iowa, that's a pretty jersey!!..

Name plate on the back, will be Benjamin and Pat..

See you there!!

Benjamin

BloomingCyclist

We registered online so we just have a printout of that - no extra info BUT the downloadable pdf registration form on the MTR site has the schedule and it says that the Saturday morning mass start is at 9:00. I assume it starts at the host Paper Valley Raddison. The form also gives vendor times, workshop times, banquet times, etc.
Go to the website https://www.couplesonwheels.com/mtr2007.php and click on registration form.

Bloomington, IN

counselguy

We will be there as well late Friday evening with a Calfee Tetra Cabernet tip to tail fade and Rolf wheels. Really enjoyed Cedar Rapids last year so I anticipate this also will be a great rally. On Saturday we will be wearing White/Blue Hilly Hundred jerseys.

Part of the enjoyment is having tandem shops represented there such as Tandems East and Tandems Limited. Get to learn alot and fix troublesome issues that LBS sometimes can't fix.

See you there!

GailB

RJ Berner and I will be there. It is our first tandem rally. With hundreds of tandem riders, we are hoping for more fun than the local organized bike rides have been in West Michigan. It will be my first time biking in Wisconsin.

We will be on a blue Rivazza. We're not into the matching jerseys. I'm excited to give my new Brooks saddle and thudbuster a workout. Just ditched my Specialized seat a couple of weeks ago after it broke down with less then 3000 miles.

Here's hoping for great weather!

Gail

zonatandem

We won't make it this year . . .
Have attended many MTRs since the 'first one' in 1975; AZ is a bit far from WisCOWsin; just got back from a 3 month stay in Idaho (with tandem, of course).
MTRs have been some of the best rallies for tandemers.
Enjoy, and get in a few miles for us!
Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

bikeriderdave

We'll be there on our bright green Bike Friday triple. My stokers and I will also be working bike check on Friday afternoon (3:00 to 6:00, I believe). Say "hi" if you get a chance. Should be a great weekend if the forecast holds: Sunny or mostly sunny every day, with highs in the upper 70s and lows in the upper 50s.

blwyn

We had a nice time at the ride. We did the long route on Saturday and the medium route on Sunday. In re-reading the descriptions above, I believe I remember passing bikeriderdave at about the midpoint on Sunday, and being passed by caadman about 1-2 miles before the lunch stop on Sunday. You were flying caadman!

I took a few pictures at High Cliffs. As always, the hill looks flatter in the pictures than it seemed while we were climbing it. Actually, we got up that hill pretty well. It was that last little steep hill on Saturday before the long route rejoined the medium route for the final time that about did us in. At 4.5 mph we actually passed someone, but I was afraid we were going to totter to a clipped-in stop before cresting. Both of the routes we took had a nice mix of hills and flat.

Trsnrtr

My wife and I just got back a little while ago. We had a great time and did the whole experience: Friday Ice Cream Ride, Saturday long route, Sunday long route, banquette, and Sunday breakfast ride. All of the routes were great, weather was great, and hotel was nice. We thought it was one of the better MWTRs in recent years.

bikeriderdave

Silly me. I thought that "green Bike Friday triple" was descriptive enough, but saw another while working registration Friday afternoon -- so there were at least two at MTR this year. We were the shorter team, with drop 'bars in all three positions. We wore matching red Trek/VW team jerseys on Saturday and matching gray/blue Discovery team jerseys on Sunday. Rode a "medium+" route (59 miles) on Saturday and the plain-old medium route on Sunday. We're sort of odd in that we don't mind hills too much but can struggle in a brisk breeze. We'd hoped to go farther on Sunday, but the wind (per the NWS, SW at 18 w/gusts to 24 at mid-day) forced us to reconsider. The route headed Southeast, so there were significant side/head wind stretches both heading out and coming back. The climb up to the High Cliffs rest stop got your attention, but I saw only one team afoot. As at all tandem events, we met a lot of nice people who were especially kind to our eight-year-old. MTR 2008, in Springfield IL, is already on our to-do list.

Pista Largo

Springfield here we come!! It was a great time! (one possible exception being the comedic entertainment at the banquet).

There were certainly a lot of lustworthy bikes there!

Retro Grouch 

We're definitely on for Springfield too.

Honestly, MTR has done a good job of finding my gag point on cost. $40.00 per person registration fees, $100 per night hotel rooms $12.00 per person breakfasts and $30.00 per person banquet fees get my attention. The sheer scale of the thing, 450+ teams, vendors, etc. pretty well mandates a convention center hotel so that drives up the cost. On the other hand, the scale is what makes MTR what it is so I guess that if you want to play you have to pay.

The thing that struck me the most this year was the number of triples and quads. I'll bet there were at least as many triples at this year's event as there were tandems at the first MTR I attended in 1980. My favorite was the cow painted Zona with matching shorts and jersey's for the riders.

We've been skipping the banquet for several years so we missed the entertainment. This year we ate dinner with 5 other couples from St Louis and had a wonderful time. One other couple made a point of telling me they didn't like the entertainment. Appearently it was too risque' for their tastes. Only two folks have mentioned the entertainment to me so that's 0 for 2.

BloomingCyclist

This was our first Midwest Tandem Rally and our 4th tandem rally since starting to ride tandems two years ago. We've been to the Tennessee Tandem Rally last year and this year with 50 teams and the Eastern Tandem Rally with about 70 teams.

We thoroughly enjoyed being around the approximately 440 tandems (there were 889 riders which included a several triples and at least two quads that we saw. The Tennessee Tandem Rally has a mass start with a police escort and the 50 couples formed a double pace line which stayed together for quite a while both times we've been there. The MTR has a mass start at 9:00 and it was a very different situation with the mass of bikes filling up the street for one block - and then we were all off in a mass. It soon collapsed into taking just the right hand lane and there were smaller groups of 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 tandems together. If there were any long double pace lines, I didn't see them. I loved seeing the great variety of brands of tandems and the number of families with children, some quite young, participating in the rally.

There were "standard" triples and Bike Friday triples. One of the quads was a S & S coupled Santana with a horizontal top tube that could be assembled as a tandem, a triple, or a quad. The other quad was a non-coupled Co-Motion. Both were very neat machines. We also met a couple on a ZONA carbon tandem without a lateral tube and painted in a cow them with the riders in matching attire.

Coming from relentless heat in the 90's and humidity in southern Indiana, it was very refreshing to have some 80 degree weather with low humidity in Appleton, WI. We drove up Friday after work going across Chicago at the tail end of rush hour and we didn't arrive until 11:30 our time (10:30 Wisconsin time) so we missed the Ice Cream ride.

We did the long 69 mile route on Saturday and the long 67 mile route on Sunday. Both rides were very nice. Compared to our home in southern Indiana, I would call the ride flat to very mild hills but for those who lived in the absolutely flat parts of Illinois or northern Indiana, it had some hills. Sunday had the "biggest" climb into the park. Sunday's ride had some stiff winds 15 - 30 mph which caused a lot of people to choose the medium route of 50 miles instead of the longer route.

The cue sheet for the longer ride used a very small font size - it was hard for my stoker to read. I believe the cue sheets were made on a spread sheet and it appeared that as the number of cues went up on the short, medium, and long rides, the spreadsheet was asked to fit to one page so the letters got smaller and smaller and smaller. The mileage got off by almost 3 miles during the middle of the ride, which coupled with the small size of the letters was a little frustrating. The Dan Henry's were the smallest I've seen on a ride in many years. Anyway - we did fine - but the cue sheets could have been much better.

We loved meeting and visiting with different people. For example, we met a couple who quit their jobs in Michigan a few years ago and rode their tandem from the arctic circle to Florida in five and a half months and then relocated to new jobs in Seattle. On Sunday we connected with a couple who rode similarly to us and we pulled each other through the headwinds and flew with the tailwinds on the long ride - we were the first riders to the midpoint rest stop on the long day - it was a great day of riding. We met a family on two tandems with a parent and child on each one. The young son turned seven on Sunday and it was a joy to watch him stand on the rear of the tandem when they were going up the hill to the park - a true turbo charger in a small package.

I wasn't impressed with the food at the lunch stops but it was served quickly and adequate to the task. The banquet food was good and I enjoyed being there as a very large group and hearing about next year's MTR in Springfield, IL. They had a clever and interesting presentation. I didn't expect entertainment at our banquet because I guess I skipped reading that detail. There was a comedy troupe. Honestly, my first thought was that it was some of the riders who had agreed to do some skits and routines but they shouldn't have and then it went downhill from there. I was sitting at a table with a mother and father and a 14 year old daughter listening to an extended routine whose humor depended on the humor of anal sex. I felt sorry and awkward for them and the other families with children.

Nevertheless, being around 440 tandems and triples and quads was wonderful and when we left we got to come back through Chicago when it wasn't rush hour and that was good too. I'm attaching some images from the ride. We will go again next year to Springfield, IL. The year after in 2009 will be in Rochester, MN. That will be too far away for us but I'm sure it will be fun too.

Trsnrtr

I have to agree with you. We skipped the $12 breakfast and ate in the hotel restaurant where the buffet was $9.65. We haven't done the banquette in recent years, but my wife sneaked down and bought a couple tickets against my wishes.

mrfish

Great photos. It looked like a lot of fun.

caadman

I agree with the sentiments here also, everything was great except for the comedy troup, that left a bit to be desired, but everything else was great. What really caught my attention was the nice roads and the fact that they were in WI. we have terrible roads here in MI and it was a great pleasure to ride those roads up there, they were great!! Awesome weather also..Mom and I rode the ice cream ride friday, the long route on saturday and the medium route sunday, it worked out very well..

blwyn, I hear you on your coments, yeah we were going pretty good, I remember that strech of road, the wind was behind us and I was hungry for lunch, when those two combos come together and I'm close to where I need/want to be, we can really get it going!!. I think that part also was on a bit of a downhill drag, and we've learned to use momentum and the natural terrain we're riding on, to our advantage, momentum is HUGE in tandeming!!..

BloomingCyclist, sounds like you guy's are hooked on tandeming and rallies!! That's great, they certianly are a good time!!

We'll be at Springfield 2008 also, actually we got a preview this year when the PSTR was there in June. so it should be good riding and another good rally, let's just hope that we have as nice of weather as we did this year!!

Take care,

Benjamin