Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Heh, heh. Yes, new teams do sometimes have different cadence preferences. IME that's not particularly common. Teams manage to sort that out if the desire is there. It's rather interesting, going to a team sport from an individual one. Team members may have different talents, yet each team member has to work just as hard as any other for the team to succeed. It's just like anything else, but with the addition of the personal. Or at another level of abstraction, one might say that it's just like anything else in a relationship, with the addition of a mechanical bond.
I buy all this, tandems are great like I said. But this, together with your earlier observation that "it's all about getting the load down" illustrates my point - tandems make different demands and they aren't for everyone. I would not be recommending a tandem to a couple who have never sat on one, are thinking of embarking on an indefinite and possibly worldwide tour, and will be taking enough gear to be pretty much self-sufficient. They need to know what they are getting into, and whether it suits them, before making that choice.