My wife and I were only two miles into a ride when I steered through a little bit of dried mud on the MUP in a tight corner. That dried mud turned out to be ¾” of wet slippery mud with a thin crust and we went down on the left side. My first thoughts were for my wife since we had never dumped a tandem and I was worried that my mistake would cost her. Fortunately, she had her hands in the bar ends I recently installed to give her additional hand positions. We ride a Screamer recumbent tandem so her normal hand position would have been a disaster for her left hand. Fortunately, she only took a little bruising where the pedal nicked her leg. I had some road rash but nothing serious.
The bike on the other hand took the worst of it and had a bent fork. When we slid, we went straight into a small berm on the edge of the trail and the result was a fork that lost about an inch of rake and pulled the bike to the right on level ground. I did not realize it was bent at first. The steering felt strange but the riser had turned as well as the headset. We spent the next 14 miles making adjustments and sorting it out. Just after mile 14, I stopped again and removed the front wheel while making some brake adjustments as the fronts were dragging. It was obviously not quite right but I decided to turn around for safety reasons. We ended up with less than half the planned 65 miles but we were safe.
We were on one of our final training rides to prepare for the DALMAC tour and needed to get a replacement fork ASAP. It’s not incredibly easy to find a tandem rated 20” fork in short order but fortunately, a fellow Screamer owner one state away sold me a Screamer fork he had removed when he switched to a suspension fork. Three days later, I installed the fork and we were on a test ride.