Originally Posted by
TandemGeek
...Again, so much of what was posted was removed by TMB that these snippets are even hard to track, i.e., were ALL of the significant problems related to the same two-tandems and what I'm almost sure was retribution doled-out by the peloton???
As others in the Peloton thread noted, it sounds like the captains should have been banned from the event not an entire class of bicycle. If this was the standard at most cycling events I'd venture to guess that single bikes would have been banned long-ago...
I feel compelled to relate my experience on a recent ride in my "backyard" (The Oregon and California Railroad lands of the Oregon Coast Range). The Oregon Gran Fondo was going on and their ride was contraflow to the direction that my wife and I were riding for a 100 km stretch of our 200 km ride. A large portion of these forest (okay, tree farm) roads are extremely narrow, as in fifteen feet total for both directions. We were constantly having to yell and wave to get the attention of the folks riding half-bikes on the wrong side of the road. They were lucky it was just a tandem coming along instead of a pick-up truck. I know they were instructed that the roads they would be on were open to traffic, but many of them seemed intent on behaving as though it was a closed road for the event.
Out of nearly 200 cyclists we saw, only twenty or so resisted riding on the right half of the road while we were oncoming and none of them were tandems. It would seem to be pretty ridiculous to ban all single bikes from the event and only allow the ten tandems to ride.
Then again, I sometimes wonder how safe our roads would be if we simply closed them to motorists for a few months every time there is an injury wreck on one of them.