Until last March my wife and I rode Tom's first tandem - at least the first tandem he sold. We met Tom in the late 70's on Sunday morning rides led by an interesting guy named Jobst Brandt. At that time we were riding a Bob Jackson tandem. Tom made a tandem for riding with his wife that he let us try out. It had a weird geometry with a very short front top tube compensated for by a very long stem. We didn't like that arrangement but Tom clearly knew how to assemble tubes so we asked him to build a more conventional frame for us.
The year was 1977 and there was a stack of unusual looking frames in the corner of his shop when we picked up our new frame. I believe those unusual looking frames were one of his first orders for mountain bikes.
The photo above was taken no long afterwards. We rode this bike more than 100,000 miles over the next 41 years. The photo below was taken in Switzerland in 1984.
We also rode on a lot of dirt roads. The next photos show us working our way around a landslide on Alpine Road in the Bay Area.
That is Jobst Brandt in the front, also riding a Ritchey. Our last long ride on this wonderful tandem was last Summer. We repeated an easy trip on the coast in Northern California.
The only problem with that tandem was the lack of mountings for disk brakes. We used an old Atom drum brake that I modified with larger flanges that placed the spoke holes outside the diameter of the freewheel, so that we could replace broken spokes on the road. The flanges was drilled for 48 hole rims. The wheel worked great but that Atom drum brake was marginal. This past March we bought a new Breakaway frame from Tom, which we are enjoying.
I also ride a Ritchey Classic and a Breakaway single.