Originally Posted by
SouthSanDiego
Precious cargo, indeed. I'm new to the terminology, too. SPD as in clipless/cleated/click-in pedals? Don't those interfere with quick removal of the feet from the pedals, too? As a tandem beginner, I think i'll stick to flats for now, until I become more familiar with this bike. Thanks much for your very helpful responses.
Yes, SPDs are clipless pedals, i.e. they are not toe clips but have cleats mounted to the shoe sole which click into clipless pedals. So "clipless" because of no toe clips, but one does "clip in." Yes, confusing. There's comment upthread where someone claims to "clip in" to toe clip pedals. That just makes the confusion worse.
I assumed, as perhaps others have, that you already ride a sport road or mountain bike, in which case you already use clipless pedals. If not, definitely do that before mounting clipless on your tandem. Captaining a tandem is about 4 times trickier than riding a single road bike. I'd been riding road bikes for 65 years and the first time we tried a borrowed tandem, we made it 20' before we fell over. On another try, in a parking lot, I almost hit a couple parked cars. We now have about 20,000 miles on our tandem and love it, which mileage is like nothing to experienced teams, but we started late.
Just expanding on the cautions in previous comments.