Saw a tandem being brought into the Bike farm.

a Peugeot tandem. Nice orig color. *

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2d21e3ae6.jpeg
* I have no affiliation with this co-op other than searching for the occasional part or using their tools.

I have one of those. We bought it with the idea that my wife would be able to keep up with me on rides. We never got comfortable riding it, so we haven't ridden it in a few years. Since my wife got a nice single bike, we ride together more often than we ever did on the tandem.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...450814f913.jpg
1980 Peugeot TH-8 tandem

Oh boy, am I tempted.

Well I be one of the many many husbands to buy a tandem that ends up going unused? Or could it maybe work out for me? In the words of a Tobias Funke:
"No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us."

make it fun!!

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2a6ccf700.jpeg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a46df39dc.jpeg

Only if the term good sport solidly applies to your wife, and that's only a start. :roflmao2:

I have 4, don't know what I was thinking.

She is a good sport, and she did commit to doing a bike tour at least once (her idea for a birthday present). But we have a six month old, so it could be a difficult time to learn.

Well it is summer time and we do have the savant team of Rob and Myronda that make it look soooooo easy right here in PDX so....... ;)

Guess why you see so few tandems .

I just saw a couple kitted out for touring on a tandem yesterday, a rare sight indeed.

4 wives or......? :innocent:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6749b1945.jpeg
Sorry buddy, just unloaded it to a family in Salt Lake City.

Oh no, I can barely wrangle one and fortunately she is a very good sport that puts up with way too much nonsense.

I don't think the tandem thing is going to happen but I may get after the one that seems to be a pretty nice somewhat complete seemingly custom that I got awhile back.

Also have a well seasoned Atala that is fairly complete and was reportedly a pretty good workhorse, rider with some updated workaround components.

A boat anchor all steel Gitane that was the first I got as a curiosity, wanted to see exactly how a factory one was done.

Last is a tiny Bob Jackson frame that was raced extensively and crashed hard, folded the HT way under withtout bending the fork, crazy and cool as ef, need to hang it on the wall.

I don't think you can find any more fun than this here. ;)

There is a saying: wherever your relationship is going, on a tandem, you'll get there faster.

My spouse was not happy when I got the tandem but she agreed to try it. She was terrified. Fortunately, she agreed to try again, and we don't know what made the difference, but she's not scared on it anymore. Sometimes we ride singles, and sometimes we ride the tandem.

I got it hoping it would equalize us since I go faster and have more stamina. It did equalize us but not in the way I had hoped. Captaining the tandem is exhausting for me, and I can only ride it for short distances. Well, that's somewhat useful. I'm not quite sure what exhausts me. It might be that my position is too upright. I'm pretty sure that one factor is that steering it and keeping it upright requires a lot of upper body work, and I have puny shoulders. I'm working on that.

:thumb: That is flippin priceless! :roflmao2:

Yup, and I should have heeded that when I rented a tandem for my ex-wife and me to try. It did not go well.

That has been my experience as well. When I was getting the tandem ready to ride, I would take it out by myself to test the brakes and shifting. It felt like riding a heavy mountain bike, but not really hard to ride. When my wife got on for our first ride together, everything changed. I don't know if it was the geometry or what, but it required a lot of strength just to keep in a straight line. Every little move my wife made in back was transmitted to the steering. Taking a hand off the bars to shift was scary. It doesn't help that she is shorter and tries to stretch to see around me.

The bigger the weight difference, the easier it is to captain. I had a good 80 pounds on my wife and, while it was still work, it was manageable. Later when my daughter was in middle school she took over the stoker seat and my wife took up knitting. The daughter weighed nothing; it was like having a motor on the back. We had some fantastic father daughter times, at the time in her life when everything starts getting hard.

I'd like to have one for my grandsons (her sons), but they're too far away to ride with much.

Yes, I learned those things, too. Lucky for me, my spouse is quite light, and she does not lean to the sides. I tried riding with one of my kids who weighed the same as I did or maybe more. Very scary, and that tandem was not a good one for me to begin with. Our tandem has upright (butterfly) bars with trigger shifters so that's easy.

Yes, I do not like to take my hands off. For signals, I call out the signal I want, and she does it for us.

So much talk about tandems, how do you transport them, if you want to ride someplace that’s a few hours away?

I'm trying to work that out now. We finally got a trailer hitch rack for the car, but ain't no way I'm going to mount the bike side-to-side. There are adapters I need to look into. I got the bike home years ago by tying it to the roof of my car.

There is a tandem section of bikeforums.

Thule roof rack with Tandem extension was what I used bitd. Occasionally it helps to be tall. Bike was darn near as long as my '85 Ford Escort, and worth twice as much. Heck, maybe 4x; Santana vs beat to hell Escort.

I stopped by P;ear in far east (SE I guess) Portland this afternoon, to donate some items and check it out. I'd like to volunteer, but their hours are pretty much work hours. Maybe post retirement. They had a lot of for sale bikes, but I was too rushed to check things out. I did notice a small, newish looking current generation Fuji, which is not Fuji of old but sits between wally-world and lbs.

Nothing brings us together like things that bring us together.

I am picturing you two H**lbent, flat out, time and time again, grinning and smiling from ear to ear.

Memories and a bond that could not be had at any cost.

I might be grabbing one of these for my sister-in-law, but I wanted to be sure of some things.

I had heard some Benottos had high failure rates, and this includes the 3000.

I had also heard that the Mexican built Benottos copied many of the (otherwise signature) De Rosa techniques such as the heart cutout and diamond chainstays.

Not sure what to make of either of these rumors, but I don't want to build up a bike for my sister-in-law only to have the seat tube crack.

Who can assuage my fears?