zonatandem

Noticed that there are a bunch of new tandem enthusiasts joining this forum. Welcome!
A good tandem club and source for information is the the Tandem Club of America (TCA), a club that has existed now for 30+ years, is national and international in scope and has no meetings to attend!
They do publish a magazine called DoubleTalk, six times a year that is loaded with all sort of tandem related articles and information.
Check out their webside www.tandemclub.org for details.
Membership is a mere $15 a year for US and $20 for folks up in Canada.
The latest issue, Jan. - Feb. 2007 has some great articles, including a tour in France with folks on a three-seater, "A Season of Three Stokers" article, two different views/reviews of the Midwest Tandem Rally sponsored by the PIGS (Paired Iowans Going Somewhere) in 2006, an off-roading tandem adventure weekend, a great get-TWO-gether of tandemistas in New Jersey, an Adirondacks riding report plus a rally in Kentucky!
Also a listing of tandem rallies/events across the US, a 'for sale' page and even occasional reviews on new tandems and tech tips/problems.
We have enjoyed being TCA members since the club's inception, way back in 1975.
So, if you're failry new to the tandem scene, the TCA is an excellent source!

Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

caadman

I'm glad you posted that Rudy and Kay, I'll second that, it's a great publication!!

Benjamin

regomatic

Thanks for reminding us and new members.

Jack & Susan Goertz edit and publish DoubleTalk magazine and also run their business;

https://www.tandemsltd.com/

providing tandem bikes, accessories and very learned advice to the tandem community. I was referred to them by a very knowledgeable tandem mechanic when we bought our first mid '90's Burley Duet just less than two years ago. We had a blast on it and upgraded to a second hand but only slightly used Trek T2000 three months later.

We're having more fun than ever so we're ready to upgrade again.

Jack & Susan have been very helpful in dialing in our new custom S&S Bushnell that should start welding up in the next couple of weeks.

Red Rider

Thanks for the link! We're so new to the tandem world that we had no idea to look for a link like this. I'll go check it out. It's nice to have a community specific to one's passion.

TandemGeek

Although not definitive and occasionally out of date, I put thetandemlink.com on line about six years ago to address your very problem as there wasn't much on the Web to help folks looking for information on tandems and tandeming.

Before buying our first tandem back in '96 (or was it '97?), I knew a bit about tandems as my former S.O.'s brother and wife were cycling enthusiasts in Seattle. He was (and may still be) the King County bicycle and equestrian planning director, a USCF / UCI official, and his spouse was basically a cycling animal even cycling to work up and until a week or so delivering their first child. They even did the "tandem as a wedding present" thing spending their honeymoon cycling the West coast from Seattle to Los Angeles with parents driving SAG. Visiting them in Seattle, I was introduced to Elliott Bay Cycles, owner Bob and resident bike builder Bill Davidson back in ‘86. I'd never seen much in the way of high-end tandems and EBC was flush with them. A subsequent visit to Bud’s Bike Shop in Clairmont, California closer to home (noting it was Santana’s home shop, owned and operated by Bill McCready along with several other stores in Southern California) gave me even greater access to tandems and folks with tandem knowledge. I was smitten, but had no outlet as I failed to cultivate any tandem interest with my S.O..

Fast forward to 1996, having relocated to Georgia where I found and then married my soul-mate, I’d been doing my thing with cycling and as a result didn’t see much of Debbie on the weekends. To fill this void in quality time, I asked her if she had any interest in tandeming. She was and I discovered that a co-worker and her husband who cycled also had recently acquired a tandem. Cool! I did a little homework, Yahoo’d the Web and learned a little about tandems, got a Santana catalog, and also got in touch with Jack & Susan Goertz at Tandems Limited in Birmingham, about 2 hours from our home in Georgia. I’ll skip the tandem selection & buying experience but, needless to say, it was VERY difficult to find information regarding tandems as a newbie 10 years ago. However, after visiting Tandems Ltd we had our Santana Arriva, a copy of ‘The Tandem Scoop’ and were signed up for TCA’s newsletter so that we could come up to speed and stay informed on tandem happenings. We were also given an Email address for a guy in Atlanta who had recently established a mailing list for a quasi-tandem club called PEACHES that had recently started to hold monthly tandem rides in the Atlanta areas. Through Rich – the guy in Atlanta – I also learned about a tandem enthusiasts mailing list (aka, listserve) called Tandem@Hobbes and an excellent publication called Tandems & Family Cycling Magazine.

The Tandem@Hobbes listserve turned out to be the best resource for gaining access to information regarding tandems and connecting to other enthusiasts: this is where those in the know would share their knowledge interactively and near-real-time, to include folks like Santana’s Bill McCready, Co-Motion’s Dwan Shepard, daVinci’s Todd Shusterman, Glenn Erickson, Dennis Bushnell, folks from Bilenky, Sheldon Brown, Peter White, Jobst Brandt every now and again, and many other fountains of knowledge and experience. The Tandems & Family Cycling (T&FC) Web site was also a pretty good resource in that there were somewhat objective, very well-written reviews of several different brands of tandems that finally added balance to the Santana marketing data I had read. In fact, it was David Morgan’s excellent review of an Erickson tandem that eventually led us and four other couples from Atlanta to sell our Santana tandems and acquire Ericksons between ’98 and ‘00. The links, article archives, interactive classified ads, and other information hosted at T&FC’s website was far more comprehensive than TCA’s web site which, in retrospect, was essentially marketing info for TCA membership and the Newsletter via a few snippets (travel & rally reports) from the magazine and static snapshots of the important event list and classified ads extracted from the most current, bi-monthly edition of TCA’s newsletter.

However, both the T&FC & TCA websites were somewhat limited in their true value to consumers as the folks who ran them also ran commercial enterprises. Thus, in that TCA's leadership & newsletter editors ran a tandem business and also sold ads in TCA's newsletter, there was no interest in freely making information regarding other tandem dealers, tandem builders, or other tandem-related businesses available. The same was true for T&FC in that they survived based on ad revenue and, like all other bicycling magazines, tended to be generous in their comments about the products and services of their paid advertisers and made little mention of others except during the annual buyers guide edition.

Somewhere around 1999 T&FC ceased publication and their Website went into a dormant mode. No longer would the club links, event listings, etc… be updated. It was shortly thereafter that I decided to greatly expand my personal website’s tandem cycling page of links into what became https://www.thetandemlink.com. Given that I launched my site as a non-commercial, non-revenue generating personal website, I was not encumbered by alliances or business relationships and was able to pretty much include links to anything that I felt was of value to tandem enthusiasts. Thus, a comprehensive list of links to tandem builders – large and small – as well as tandem specialty dealers, tour operators, and anything else that I happened upon that I felt tandem enthusiasts might benefit from made their way onto my site. Alas, the sheer size of the site, numbers of links, volatility in URLs/domains, and the need to move the site between different hosts has probably taken its toll over the years, but to this day it remains pretty much the most comprehensive list of tandem related links on the Web and a frequent source for link & information harvesting by other sites.

Anyway, less I digress, getting back to TCA. Before the internet, Tandem@Hobbes, and T&FC, the TCA and its newsletter were the only game in town and the membership rolls which were three-times those of today, reflecting its value to the tandem community. However, with Wade Blomgren’s launch of the Tandem@Hobbes listserve in late ’92, early embracers of the internet who were also tandem enthusiasts found a more efficient way to share information regarding the hobby and ultimately, TCA membership began to feel the effects as Tandem@Hobbes list membership continued to grow. In late 1994, T&FC began to publish a high-quality, full-color magazine that truly filled the void in tandem-related publications providing a well-edited, balanced collection of articles and features on a quarterly basis that really gave enthusiasts a much broader view of the tandem industry, technology, and travel. T&FC’s popularity further eroded TCA membership as tandem enthusiasts who preferred printed material to Email from the Tandem@Hobbes listserve had an alternative source for tandem news and information in a far more appealing package vs. the somewhat dated “newsletter format”. Unfortunately, publications like T&FC magazine can’t survive on reader subscription fees and, lacking the necessary ad revenue that a tandem-only publication could generate, as previously noted T&FC ceased publication in ’99. However, by this point, Tandem@Hobbes had grown into a robust mailing list that continued to fill the need for enthusiasts looking for real-time information and who were becoming more comfortable navigating the Web to obtain information vs. sitting by the mailbox. In the interim, there have been two other attempts at tandem publications: “Tandem” magazine which, despite being a world-class product, was overly ambitious for the available start-up capital and folded after two issues and “Recumbent & Tandem Rider” magazine (https://rtrmag.com) which after six years remains in print and is the only regular source for tandem test ride reports and related news and information. As a result, TCA membership has continued to fall to its current levels – somewhere around 1,200 members – sustained by long-time loyalists who support TCA for the nominal $15/year membership dues for a variety of reasons, and a somewhat steady inflow of new members to off-set those who roll-off each year.

As it is today, we belong because I think a national organization for tandem enthusiasts is a worthy thing to sustain and, as already indicated, $15/year is a nominal price to pay to ensure the organization remains viable. I remain disappointed that TCA doesn’t do more for the tandeming community and is, for the most part, defined by the “newsletter” which I’ll simply note is what it is and the editors make no other representations: they generally publish what members submit. The production quality and balance reflects that approach in that many of the submittals are long-winded and of marginal interest to a broad audience and lack variety. Frankly, if you’re looking for industry news and product information, I would recommend a test subscription to Recumbent & Tandem Rider Magazine. However, at the same time, TCA remains an institution that is worthy of support and more recent improvements such as those made with the website over the last two years and some newer elements of the newsletter are indicative of TCA responding to the marketplace and membership interests.

Again, if one thing is constant it's that nothing is constant. Tandem@Hobbes is a mere shadow of what it once used to be. Small cliques of newer subscribers flood the bandwidth with off-topic "noise" that is of little interest to anyone except themselves, diminishing the value of the resource and reducing the list to little more than a "chat-room" for the self-absorbed. Will Tandem@Hobbes survive? Hard to know if its just part of the ebb and flow, or if my perceived loss of its value is shared by a wider audience who have also tuned out. So, TCA while not perfect, does at least remain as the longest standing, US tandem club and outlet for sharing information and connecting tandem enthuisasts with one another and I hope it always does. In the mean time, I'm quite content here on bikeforums, gleefully engaging in my theraputic process of typing out my thoughts to a seemingly appreciative audience.

Just my .02.

transam

Mark,

My stoker/wife and I appreciate the time and efort you put into this forum. Your answers and insights are coveted by both of us. Count us as part of that appreciative audience. Thanks!

Gary & Carol

zonatandem

While the print media may be viewed as a bit 'out of date' compared to computer forums, we compare it to 'steel is real' tandem enthusiasts and the newer metals/non-metal fabrications.
Gutenberg started the moveable type craze, and if it wasn't for his invention there may not have been anything like the moveable (and sometimes disappearing) type on the internet!
TCA's DoubleTalk and R&TR are the only USA-tandem type mags out there for now; they, and their predecessors. helped fuel the tandem boom as we know it.
When we started riding as a duo in 1975 folks used to point at us, even on club and century rides. Now we just seem to be part of the regular cycling scene, like " . . . oh, there's another one" comment we heard the other day.
Whatever it takes to help folks enter the fun-world of tandeming is appreciated!
Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Zonker

I don't know how widespread their distribution is, but I often pick up a free copy of RTR at my LBS. I always enjoy it, although it helps to also have at least a passing interest in recumbents as well. Some issues are recumbent heavy, and others more tandem-oriented. Of course, sometimes there are recumbent tandems being reviewed.

Pigoo3

I think that was a lot more than 2 cents!!!!

DBC Steve

TandemGeek's two cents/sense were excellent -- I sent the link to a number of other tandem friends for info.

Pigoo3

That's Nice!

No one said that the info wasn't excellent...just a lot more than 2 cents! ; )

Instead of 2 cents....I think it was more like $20.00!

zonatandem

As the name of the magazine, "Recumbent & Tandem Rider" implies, it covers a niche market in the world of bicycles. When is the last time Bicycling or any general cycling mag had something on tandems?
So, we're thankful for R&TR and TCA's DoubleTalk that gives us tandemistas something good to peruse!
A subscription/membership to support these endeavors is well worthwhile!
We have been contributors to several publications throughout the past 30-some years. Tandem specific information was, and still is, not easy to come by. So the more of us that share information, the better we'll all be for it!

Pedal on TWOgethetr!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Thigh Master

We purchased a rack from Topper yesterday that included a one year membership to TCA... very sweet, and smart of TCA to get us started this way.

DBC Steve

We got our Tandem Topper three months ago and I was wondering when my complimentary subscription to RTR was going to start. Just showed up in today's mail with a feature article by Bill Wheeler on the Paketa V2. A quick scan reveals a long article with photos from Interbike.

Redpath

Sent my money in a few weeks ago (TCA). Haven't heard a word back. How long does it take? Winter's killing me. I need something to read-quick!

BTW thanks for the info on all of these groups. Even though we're all 'cyclists' tandem riders seem to be a unique subset with our own rallies, publications, requirements etc. and it can be hard to find things-especially if you don't know what's out there.

This is a great forum.

TandemGeek

I depends on when they get your name into the mailing list and when that relates to the bi-monthly magazine publication mailing schedule. I'm pretty sure the next "edition" will be the annual membership directory.

Aside from the newsletter, that's about all you'll receive. In fact, at one time TCA sent out "your membership is expiring" notices which was nice. However, we didn't see one this time around and may have allowed our Membership to lapse as I always do 3 years at a pop. Without the notice, you're left to mark your calendar or you must keep an eye on the "number of issues to go" printed on your newsletter address label to clue you in on when it's time to re-enlist.

Damn, I'll be PO'd if I miss the annual directory. Checking changes in TCA membership levels each year is one of my other "barometer checks" of the tandeming community's health and well-being. Sadly, membership has been falling for several years.

arie

You are a very enthusiastic couple I read. Because I'm going o visit Tucson next April the article drew my attention. And maybe this should have been the solution.
My wife doesn't come because she'a bit afraid riding in unknown territories.

Anyway if you're making a trip between 6 and 13 April (I arrive 4 Aprilin Phoenix) it should be nice to ride with you, to explore the area and to learn the mores.
My cousin has has already found a (normal) bike for me by friends.

Unfortunately she's no biker.

Well, keep on doing the good things.
If you like the idea, please mail.

Arie

antiquepedaler

Is this club still active? I googled up its web site and it hasn't been updated in awhile. Also googled up an old Tandem Geek blog entry describing the dwindling membership. What brought it to mind is our thinking about participating in the April SWTR.

TandemGeek

TCA is still a going concern that collects dues and publishes a bi-monthly collection of travel diaries, ride calendars, classifieds and other member-submitted items in their "DoubleTalk" newsletter.

Active is probably a stretch....