Well Our new CoMotion Periscope came in last week. I got it all together very quickly but now it gets to sit in the basement until the weather here in the north east changes for the better...they are calling for snow again today.

Anyway I wanted to drop in and say thanks to those that talked me into the CoMotion over the Cannondale Street. I knew it was the way I wanted to go but didn't know if I wanted to spend this much money. In the end I think I didn't really spend all that much more since I didn't have to buy a child stoker kit and because of all of the extras Mel and Tandems East threw in with the deal.

For anyone looking to mail order a tandem I highly recommend you give Mel a call or drop him an email....I know if I ever buy another I will.

Photos to come later...we got the Scout 26 flat bar in Pumkin Orange (custom color took a little longer). Very well put together bike with a nice level of components for the money.

So you have a brand new bike, all ready to go and you have to sit in front of the window watching it snow? That's gotta hurt.

Congrats on the new Co-Motion. I sure you'll love it.

Shayne

Another Co-Motion - Mel happy customer!

Congrats. Post for us a spec sheet and pictures please. If you can't ride it at least you can take pictures.

LOL yep the snow is slowly piling up.

I will take a snap shot or two of the bike this evening...it will be in my basement but it will be a picture right?

The specs are all stock. 40 spoke Velocity rims to CoMotion branded hubs. CroMo frame. FSA riser bar and FSA stem. Truvativ Elita cranks. SRAM X7 shifters. V brake up front and a BIG Avid disc in the back.

Yup, Mel and Barb are great to deal with and the Co-Mo Peri is one great bike.
We logged 57,000 miles on our custom Co-Mo before switching to c/f.
Bet you'll sneak out for a ride when the snow's gone and the road is dry!

Zona - the weather mystics are claiming it will be 50° here next week so maybe I get a ride in with my son then...tonight he and I shoveled 3" of snow and went sledding.

You shoveled . . . while we 'suffered' with another 78 degree sunny day in Tucson!
When we lived in Michigan, back in the mid-1970s, we used to ride our tandem when it was 20 degrees and dry out . . don't like icycles hanging from rear derailleur!
Hope you two get to ride the Peri next week . . . heck 50 degrees is downright balmy for your neck of the woods!
Enjoy the ride TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Congratulations on the new CoMotion......+1 on Mel, he is as good as they come! Hope your first ride comes real soon.

Bill J.

I know this is going to sound a bit precocious, but why not put it on a trainer and start exercising now. My daughter and I (and occassionally my partner) get on our triplet in the living room from time to time in the winter. Nowhere near as fun as riding outside, but still a good workout and still using the new bike.

It seems like most trainers can't accommodate the wider rear axle on most tandems or am I just making this up? What kind of trainer do you use?

Frank

No my trainer will take the wider rear axle no problem...I'm not putting the tandem on the trainer...son wouldn't ride it and I can just put one of my singles on there...in fact my beater, geared roadie is hooked up there already.

You know... there really is no free lunch. Having graduated from high school in Phoenix I remember that the summers can be (how should I put this?) somewhat warm. When I went back to visit my son at ASU I had to get up at 4am to ride in July. Of course, having said that, I suppose at least you can ride then. No one in their right mind would ride here right now.

Frank

I'm in the same situation - bought a used Santana earlier this year, but my wife was pregnant at the time, so we couldn't use it. Now the winter weather has arrived here in Indy, so we won't be able to take it out for our first ride until spring!

I'm also curious as to what trainer can accept the tandem. I thought about doing that for fun, but the 160 rear wheel on the Santana won't fit into the 1UP trainer I have...

This thread just re affirmed why it is I plan on staying in OC , California for the rest of my cycling days. We pretty much have 365 of them if you want to. I avoid the 5 days of wet and a few of the Santa Ana wind days and the occasional smoke out from brush fires but always know that it will be ridable soon. Not next year.

ftsoft:
Yup, been in Tucson area for just about 30 years. Yes, it gets (to put it mildly) "warm" at times. Pre-retirement, we used to ride just before daybreak in summer on the tandem; come home and hop on the single and commute to work. "Warmest" I've commuted in: 117 degrees with 2% humidity . . . had a wet bandana around neck and wet cycling cap on head; of course 15 minutes later it was bone dry
Heat bouncing off the pavement came through soles of my shoes; eyeballs were burning behind my glasses; not fun, but do-able!
On days off we'd pedal 50 miles and be done riding and in the pool by 9:30 a.m.
The flip side of the coin was when we lived MI we rode when it was 20 degrees and dry in winter or ride the rollers on my single in the basement. Or, if there was enough snow, I'd X-country ski.
Now that we are retired, we head somewhere north for 3 summer months and take the tandem with us.
Have spent several summers in OR, MN, UT and ID . . . growin' old is not for sissies!
Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

I was able to get our '96 Arriva into a CycleOps II back in '97. It was a very tight fit that required the removal of the threaded fixing collar on the drop-out width adjuster and a pretty good grip on the right-hand tension/release lever but it did fit and was held tight. The older models would bugger-up your skewer ends so it was ill-advised to use anything other than the el-cheapo steel Shimano skewer with the CycleOps. As for stability, so long as you didn't stand and really honk out of the saddle, it was rock solid. However, if you both got up and weren't really smooth you would indeed find that the trainer would start rocking from side to side which put you at risk for a fall. The only other really disconcerting thing that I noticed when using the trainer was the rather pronounced deflection of the front bottom bracket under pedaling loads. I would literally look down at my feet and watch the front bottom bracket and cranks moving back and forth across a 1.5" path like a pendulum. Of course, on reflection, that's exactly what you'd expect to see but the first time I noticed I was a bit taken aback buy just now much deflection there was even from a small team like ourselves.

Zona

Phew! I guess you could get used to 117 degrees (just like you can get used to 20 degrees). I rode Hottern hell in 2001 when it hit 111 and I can't ever remember my core temps so high. There used to be a ride here called the Dog Days which which did 100 miles with a stop at a swimming hole every 20 miles. Only trouble was that even in July it was rarely hot enough to stop at all of them.

Since we are both retired now we are thinking of reversing your course and going south for some of the winter.

Frank