2011 Spring Thaw at St Michaels, MD
 

Thursday, April 14 to Sunday, April 17, 2011

With just a few dozen rooms left at the host hotel, time is running out to get your registrations in for the best-ever ETR/PPTC St. Michaels Spring Thaw weekend. Waiting much longer will require staying in busy Easton, over 10 miles away. Once again the weekend will show off the wonderful Eastern Shore of Maryland cycling. Meet cyclists from throughout the East Coast. Four days of riding: no hills, sparse traffic, wide shoulders. Perfect for getting back into cycling after a long winter.

Special guest Bill McCready, president of Santana Cycles in California, will make a rare stop in Maryland to meet the group on his way to Europe to direct an international tandem rally. Bill's got an exciting presentation on tandem technology, history, travel and lifestyle that's intriguing to tandemists, tandem wannabes, and even those who just enjoy traveling by bike.

Here is a link to the registration page:

http://www.bikepptc.org/node/5447

I live in the area. People think the Mid West is flat. It isn't. The Eastern Shore is flat. And quite scenic. If you like quaint towns, lots of shoreline, nice restuarants (great seafood), back roads and bike lanes—you'll like this trip.

It'd be fun to join you folks, but my stoker finds she doesn't like stoking (I'm very disappointed—it was looking good there for a while). Anybody looking to buy a tandem?

Tandemed MD's Eastern Shore decades ago.
Yup: flat/scenic and lotsa shade!

Interesting tandem seen at the Spring Thaw.

An S&S coupled Santana Beyond with Gates drive. Interesting! (And crazy expensive.) Did Bill M bring it?

And Di2 shifting. Yes, Bill brought it.

I don't even want to know how much that retails for.

Maybe it's the bike that TandemGeek was offered to ride at the Chattanooga weekend. The low and high gears may be similar but I'm not sure I could give up the extra gears in between.

Bill did say that Shimano may be coming out with lower priced Di2 systems.