joe@vwvortex

This. 100% trust. If you don't have it - you are really never going to fully enjoy the tandem experience IMHO.

oldacura

The definition of "high speed" is an individual perspective. I think our highest speed was 58 mph in a tuck on a steep, straight highway. That was some years ago. Now I think 50 mph is fast enough. I think the biggest problem for me is being able to see small road damage or debris well enough at high speed with enough time to do something about it. My stoker used to love high speed but I think she's had her fill as well.

Pista Largo

My stoker threatened to take my brake away if I didn't quit using it so much.

riding_blind

As the stoker I've never had a problem with it. Of course while peddaling down the hill I'm controling the shifting so I get more direct input than most. I have the faster the better mentality. Then again I used to ride bulls so I may not be the best person to ask.

Ritterview

Trust is a concept in the higher, more evolved areas of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex. Descending terror is that of an an environmental threat. It is more basic, physiologic, primitive, direct and involves the amygdala. It is faster too. The amygdala will have the stoker wigged out while trust is still getting her shoes on. Overcoming the fear response is a complicated thing, and professing 100% trust is nice, but I don't think entirely sufficient to the task.



A woman without an amygdala has no fear. She'd make a perfect descending stoker.

waynesulak

Very true. Your graphic clearing indicates why some stokers close their eyes.

Fear is not logical. My stoker likes going fast but does have am irrational fear of heights. This is not usually a problem but once on a narrow country road with a drop off on the right she kept insisting that I move toward toward the middle of the road. The surprising thing to me was that we were climbing at time. Just plugging along at about 12-15 mph! She knows that I can keep the tandem on a fog line with no problem and here she is afraid of being 5-10 feet from the road edge at a moderate speed. What she knew didn't matter as much as the right edge of the road.

I moved over and kept an eye out for on coming traffic.

rdtompki

We did a tough (for us) 100K today. After a longish climb at the team-is-toast point in the ride there was a really nice descent. The road was somewhat narrow so I followed two singles who were experienced descenders. My wife asked why I was using the brakes. I did eventually pass the two riders, but I'm conservative on unfamiliar roads.

conspiratemus1

Be careful with that "100% trust" thing. No one is 100% infallible, which is what it would take to "earn" 100% trust from a person who puts her life in your hands. The only person entitled to 100% trust is the master of a ship. Centuries of dealing with the implacable mercilessness of the sea have taught us that even if the man or woman selected for command is wrong, he is less likely to do the wrong thing in a crisis than any one else in his command, so his word is, literally, law. At sea, naval discipline makes rigid and absolute the trust that the crew is more or less disposed to put in the captain in the first place. Yet mutinies still occur when the crew (usually the junior officers) no longer believes the captain can be trusted to get them home in one piece and brings itself to commit what is the most serious possible crime afloat with always dire consequences to themselves.

There is no analagous reason why a tandem stoker should trust her captain 100%. A stoker can disobey orders, she can mutiny, and she can desert, all without penalty of death and without crashing the tandem even. So trust on a tandem is always an evolving, incomplete, tentative, and fluid concept that reflects her experience of the captain's cumulative performance and her judgement of his trustworthiness; it can at any moment be withdrawn, withheld, or forever lost.....much like marriage itself.

Just as in medicine, we tandemists sometimes use military and nautical metaphors to get at the essence of what we are asking our stokers to put up with. But it really isn't the same at all.

Dean V

I would say the captain of a ship expects 100% obedience. Trust is a different thing. Trust can't be forced upon someone, only earned.

Carbonfiberboy 

You don't have to be infallible to be trusted. You just have to be pretty good. It's a team thing. A tandem and an aircraft are both better off if the First Officer trusts what the Captain is doing, even though the First Officer recognizes that the Captain sometimes makes mistakes. It is not true that either a Stoker or First Officer "can disobey orders, she can mutiny, and she can desert, all without penalty of death and without crashing." There's that moment when one comes into a fast right-hander to find an oncoming car in the other lane and debris in one's one lane. Stoker's response has everything to do with staying alive at that moment. I know I've failed her a time or two, but she still trusts me, and vice versa. The Captain has to trust the Stoker, too. It's a team thing, and it's why I love tandeming.

I don't know about the amygdala thing. As long as your team rides within its ability, it's analogous to rock climbing. Yes, it's dangerous, but it's so beautiful and involving that fear just isn't in it. OTOH, some people are just afraid of heights, like I was when I started climbing in the 'Gunks. Practice and care increases ability and takes away the fear, which frees the mind. "Fear is the little death."

joe@vwvortex

I disagree - you don't have to be infallible to be trusted 100%. My wife trusts me 100% in everything we do together - from riding the tandem to high performance track days in my track car (I'm a certified instructor - she's an intermediate level driver as well). I'm not perfect - no one is.

Which is really a lack in confidence which is essential to trust and at the heart of the meaning of the word. If my wife didn't trust me for any reason - their really would be no reason to get on the bike together.

trust
noun
1.reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2.confident expectation of something; hope.
3.confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit: to sell merchandise on trust.
4.a person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.
5.the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.

What does obeying orders have to do with trust?