TandemGeek

I've kept my ear to the ground -- so to speak -- and have not heard a whisper. Of course, I'm also not sure if there were any tandems either...

ssmc

The fix is fairly easy, conact the chamber of commerce, remind them there is a calculator to figure the amount of mony that is spent when people visit a town or city, hotels, meals, food, stuff. In our case my wife and I dropped around $350.00 in Salem at the NWTR 2012, multiply that times 740 tandem riders and attenees and you get the idea. Then let them know your going to take your tandem and your money to a more friendly enviroment.

TandemGeek

Context...

This was a UCI sanctioned event in Britsh Columbia that draws in 2,500 - 3,000 cyclists, many of them professional / amateur racers where tandem turn-out has been in very low numbers, perhaps only single digits. As a group at this particular event, tandem enthusiasts would have very little economic clout or leverage. Moreover, any event organizer is within their rights to establish rules, which could in fact include precluding certain types of "bicycles" from their event.

The original concern was that as tandem enthusiasts we were unware of any "safety issues for riders" directly related to tandems as a class of bicycle, which is what was cited as the rationale for the ban.

Inquries into the reasoning behind the ban -- not necessarily outright demands that the ban be lifted -- brought forth that during last year's event unruly behavior by at least 3 of the very few tandem teams who attended this event caused the organizers to simply "ban" tandems from their event for safety reasons, i.e., speed differences & other issues that made it a challenge for the few tandems to "integrate" safely with the thousands of single bike riders... of all skill levels. The truth of the matter was that there were simply three tandem captains (aka, cyclists) who failed to follow the event's rules.

We must assume that these inquries led the organizers to the same conclusion, that the broad application of a ban on tandems as a class of bicycles probably wasn't warranted when, in fact, just some unruly cyclists should have been sanctioned and ejected from their event per their event rules.

Bottom Line: Allowing a ban on a tandem as a class of bicycle from what are widely attended cycling events for unsubstatiated safety issues could have establish an unacceptable precedent. Due diligence caused the organizers to reconsider their rule and ultimately recind that rule. Those of us who pressed for those additional details were appreciative that they recided the rule.

twocicle

Mark, your response is so PC that I must congratulate you on winning my nomination vote for Governor of Texas (err, Georgia)!

I sincerely wish you a successful, "doper free" run for office.

conspiratemus1

Well, he did nail it. Sometimes "PC" is just pure 200-proof "C". Well put, TG.
(Couldn't follow this thread while I was out of the country, "device-less.")