Lessons Learned On A Tandem Bike

Hi Blog Buds!

Happy Friday EVE!!! (Wow, I must post every Thursday because it seems like I say that a LOT! )

I have so much to try to catch you up on it’s ridiculous. I’ll start with the first adventure from our Colorado Stay-cation, which was TANDEM BIKING.

I can’t even express how much fun this day was. I had no idea what to expect. I just knew we wanted to escape a little bit of the crazy heat down here at 6000′ by heading up to 9000′, where the temps were 20 degrees cooler.

We headed up to Lake Dillon (aka Dillon Reservoir) and started with lunch at a tiny mom-n-pop natural foods cafe called Kula’s that I’d heard about, where they make all their own food from scratch. I ordered the Vegetarian Green Chili and a Veggie Sandwich on sourdough. The soup was perfectly spicy and absolutely delicious.

(Most of the pics from our tandem trip had to be taken w/ my iPhone, blurry photo alert!)

Now that we were fueled, it was time to rent the bike.

My view from the backseat:

View from the frontseat (if MSP had eyes in the back of his head)

Back down near the water toward the end of our ride:

The primary observation I made about tandem biking is that it is a definite exercise in COMMUNICATION. Anyone contemplating marriage or business partnership should be forced to tandem ride up and down a hilly mountainside.

Here’s why:

Both sets of pedals go at the same time (maybe some fancy ones go independently for all our know – but ours didn’t). So when you are riding a bike alone and you decide to do something, such as stop pedaling for a second to adjust your positioning in your seat – no big deal. When you do that on a tandem bike, you will pretty much cause your partner’s feet to be jerked off the pedals by your putting weight on one pedal to move around in your seat. And it’s a freaky feeling when your feet fly off the pedals – you feel like you are losing your balance a bit. Same with shifting. Only one person gets to shift, and the back rider can be pedaling along smoothly and all of a sudden the front rider shifts quickly, causing the pedals to jerk and the back riders feet come flying off.

Or one rider can be pedaling aggressively and not realize that the other riders feet can’t stay on. MSP would all of a sudden pedal like crazy and my feet were like “whoa, hey now Mr. Herky Jerky!”

RANDOM TIP: if you are doing to tandem cycle on a cruiser bike, bring your own inexpensive cage-style toe clips. Throw those puppies on before you take off. Not only will it make pedaling easier, but it could save your partnership as well.

The next observation: tandem biking is also a definite exercise in RELINQUISHING CONTROL and TRUST. If you are the back rider, you are at the mercy of the front rider. The front rider steers, shifts, brakes and can SEE. The rear rider may pedal and hang on for dear life and that’s it. You have a back and a head blocking your forward view and you can feel as if you are headed straight for something and want to turn out of the way, but alas, you may not. Hope you trust that person in the front! They have your life (your teeth, your noggin, and potential for road rash) in their handlebars.

I am an admitted control freak. I’m sure you can imagine that this was an uneasy feeling. But I trust MSP immensely, so I got over it in a hurry. The plus side of being the rear rider is because all you are doing is pedaling, you get to look all around, enjoy the scenery and not really HAVE to pay attention.

Last observation is that this was an AWESOME time. I can’t recommend it enough. Such a great outing for a date! It was perfect weather, a great workout, not terribly pricey and we truly felt like we were on a vacation outing. We laughed our heads off the entire time, about things like how trying to take off from a stopped position was comical (trying to time two people hopping on, getting their feet on the pedals and actually pedaling at the same time – yikes). We went around the entire reservoir, and burned a boatload of calories. (I wish I’d worn my GPS - from what I can tell online we went about 31 miles with a LOT of hill climbing, supposedly about 3000′ of gain. Quads were definitely burning!)

If you haven’t done this with your sweetheart, you should make plans to do it soon. I promise that you’ll get your GIGGLE on!

Afterward we hit up the TIKI BAR for a postworkout, uh, cocktail. (Does it count as a postworkout smoothie if my drink was blended???) They are known for their RumRunners so I had to try one.