I know my wife would enjoy doing some serious touring, on a tandem, as opposed to riding solo. I’d like to get a nice enough one that we could ride tours without pushing a beast up the hills. What are some of the better ones? Used to be Cannondale and Calfee made some nice ones.
For the sake of your marriage RENT ONE for a while at first. We thought we would love it, turns out we hated it. Glad we only rented it!
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Think about that one dude. Lot’s of downside risk.
Think about that one dude. Lot’s of downside risk.
Ha…maybe.
Agreed on the “rent one first”. As the stoker, she may not love that she has
No control of steering,No control of brakes,Limited visibility. Depending on your neighbourhood, this means getting hit in the face my low-hanging branches that you duck; or bruising her sit bones as you go over rough pavement/sewage grates and she doesn’t see them to take weight off the saddle.The zero-speed crashes that happen when you clip out or fail to get the bike moving, and the whole thing tips over with her on it.
I know my wife would enjoy doing some serious touring, on a tandem, as opposed to riding solo. I’d like to get a nice enough one that we could ride tours without pushing a beast up the hills. What are some of the better ones? Used to be Cannondale and Calfee made some nice ones.
Definitely rent or borrow one first! They seem like fun but they can be absolutely miserable – and it’s an expensive mistake if it turns out to be one. Also, in my opinion, anyone who rides a tandem should have a road bike first so that they learn how to ride and handle the road.
Riding a tandem with my wife would be one of my circles of hell. One of the early circles, but still hell. Which is why we don’t have a tandem and we each have our own bikes.
Wherever your relationship is going, a tandem will get you there quicker. Rent before you buy. They are expensive, and there is virtually no secondary market.
+1 on (almost) everything others have said. it was ~15yrs ago in my case…and we ended up riding together on separate bikes…happily. one of those keys to our happiness? I draft her a LOT more than she drafts me. it’s her ride…I’m a (rarely used) mobile support crew…and I love it.
If I have to guess, the success rate of getting the spouse/gf into riding is under 10%.
Bottom line, don’t do it, especially if you plan to spend big money…
Unless you only date someone your height.
While tandeming is not for everyone, probably about 80% of my rides are with my wife on our tandem (now on Tandem #2). My wife has partial paralysis of her left side (hand mostly) from a car-accident caused stroke when she was 18. When I met her I was already an avid cyclist and tried to get her to ride a number of times, but she was never able to overcome balance issues and problems with lack of awareness of the location of her paralyzed side. As part of our wedding gift, we bought ourselves a tandem (Burly Paso Doble) used but in excellent shape. We rode it for 10 years happily till last year when we decided to treat ourselves to a Calfee (also used, but for less than 1 year). We got the frame for a ridiculously good price ($3500, which is less than half of what they are new) and I shopped around for parts, building up a 24.8 lb tandem for under $7,000. We climb faster together on it than I do on my singles. For us, there was no other good option that allows us to ride together.
The idea that you need an experienced cyclist as a stoker is just plain wrong. Tandem’s are all about working in sync. You have the same cadence, you have a shared power output, you have to collectively decide when to spin or when to hammer, etc. If you can do those things and happily come to agreement, riding a tandem is spectacular. There is nothing like the experience of crushing yourself on a climb a bit too hard, starting to go into the red and having to let off only to find that your stoker is putting out everything she has to keep your pace up till you can recover.
If you are fighting, or even disagreeing, riding the tandem can be good or bad… it can turn into frustration, or it can help you let things go. There are a lot of interpersonal dynamics that go into tandem riding, and how the two of you would work together isn’t something that is easily predicted before riding a tandem, or unfortunately, even from borrowing/renting one and taking a few rides. I’d say it took us at least a dozen full rides to really figure out how to work together on the tandem, and issues still arose for a couple years after that on occasion. If you want more suggestions and support, from riders who have successfully figured out the tandem thing, I would try the BikeForums tandem board. It is the single best collection of tandem riders, a number of whom have some lovely tandems.
Be careful. There’s a reason why many ex-tandem riders call them a, “divorce machine.”
Just out of curiosity how do you know she would enjoy some serious touring?
Sure it isn’t you who would enjoy some serious touring and want to drag her along with you so you both have something you can “be passionate about”?
Ellen was a serious bike rider before we got married. Family and work have taken a front seat for 26 years. She’s said “I won’t ride solo but a tandem would be fun”
I still ride over 4000 miles a year and am not worried about her “holding me back” or ruining what I’ve already got. I get my fair amount of racing, touring and training miles in.
Expecting it to improve my overall riding enjoyment.
Renting is a good suggestion and I’ve got a source for that. thanks.
Good to hear. I ask as I know a lot of my riding buddies have tried to push their passion for the sport onto their wives and if anything it has caused more harm than good.
At an MS150 ride a couple years ago, the group I was riding with got blown by, by a husband/wife on a tandem rolling around 25mph, hope this will be you guys in the future if the tandem works out.
You could also consider an e-bike. It has the upside of single bike riding, yet could give her the boost to ride with you at a speed that is OK for you. In fact, she could drop you when she wanted!
I have a Trek T1000 road tandem I’m selling. Not sure why you’d need anything more until your really serious. Then get a custom Santana, or a burley that splits, etc.
My wife and I rode it a 1/2 dozen times. It worked great. It handles like a really really long bicycle…what do you expect. The whole coordinated starting and stopping of pedaling is interesting and you have to agree on cadence. On the upside, you can ride you ass off, and she can go for a nice easy casual ride. Especially up hills. The downhill and flat cruising speed is impressive.
PM me if you interested…although they don’t ship well, so location could be a problem.
I guess I (and everybody else) got distracted from answering your original question. Here is my short list of lovely tandems that are still being made in order of descending interest:
Calfee (Carbon, Custom)
Paketa (Magnesium, Custom)
Seven (Ti & Steel, Custom)
Santana (All materials, Custom)
Co-Motion (Steel & AL, Semi-Custom)
Rodriguez (Steel & Ti, Custom)
Bilenky (Steel & Ti, Custom)
If you plan on going for something extremely light and racy, the Calfee and Paketa are the obvious choices. Unlike a lot of road bikes, where there is a great deal of consistency across frame designs and just small tweaks around the edges, there are some big differences in the tandem world, and your decision about some of the aspects of the bike often limits your choices. These include whether you want a lateral tube (the “third tube” that runs from the head tube to the stokers BB), whether and how many disc brakes you want, and what sort of spacing you want for the rear wheel (anywhere from 130mm road spacing on a Paketa to 160mm on a Santana). If you want to coast separately, there is also Davinci Tandems (All materials, Custom). I didn’t put them on the original list because all of their tandems have this feature and none of the other brands do, so they stand apart from the rest.
If you aren’t looking for something quite as light, then the Ti, Steel, or Al frame options give you a lot more choices in builder, and there are a good number of custom frame builders who have experience with tandems.
Hope that helps answer your original question. Again, the BikeForums message board would have a lot more info and opinions.
I wonder how many of the naysayers on this thread have actually tried a tandem with their spouse! My wife and I bought a tandem on somewhat of a whim around a year ago. I have ridden and raced bikes for my entire adult life (we are 48), she has never ridden for exercise or raced - but she is very fit (gym-rat). We have absolutely loved the tandem. Last June we got it fully equipped with panniers and toured from Burlington Vt. to Mont Tremblant over 8 days (six days of riding and two rest days - longest day was 110 miles). It was the best vacation we’ve ever had by far. I find that a 30 mile spin on the tandem is a really great recovery workout - on days when I previously would just do a run, I’ll now get on the tandem with my wife for a while afterwards and I think it’s definitely added to my overall fitness. Another plus is that I’ve been riding the same roads now for 20 years (central New Hampshire). It’s great riding, but anything gets old after a while. It is a real treat sharing these routes with someone who’s never been - sort of like seeing them through fresh eyes.
As to handing, as I mentioned, my wife has never seriously ridden a bike. It was sketchy at first but after 5 or 6 rides we were fine - we now are 100% clipless pedals (but not a bad idea to for the non-rider to start on old-fashioned pedals). Fully loaded for our Mt. Tremblant trip we were easily 350 pounds of rolling weight (bike, two riders and 4 fully loaded panniers) and no issues.
Our bike is a Co-Motion tandem. We bought it off of e-bay used for around $1,500. I think it’s dated around 1996 - but it is in great shape. It has a soft-ride beam for the stoker which I understand makes a huge difference for the stoker’s comfort. Good luck in your decision - we certainly didn’t regret ours! Can’t wait to plan and do another extended tour next summer.
sounds nice. Coincidentally, my wife is a registered landscape architect. among her jobs is to design rails to trail plans for all of our enjoyment.