Friday, February 09, 2007

Tandems&hats: what else?

Friday, 9 February

OK, so it hasn't exactly been the best week ever. But it started with a warm date with my nearly under-age tandem partner at a place of his choosing that couldn't have made me happier (obviously women are NOT hard to figure out). Tuesday night I got to ride with a tandem newbie at the CycleU TT; he got a rude shock when he tried to suddenly stop pedaling while we were warming up because I kept pedaling ("it's worse than a track bike!"), and then got payback by trying to wear out the 12 and 13 cogs for the 14 minutes of our TT. But we had a good ride. And maybe, just maybe, there's a tandem ride in my tomorrow--but stokers are the last to know.

Last night I gave away my latest hat and the recipient seemed genuinely thrilled. I am now at work on a top-secret design that might be revealed by, say, Ohop. There's just a little thing called work that might get in the way.

2 comments:

Argentius said...

I have never ridden a tandem, so forgive me for being out of the loop.

So, when you want to coast on a descent, the two of you need to agree to stop pedalling together?

Howabout when you and mick are in the paceline, and he needs to shed a bit of speed by soft-pedalling?

maybe THAT's why he just freight-trains it to the front...

Furthermore, how the heck did you even know I RODE with Chris on the beautiful day that was yesterday, let alone the pace? Is there a secret training mafia out there? We did see like 6 Byrne guys at one point.

UltraMick said...

The only absolute on a tandem is that the stoker controls nothing: not shifting, not braking, not pedaling, not freight-training. The transition to not-pedaling is seldom instantaneous and just requires a little stoker sensitivity. (I'm still trying to convince OAD that we don't have to pedal down every descent at 125 rpm!) Sometimes in a paceline there has to be a verbal cue to soft pedal. When PDog tried to stop, he drove his foot to the bottom of the pedal stroke and tried to hold it there--not what I was expecting on a trainer! And I do have my spies, not Byrne guys in this case. :)