My wife and I first rode a tandem when we were dating, on Block Island, an old clunker. My wife learned to ride as an adult, and is, to say the least, not confident on the road. We took single bikes on the ferry, but just outside of town she got spooked by a passing car and wiped out on some sand on the side of the road, so we rented the tandem. We had a great time, went all over the island.
About 7 years ago, after 15-some years of marriage, with the kids not around much (you who've had teenagers know what I'm talking about), I shanghaied my wife to Tandems East, and we test rode 4 tandems, selected the one we wanted and bought it on the spot.
We don't ride a lot, and my wife doesn't like riding in the cold so we ride the tandem basically May through September. She doesn't ride as frequently as I, during the warm months we ride maybe 3-4x per month, for 1 - 2 hours (longest ride ever was about 3.5 hr).
I do enjoy the tandem rides enormously, though. It is quite different from riding a single, not better or worse, just different, which is refreshing after 10's of thousands of miles of riding a single. There's a lot of teamwork involved - I have to take it more slowly on descents and through corners, and lower my cadence. She has to put up with me missing bumps occasionally, and sometimes going faster than, and riding with more traffic than, she's comfortable with. The purpose of the ride is different too, it is time together (even if we're not speaking while riding) rather than "training", and while we get exercise there is a lot more looking around and stopping to look at stuff. The amount of feedback you get from the pedals is amazing, I can tell what she's doing back there and how she's feeling (this was missing when we tested the Da Vinci tandem with independent pedaling, we disliked that tandem though some teams love the ability of each rider to select their own cadence and not being "locked" together on the pedals). It is hard to describe, but as I said, a different feel from riding a single bike.
We've gone on picnics on the bike, done a loop including the climb from New Paltz to Mohonk Mountain House, taken it on weekend visits to my Mom's, my brother's house, a long weekend at a B&B in Vermont, etc. I'd like to use the tandem more, but I'm happy that we have it and I enjoy our rides, even if they aren't that far or fast.
(Edit: one negative, if I never hear some freakin' moreon yell "Hey, she's not pedalling!" again, I'll die a happy man.)
Last edited by noimagination; 02-07-20 at 07:03 AM.