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Shhhssss! Be very quiet...

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Shhhssss! Be very quiet...

Old 02-13-21, 09:11 PM
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lowflying
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Shhhssss! Be very quiet...

...and make no sudden moves...I'm stalking a deer, or rather I'm grooming my non-bike riding wife to be my stoker!

Bought an Apollo Syncro 700. Did a lot of reading here and elsewhere, which has been very useful in terms of being warned of dumb things not to do on a tandem, especially to do with not pissing off the Rear Admiral. I've already got new bars, grips and a gel saddle topper to make her as comfy as possible. She's only little 5'1" and 51 kg and is used to being on the back of my motorcycles so there's that. Mostly it's going really well. She's taking on the turn signalling and letting me know about rear traffic, which I thank her for even though I've got a nice rear view mirror on my right bar and my head is on a swivel when I ride, a system which has got me to almost 58 years old! She doesn't seem to mind bumps as long as I let her know, but she has figured out that if she sees me bump she's going to feel it next when it hits the rear wheel. She gets pissed off at phone walkers and generally unaware dilly dallyers in the middle of the road and bike paths, but I'm trying to get her to see that it's all part of the challenge and the whole idea is to chill and have fun. My M.O. when biking is to share space with everybody and be nice and understanding about lost wanderers in my way. Usually a bit of niceness gets acknowledged and reciprocated, and if it doesn't I'll let karma sort the person out after I'm long gone.

I'm pretty happy with how things are going. I'd like to do this 2-3 times a week, but I'm easing her into it and told her I'm happy with once a week for now. We're lucky in that the beach is nearby. We can do an 8 km loop and get in some good sight seeing and a coffee down at Cronulla. I take it easy with her as I have an MTB for harder exercise with my buddy in the Nasho and a new gravel bike for general bashing around the suburbs.
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Old 02-14-21, 04:08 AM
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PaulGrun
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Well, it certainly seems as though you are well on your way! It sounds as though you could easily write the book on how to treat a stoker while riding respectfully.
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Old 02-16-21, 02:25 PM
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Vefer
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This has to be one of the best starter tandem articles. Go here;

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tandem.html
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Old 02-21-21, 09:18 PM
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I've been told that, whichever direction your marriage is headed, a tandem will get you there faster.
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It's like riding a bicycle
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Old 02-23-21, 05:39 PM
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lowflying
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You’re right Vefer. I happened across the Sheldon Brown articles before I got the tandem. Read them all. They’re very good and helped me to feel confident to give it a go.

She’s enjoying it so far. Quite a learning curve for her as she’s never been a cyclist, even as a kid which must be rare. So I’m easing us into it as it’s easy to underestimate how bike fit I am compared to her. She’s slowly adapting to the saddle soreness business. She’s actually using two gel toppers at the moment but feeling less sore each ride. I may have to investigate different saddles at some point. She is suggesting rides we might do, so I might pull this off!
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Old 02-24-21, 07:19 AM
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scycheng
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Originally Posted by lowflying
You’re right Vefer. I happened across the Sheldon Brown articles before I got the tandem. Read them all. They’re very good and helped me to feel confident to give it a go.

She’s enjoying it so far. Quite a learning curve for her as she’s never been a cyclist, even as a kid which must be rare. So I’m easing us into it as it’s easy to underestimate how bike fit I am compared to her. She’s slowly adapting to the saddle soreness business. She’s actually using two gel toppers at the moment but feeling less sore each ride. I may have to investigate different saddles at some point. She is suggesting rides we might do, so I might pull this off!
Saddle is key to enjoyment for people who don't or rarely ever ride. She may have to try several. My wife did before we settled on a Terry saddle.

We were in similar situation when we started tandeming. My wife hardly rode a bike (ever). What I told her was that this was a chance to spend time together doing something we could enjoy together rather than me disappearing on long rides with my riding buddies or dropping her on the road because she was less confident with the traffic. The other key point I made to her was I don't really care how fast we go on the tandem.

It all come down to 'we' rather than 2 individuals.
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Old 02-24-21, 12:44 PM
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Originally Posted by lowflying
You’re right Vefer. I happened across the Sheldon Brown articles before I got the tandem. Read them all. They’re very good and helped me to feel confident to give it a go.

She’s enjoying it so far. Quite a learning curve for her as she’s never been a cyclist, even as a kid which must be rare. So I’m easing us into it as it’s easy to underestimate how bike fit I am compared to her. She’s slowly adapting to the saddle soreness business. She’s actually using two gel toppers at the moment but feeling less sore each ride. I may have to investigate different saddles at some point. She is suggesting rides we might do, so I might pull this off!
Hmm ... I appreciate the delicacy of your situation, however ... saddles ... you know, and I know, that it shouldn't require two gel toppers for comfort. The sooner this can be addressed, the better. I wasn't familiar with the bike you bought so I looked it up. Very nice. Very nice indeed. I can't see the profile of the saddles but I can tell you that my wife was not happy until we figured out that she needed saddles with a 'notch' at the back. Price doesn't matter, anatomic cut out in the middle doesn't matter. If it hasn't got a significant scoop at the back for her tailbone to settle into she gets sore. So you might need to ask intrusive (but well meant) questions about exactly where is sore, front, back, sides ... . You might also want to sit back there yourself and see what she is working with. You won't fit like she does but you can learn a lot.

There is the possibility that at 5'1", your Stoker is sitting forward on the saddle to reach the bars. This hurts because those sport saddles narrow sharply past the wide section. You might want to have her put her elbow on the nose of the saddle and point her fingers to the bars. The longest finger should at least reach to the back side of the handlebar, for an aggressive back lean, and actually overlap the bar by at least its thickness, for a more comfortable posture. She should make sure she is always sitting on the widest part of the saddle. The best way to ensure that is to first sit too far back and then ease forward just enough to be on the seat properly. Getting on the seat is almost always done by sitting back on the seat and it is easy to get into the habit of not going far enough back. Hopefully there is enough extension in the Stoker stem to make a comfortable seating for her. If not, it's worth the money to find a longer one.

The saddle I linked is a Bontrager Affinity RL women's model. They are discontinued, but Bontrager/Specialized have similar styled saddles. Notice the 'flat' almost pan shaped top of the Affinity? I notice a different profile on the OEM saddles of your tandem. Could be something, could be nothing, but coming from motorcycles you both are used to flatter seating I would think. I get the sense that you are not in North America so I don't know if brands like WTB or Charge or Velo are available where you are but Bontrager/Specialized are pretty global in their distribution. Cheers.
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Old 03-20-21, 12:51 PM
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zhwang
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Suspension seat post for the rear means you don't need to call out the bumps so much. It also means that you don't interrupt the flow and need to call to coast. I picked a SunTour SP12 NCX as it was an affordable parallelogram linkage seat post - piston type seat posts are more prone to lateral and rotational slop as the bushings wear out, and the Redshift and Cane Creek Thudbusters were about 2-3 times the cost. Just make sure you set the sag and preload on it for your stoker.

That and positioning the saddle and reach as previous posters have mentioned (basics, should be done regardless).
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Old 03-22-21, 02:42 AM
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Terry is a good advice : not expensive and comfortable. If stoker sits upright most pressure is on the sit bones. Than a large saddle wit short nose with a lot of padding could work fine.
After the rails of her first saddle broke we tried more than six others. She felt best with a short and cheap selle royal with springs and a lot of padding. Nose tilt up. Weighs almost 800 grams.
But it works for her. Selle Italia, Fizik etc all painful.
Ergotec, SQ lab and ergon a bit more expensive but a lot of people are happy with them.
Did you measure the distance of her sitbones?
We ride a lot offroad and the tandem has rear suspension. Before suntour suspended seatpost on hardtail tandem, but because we're spinners the sadlle bounced often up and down
even with the right spring.(own frequency), however she did not complain about that.

Last edited by longpete; 03-23-21 at 02:12 AM.
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Old 03-22-21, 05:50 PM
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Originally Posted by zhwang
Suspension seat post for the rear means you don't need to call out the bumps so much. It also means that you don't interrupt the flow and need to call to coast. I picked a SunTour SP12 NCX as it was an affordable parallelogram linkage seat post - piston type seat posts are more prone to lateral and rotational slop as the bushings wear out, and the Redshift and Cane Creek Thudbusters were about 2-3 times the cost. Just make sure you set the sag and preload on it for your stoker.

That and positioning the saddle and reach as previous posters have mentioned (basics, should be done regardless).
yes my wife here her tailbone on our test ride of the tandem and it took weeks to get better. had to find the right saddle got her a Kinek post right away Now it is no big deal. it was hard doing saddle shopping during the pandemic. plus ih ad to figure out the seat position and bar position as she had not ridden in 40 years and she is blind.
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