"The stoker is always right."
This one adage alone is almost all you need to know about tandeming together.
That said, finding a stoker who has experience riding on the back of a motorcycle cannot be suggested enough! I simply lucked into that one. Plus, she has naturally fast pedal speed, which in my experience is rare among unseasoned bicycle riders. Compatibility check number two! And then she's half my weight, so it's totally cheating. There's a third factor that made it a match made in heaven for us. Starting and stopping? NEVER a problem for us. Standing and sitting? Nope, works just fine. Climbing out of the saddle? No biggie. So after four years on the road tandem, we thought we'd give off road tandeming a try...
Which is why she was dumb enough to try THIS with me:
And for her fiftieth birthday, too! What a champ! We really should ride more, we're so compatible. Track stands are no big deal. As is gnarly single track, when we actually make the effort to load up the tandem and ACTUALLY RIDE it. Actually, I'm just INCREDIBLY lucky to have a stoker who trusts me implicitly. (And she definitely shouldn't! But I haven't dropped her yet, so perhaps she can!) Plus, we have compatible personalities. Neither of us are type-A control freaks, so we work together well. Again, I simply got damn lucky. And I'll add that we NEVER rode a tandem together before I surprised her with the road tandem on her birthday. Oh, and the damn thing fitted into our Westphalia camper too. "Pure or dumb luck" should probably be our motto!