Originally Posted by
curbtender
Good thread. My wife will ride with me but she has found a few limits. The number one being that she won't ride a tandem again. Something about having a butt pointed at you...
That's why when we had our first tandem built back in '87, we had it made so that either one of us could be captain or stoker. Lucky for us, this was something that our builder had already considered and he had even built a few for a small captain/large stoker. In pretty short order, we settled in on her as captain and me as stoker.
Some people think a tandem requires the captain to have a strong upper body, but that's just not true. In fact, just yesterday my wife decided to see if she could ride with no hands as we cruised along on a gravel road. It might have been nice if she had told me first, but she didn't have any difficulty controlling the bike without touching the bars. It's all about teaching the stoker to not rock the boat (rollers are good teachers).
Of course if you go this route, then your wife has to get used to having someone panting behind her head, but at least she can call for back rubs after a difficult climb.