Well
merlinextraligh you didn't set off a Sh**storm, but in September of last year I would have agreed with you. Last summer I started looking for lighter wheels for our perfectly good Cannondale Tandem to try and keep up with everyone else who all seem to be younger and fitter than our 130 year old team. But except for a few routes, all our riding routes on the Big Island are either up or down, and being old roadies, we tend to want to ride hills and we are just so slow going up. So after looking in the mirror and seeing that that we will probably not be getting any fitter or faster in the next 10-15 years I decided to invest in an e-tandem with couplers (rather than lighter wheels), so we could enjoy our senior years traveling and riding the globe post-covid.
After talking with my old frame-building friend John Slawta at LandShark, he agreed with my prognosis. He built us what would normally be a sub-30 pound carbon tandem, but it has about 15 pounds of Shimano e-assist. It's 1 x 11 gravel geared for touring, with hydraulic discs, and although we-re running 28mm road tires, it is convertible to gravel tires. We couldn't be happier, as now we can keep up on the climbs. It isn't easy as we still have to put in monster efforts, but it allows us to maintain contact and not hold up everyone else. Before, it was always questionable whether anyone would regroup for us oldies on the tandem. Now it is a non-issue. Our purist souls are still there to ride our ultralight single bikes, but we're loving every minute on the e-twinshark! Highly recommend it to anyone who used to race, but is now only racing father time.