13 January 08
The Journey Is Half The Fun
The tandem went in for a tune-up today. This Bigbying means we have many miles to cover!
Birding is often not an activity that gets you lots of exercise. Frequently the pattern is to drive for a couple hours, and then only walk several hundred yards away from the car to see the birds. Doing a Bigby reverses that pattern. If we actually manage to get a mountain quail on our Bigby, we will have had to have ridden at least 50 miles round trip and then either cycle or hike up towards the top of the Vaca Mountains. Bird or no, it makes for quite an enjoyable trek.
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I was wondering: does the same one of you always ride in front on the tandem, or do you take it in turns? (I don’t know a lot about bikes, but I suspect that maybe, due to your different sizes and builds and the tandem needing to fit you, this is not feasible?). And is this a big issue to deal with?
Jean: there is NO WAY I would captain (be in front of) the tandem. It requires a lot more upper body strength and general all-around skill than I have. I’m content to be the stoker: my job is to trust Numenius on scary curves and descents, signal right or left, and ding the bell when there are people with unruly dogs or children ahead of us that we’re coming (the tandem is much less maneuverable than a single). Oh, and bird. I don’t have to watch the road. I do, though, have to watch for traffic behind us… I have a little mirror for this. Most frightening are large pickup trucks pulling boats to get up to Lake Berryessa on a weekend: it’s good to know ahead of time what’s going to come past us (and whether there’s only one of them or several).
Thanks! Very interesting. I have ridden on the back of a tandem a few times, many years ago. Some friends of mine had one when we were students: a couple, the man of whom had very poor eyesight, so it had to be the other way round in their case.