tandem bike wth?

I am a bit confused as to why this is an issue but lets just say it is not just two guys who enjoy riding tandem, maybe one guy is assisting a blind rider?  When I was on the Tucson Tri Girls we had a girl that was seeing impaired and would periodically send a request for a rider.

That being said, there are a few couples in my old riding club that had tandems that were very good riders and every now and then one of them couldn't ride and another guy in the club would ride with them and have a blast from everything I could tell

So are tandems a bad thing?  Or are two guys riding a tandem a bad thing?  Or could it be two women riding a tandem?  On RAGBRAI year I saw more tandems than I have ever seen and they ranged from the old Schwinn style three speed internal or up to carbon fiber road tandems.  Ridden by 2 men, 2 women, or a male and a female.  What does it matter????

Do tandems scare you and you have nightmares about them? 

What is it that you can't wrap your brain around, exactly?

Where do you live that it's odd to see a tandem or a unicycle?

There are several couples on the Richmond Area Bike Association (RABA) that go on group rides with a tandem.  I think it's great.  They are doing something together and having a great time.  Not sure if they all have individual bikes as well as the tandems are pretty pricey--but I think it's awesome.  Slow as a snall up hill but they fly down hill like nobody's business!

Not really, pretty standard.   Now you'll have the whole club chasing you down. LOL!

Welcome to BT's COJ!! 

I see tandems from time to time.  Coworker and his wife rode one for charity rides. 

Once I saw a 3-guy tandem.  I was riding on the opposite side fo the road and saw 3 guys trying to fix something on that bike. Yes, it has 3 saddles.  They guys wore some sort of uniform jerseys that are bright red. I so wanted to take a photo but I didn't have my phone with me.

I could see Tony doing that as Monica would be the one in charge anyway.  The person up front has all the controls on the "bent" tandems that I have seen.  Quite a few on RAGBRAI.  For the Iowa Bicycle Festival they actually connected 27 "bent" bikes for the current US record.  I think the world record is 99 connected together.  I am not sure how far they have to travel for it to be a "record".

Ha!  I don't know if that would be a good idea... I'm severely directionally dysfunctional and would ride us straight into the lake or something.  I'd love to try a tandem bike at some point though if there was some way to guarantee that I wouldn't somehow kill us!   

There were a few tandem bikes that would ride all the time out by where I used to live in Vancouver & at least one of the tandems was a really cool road bike for a blind triathlete who would race every year in the UBC triathlon - he was FAST! 

My daughter and son-in-law are tandem riders and really enjoy it.  They talk and work well together on the bike.  They got a new/better tandem the day before RAGBRAI, and had a great time on it.  They let my brother-in-law and his girl friend take it for a day of RAGBRAI and they bought a tandem when they got back to Kentucky.

My wife and I will ride separate bikes as we have been married for 26 years and we ride two different speeds and she wants to see where she is going.  Not much of an option for her at 5'3" and me at 6'3".  I like a cadence of 90+ and she likes 70-80 with coasting.  Maybe I could take some highway pegs off of the motorcycle and mount them to the bike and she would like it better.

I have a friend who is a world class visually-impaired paratriathlete. Her tandem is built for racing.

Out of context quote of the day!