The plan was to eat lunch at the White House Grill. We hit Post Falls too late to pedal into the head wind for another 3 miles, have a leisurely lunch, and get back to pick up Maddie from school by 3. So, we took the tail wind into Liberty Lake and had an OK meal at a Pan Asian place.
The tandem lesson we learned on this journey is that Liza prefers many small incremental shifts. I'm a grinder. I often go on bike rides and shift between two gears (low-ish and high-ish). Interestingly, the Centennial Trail to Post Falls has lots of little dips and climbs where I could practice shifting to Liza's preference. I pulled off a couple brilliant double-shifts and I totally shit the bed on a couple downshifts, especially where the Harvard road 90-degree detour jumps out at you.
I had a lovely time. What a great way to hang with your wife. Liza is still cool to tandeming. She doesn't hate it; but she doesn't love it either. She only indulges me because I love it so much, so it's fun for her in that way. She said she had more fun that she thought she would today. So it's mostly good.
We both decided that when we tandem, we should wear proper bike shorts (with pads). You just don't have as much easy freedom to stand and adjust on a tandem, so the bum suffers a bit. Liza doesn't have bike shorts. We're going straight to Ibex; they're like the Orlieb of bike shorts. You can spend a much of money on many different cheaper solutions to end up with Orlieb bags or Ibex shorts, or you can save time, money, and frustration, and just go straight to the de facto best solution.
I think a Thudbuster is also in order very soon.
We're going to try a shorter ride next Friday. Maybe drive (gasp!) up north and then ride across the (Wild Rose?) prairie and have lunch in Deer Park.
7 comments:
That does sound like an awesome way to spend time with your wife, not to mention that the exercise will probably give you more time with her too.
I don't think I'll be able to not day "shit the bed" when something goes wrong now. Awesome.
"What a great way to hang with your wife."
I heartily concur. Although we both have to compromise--okay, I have to compromise. I like to pedal at a pretty high cadence so I have to slow that down for Kathy.
"...totally shit the bed..."
Well put. My bed-shitting had nothing to do with shifting. Do you know your stoker gets really pissed if you don't unclip in time to hold the bike up when you come to a stop? No amount of apologizing can make up for it. It just better not happen again. And after three times it hasn't.
"I think a Thudbuster is also in order very soon."
Yeah, that stoker position can be brutal at times. Are you not spotting and calling out the bumps both of you can rise up for them?
I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but you and Liza are welcome to try our soft-tail Burley if you want to compare and contrast the ride.
The cadence thing is tricky. The one for me is anticipating which gear we'll need to be in when we start pedalling again after a downhill coast. On my single I'll happily spin up to a very high cadence (~150rpm?) then decide a gear is wrong. Christine doesn't like going much above 100rpm, so that technique doesn't work.
We have a Thudbuster seatpost, but I still need to call big bumps.
We've had some good times on the tandem over the last 12 years. I can't believe that we bought it that long ago...
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