Have Tandem, Will Travel

My boyfriend Jon and I had been riding together on a Cannondale touring tandem in the San Francisco Bay area for about a year, and I had finally stopped shrieking out yellow light and stop sign warnings from the back seat. We wanted to sign up for a Backroads tour of the San Juan Islands and take the bike on the road. We argued the pros and cons of hauling it around, and eventually decided to purchase a travel case for it. We balked at the $700 price, but sucked it up and made the investment in a BikePro USA metal framed soft-sided case. It was 68 inches long and 10 inches wide, and had four little wheels like a skateboard.

We had to remove the tandem’s front wheel, pedals, and handlebars to get it into the case, but were pleased to find we could also fit our helmets, gloves and several cycling outfits in there as well. The size of the case required a van or station wagon taxi to get us to the airport, so we had to order one the night before our trip. We were surprised how easily the case traveled through the airport, with one of us pulling it along by its little leash.

The airline charged us the same fee as a regular sized bike, so already the case was earning back its price. We made it easily to Seattle where the Backroads van picked us up, and Jon spent the evening re-assembling the tandem in our hotel room. We blasted around four of the San Juan Islands, easily wheeling the bike onto the ferries, standing together on our pedals to make it to the summit of Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island, and shooting six rolls of film through five 72 degree cloudless days.

At the end of our excursion, the traffic back down to the airport was fierce, and we arrived at Seattle-Tacoma with a fully assembled tandem and barely an hour to go before our flight. Jon found a secluded piece of sidewalk in the departures area, grabbed his tools and began yanking parts off the bike. I ran back and forth between the ticketing counter and the Starbuck’s, attempting to ensure Jon had enough caffeine and that the plane wouldn’t leave without us. We barely made it.

The BikePro case had a diagonal line across each side, with a giant black triangle on the top right, and a fire hydrant red triangle mirroring it below. People couldn’t miss it, and generally got out of the way. Dragging the bike case, a wheeled green duffle bag large enough to hold a sleeping human, our knapsacks and a hanging bag, we attracted a lot of attention in airports and hotel lobbies. Despite the BikePro name printed in large white letters across the top of the case, strangers generally assumed it was some kind of instrument and asked us if we were toting everything from a guitar, a harp, a keyboard, or even a xylophone.

After the Washington trip, we used the case for job transfer moves to Los Angeles, back to San Francisco, Chicago, and back to Los Angeles again, and for tours in Bryce, Zion and the Grand Canyon, the coast of Maine, the big island of Hawaii, and Banff and Jasper.

We learned a Sky Cap could help us cut to the front of the line because of our large baggage, and in airports where there was a special oversized bag check-in counter, the line was often negligible. We discovered how to tip the taxi coordinator for a van to get us home or to our hotel, we found the BikePro case would usually glide right into the wood paneled elevators of any fancy hotel, and that most hotels would stash the case for us while we were on tour.

Throughout our travels, we were an oddity – the only tandem, and generally the only folks who brought our own wheels as opposed to renting them. Our tour-mates smiled sympathetically as they passed us going up the first hill each time, and were universally stunned to see us whipping past them at forty or fifty miles an hour on the other side.

Dragging the tandem through nine cities and six national parks strengthened our bond as a team. In Banff, we hit a cattle guard that proved too much for even my shock absorber seat. The seat post snapped, and the Georgina Terry for women seat went hurtling into traffic like a Frisbee. I yelled to Jon to pull over, and remained standing until we were stopped. He retrieved the seat, and rigged it together with the shock cord from the waistband of his windbreaker until we could get into town and find a bike shop. In Bryce, we went through five flat tires before realizing we had the wrong size Mr. Tuffy liners installed.

In the mid-west we added a roof rack to our sedan. A bright green Audi with both a huge white bicycle and a fluorescent yellow tandem kayak on its roof received more than a little attention on the freeways, but took us to state parks where we could ride the bike paths on the perimeter and paddle the multitude of lakes and ponds that lay within.

We slogged through spring thunderstorms in coastal Maine, squishing our shoes around on our pedals, and squinting through the curtains of rain and fog at the barely visible scenic lighthouses.

In Hawaii, we accidentally rode through the middle of the Ultrathon (a double Ironman race,) and by the side of the road with a glacier for a backdrop, we were swarmed by a busload of Japanese tourists who wanted photos of us and our bizarre mode of transportation - and then wanted shots with each of them also in the frame.

Moving back to Southern California has meant an increase in local riding options, and an end to our uniqueness as tandem riders. We pass multiple other tandem couples every time we ride on the bike path, and we were delighted to discover an actual tandem specific ride in Orange County.

With so many touring and training ride options in Southern California, the travel case currently hosts nests of silverfish in the storage closet. But it hasn’t been forgotten. If we hadn’t made the investment in that case, we’d have missed out on some incredible adventures. The Backroads catalog came in the mail the other day. Next stop: Europe?

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