The Other Half

I thought I might say hello. I am the other half of this tandem team, the one who sits up front. My position is usually called the captain or the pilot. I have two basic jobs on the bike. My first job is to steer and brake and change gears and balance the bike. My second job is to make the person in back happy.

The person in back, often called the stoker or co-pilot (Margaret has her own name for her position), also has two jobs. The first job is to pedal, sometimes very hard. Margaret is the one who starts the bike from a dead stop; once we are moving, I start to pedal too, but she gets us going. The second job is NOT to balance the bike. If both of us balance the bike, nobody balances the bike. In a tight situation, a narrow path with tight turns for example, she might even close her eyes to avoid reacting to our situation. (I should say here that this level of trust makes me feel humble and very responsable.)

Margaret is also our navigator as she has two hands free to deal with maps.

To this date we have about 3,000 mile together on our recumbent tandem. I'll talk about what it is like to ride a tandem in a future post.