Pedaling Justice

There are three of us on this journey.  Jessica, me and The Bike.

She deserves her own post.  I am sure she is excited to get to Memphis where we have a tune up arranged. Tandem’s are stretched-out regular multi-speed bikes.  Our Cannondale T2 has two cassettes – front and back.  The front has three rings and the back ten.  Thus we have thirty shifting options as we climb hills and fight the headwinds.  The front and back derailleurs move the chain within the cassettes.  Hand levers at the front allow me to direct the derailleurs.  We try to pedal at a consistent cadence.  When we attack a hill I use the gears to maintain that same cadence as much as possible.  When the derailleur is not working in a dependable manner we may slip to a ring we do not intend and it throws off our cadence. That is happening now and it will get fixed we hope in Memphis.  When the tandem is working smoothly it is a beautiful thing to behold and a great deal of fun.  For the most part our T2 has been great.  When we have a problem I call Jim from Jim’s Bicycle shop in Cincinnati and he has been a super resource.  Thanks Jim and thanks for being a sponsor to this ride!

Oh, I know the bike snobs out there are wondering why we have the clunky stand up pump as part of our gear.

Answer is that I always break the traveling pumps and did so on day two so this is what Wal Mart had and it works fine even if it is not cool.  Hope you all get a chance to ride a tandem some day.  Great way to talk and move steadily down the road.  We just crossed 620 miles!