Kind of a cryptic question, but. Our 30 miles was from their house, neighborhood rolling hills, onto a major thoroughfare to access a paved greenway path for the bulk of the ride. The greenway is twisty and up and down bluffs following a creek (flood zone) - part of it was also along a bike expressway, exposed to a stiff south wind. Tandems are inertia machines with twice the power and half the drag for similar rolling resistance. My bike is a very good climbing machine, but keeping up with the tandem on descents required using each one of my gears to chase when they were coasting by maintaining a good spin. I did the same thing on climbs, which was also my catch-up, where he would typically make one shift to their low spin/mash gear. I made a dozen shifts for each of theirs. My shifts were rolling knuckle or pulling thumb. His shifts were at least partly spared by the fact that it's a laborious reach from the hoods to the bottom outside of the woodchipper bars.
On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 8:05:14 AM UTC-6, Steve Palincsar wrote: > > > > On 12/21/2015 08:05 AM, Ron Mc wrote: > > I've never even considered clipless pedals. Still on the first year > > of my first ever index-shift bike (9-speed thumbies). I chased my > > friends on their tandem for 30 miles yesterday (it was a good workout, > > and I left them behind for the last 4 miles). Watching him bar-end > > (index) shift on the end of his woodchippers, I saw what a chore bar > > end shifting could be, > > What kind of chore was that? > > > and really made me appreciate my thumbies. Part of the reason I was > > able to keep up with a tandem (those two turn Fast together) was the > > quick mindless shifting of my setup. So while I'm still not tempted, > > I can see the advantage to brifters. > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
