That's what I figure us, the tandem and the luggage weighed in at. Bad news for the weight weenies... it didn't matter at all! OK, I'll admit this is a bit OT; related only by philosophy and miscellaneous parts.
My wife, Patricia and I have just returned from week of touring, on our Bilenkey touring tandem, in Quebec. We rode the P'tit Train du Nord, which runs from St Jerome, a western suburb of Montreal, northwest for 120 miles. We did 90 miles out, then a rest day and returned, staying at b&b's along the way. I have some prior touring experience but Pat doesn't and this was our first tour together on the tandem. The pics are in. The oddities of Mac. If you run the slide show you will get larger images but the titles are tiny fonts at the top. If you run the carousel you get small images and bigger titles. I find the slide show, overriding the auto timer seems best. http://gallery.me.com/mhechmer#100098 Anyway. We started from St Jerome, about 20 miles west of Montreal. The bike, even with about 35 lbs of baggage handled great. I often had the impression we were as fast as anybody (except a few racers) touring on the trail. The speed limit was 30 kph and we could easily do that in the middle ring with just the tiniest of downslope. The one riding challenge turned out to be the gates. Especially the southern half of the journey (180 miles round trip) had many gates, which were narrow, curved, sandy, and then uphill. Not designed for an eight feet long and two feet wide loaded touring tandem. I soon learned to cost through with one foot down but reaccelerating eventually used up a lot of energy. We had great weather, except for the first day, which was hot and very humid, 90%+. Unfortunately 40 of the 45 miles we covered that day were uphill. Just 2-3%, which didn't feel like much, but by the end of the day we were pretty tired. The humidity broke with a downpour as we arrived in St Faustin and of course we got lost and wondered a few extra miles in the rain. The stoker wasn't happy, and told me so! But the rain stopped and we jumped into the spa and soaked for half an hour before hitting the pool. The gite owner had to go out and so bought us a six pack of Richards Red. We drank three and stashed three for the return trip. It rained hard that night which left the trail a little soft, but cleared out the humidity, which felt like a net gain. Anyway, all of the climbing was behind us and we cruised along at a pretty good clip the rest of the way, with lots of stops for gawking, drinking, and ice cream. The trail was not as heavily used as those in NE. They don't allow dogs, which cut down on walkers and even when near towns there weren't many baby strollers. Usually just old geezers like us, but mostly on rented bikes for day trips. There were plenty of other circuit riders, but we discovered that most of them paid the $15 a day to get their bags ferried. That seemed unnecessary to us. Second night was in the very pleasant town of Nomininque, about 100 miles NW of Montreal. We decided to hang out for day, go to the beach, walk about town, and in the woods. Then we headed home. We were in a groove and usually covered 40 miles before lunch, hung out in a pleasant village for a while and rolled into our b&b about 2:00. Of course Friday was all downhill back to St Jerome. I kept a daily journal, and Pat suggested I share my "learnings" page: * that we can travel for a week without a car and not worry about it * that we can go all week without TV, internet, or telephones * that we really enjoy riding without any cars around * that we really enjoy riding together for three hours, are OK for four, but stop enjoying it after that * that Pat can learn to spin at a higher cadence and lower pressure, thereby sparing all four legs * that Pat likes riding in men's shorts, which she believes have less padding and are easier on "parts" * that Pat likes riding on my Brooks B17 better than all the "women's" saddles she has tried unsuccessfully * that I want to trying raising the bars on the tandem 1-2 cm higher than I like on my single, since I rarely stand up and my left hand goes numb; but wonder if it will put more pressure on my touche * that back to back days are fine but life is better when this old team calls the third day rest * that careful planning allows for more enjoyment and less worry * that our plan for a garden tour in England next year is very doable * that our Bilenkey tandem handles spectacularly with 35 lbs of luggage on it * that we could tour comfortably for a very long time with just about 35 lbs of stuff to carry. Michael -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/peq8RAcJ2SsJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
