My Tandem Inspiration

Somewhere between Sun Valley, ID and Galena Summit
on a chilly September Idaho morning in the year 2000.

Most of us learned how to ride a bicycle while we were quite young.  Can you recall the exhilaration of mastering that skill and finding that one of the doors to independence had finally been opened to you?  I vividly remember being seven years old, and that particular year found Christmas day to be a foggy, bleak looking affair.

After opening what amounted to be a few pretty decent presents, my father asked me to go out to the garage and bring something back in for him.  I plodded out to the garage, opened the door and… wow!  There before me sat the most beautiful piece of machinery any kid in the early 60’s could ever hope to possess: a shiny, brand new, never-been-touched, Schwinn Stingray!

Into the misty morning I rode, free at last from the shackles that forced me to walk everywhere I wished to go!  It was a bitterly cold morning, but I didn’t care; I would ride to all ends of the earth on my new steed – the adventures were only beginning!

Of course, as time went by the Stingray was replaced by a Schwinn Continental (a ten speed bike), which only opened the doors to travel even more.  I spent much of my free time pedaling somewhere, and loving every minute of it.  But inasmuch as I loved to pedal all over San Diego, this joy was replaced by an item that easily fits into any man’s wallet:  a driver’s license.

Well, so much for my early history.  When many young adults receive their driver’s license, they never look back at cycling.  For that matter, many of these people never engage in any kind of healthy activity again.  Yet there was something within me that still wanted to get out on a bike... along with a deeper secret that I had kept suppressed for many years.

I witnessed something in San Diego that planted a seed within my soul, and would ultimately change my life.  Many times while I was out riding, I would see an old couple go zipping by on a tandem – yes, that’s right – a bicycle-built-for-two.  These two looked like they were in their mid-sixties, and while their faces showed the wear of age, their bodies looked pretty lean and muscular, at least compared to most of the old folks that I knew.

For as much as I loved to pedal around the greater San Diego area, these two must have loved to do so equally, because it seemed that I saw them everywhere.  And I knew that someday I wanted to be just like them.  Unbeknownst to that husband-and-wife tandem team, they were my tandem cycling mentors, and I owe them a huge debt of thanks.

Fast forward to the year 2015: I’ve been riding a tandem with my wife, Valerie, for the past twenty-four years.  Short rides, long rides, part of the California coast, part of England, part of France.  We love to get out and actually go places!

We’ve ridden in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Florida and British Columbia.  We’ve pedaled on Market Street in San Francisco, from the Embarcadero to a “shortcut” know as “the wiggle” – a series of right and left turns that leads you from the city to Golden Gate Park with the least amount of effort and elevation gain.  We’ve also cycled from Fisherman’s Wharf and grunted our way to the Pacific Ocean via some hilly roads in the Presidio – nowhere near as easy as riding “the wiggle”!

We’ve had some great rides in the past, and we’re looking forward to many outstanding rides in the future, until we just can’t ride any more.  There’s one ride I wish we could take that will, sadly, always remain just a dream.  It’s just not possible except in my dreams.  Oh, but if I could take that ride, I’d go today!  Valerie and I would be pedaling as fast as we could, when the countryside around us would begin to blur and then fade away as we reemerged into the familiar scenery that was late 1960’s San Diego.

Up ahead of us a short distance is an elderly couple on a tandem, and although it takes us a little while we’re finally able to pull up along side of them.  I look over at the captain and stoker of more years than I’ll ever know and shout, “You guys are incredible!  There’s a great café just down this road a few miles – if you’re not in too big a hurry, could we stop there and buy you lunch?”

Perhaps if Heaven has a bike path, I’ll still have a chance to properly thank my unsuspecting mentors.

Profiling By Shopping Cart Returns

I have a very bad habit; I tend to profile the caliber of a store’s customers by where they leave their shopping carts in the parking lot when they’re finished shopping.  Don’t laugh!  Instead, try this yourself sometime – you’ll never look at a parking lot in the same way again!

Are the people responsible enough to push the cart back to the nearest cart-corral, or do they just leave the shopping cart next to where they were parked poised to roll into the car next to them the first time the wind blows?  Or do they make the half-hearted attempt to keep the cart from rolling away by putting its front wheels up over a curb or in some landscaping… yet still having to avoid the dreaded walk to the cart-corral?

Rarely is there an excuse for these lazy slobs that I would ever accept (or even consider).  Folks… you just got done pushing that shopping cart all over the store, with an ever-increasing load and then pushed it all the way out to where you parked.  Do you mean to tell me that you were so spent after transferring your groceries to your trunk that you couldn’t push the now empty (and therefore lighter) cart back to the cart-corral?

From my bigoted standpoint I must conclude that in my area, CostCo patrons are the greatest people alive today.  There are fewer return areas for carts and the distances to these cart-corrals are sometimes extreme.  A person might have to walk a couple of lanes over and down to the end of the row… but these brave souls make the journey!  Bravo to you, CostCo shoppers; you’re all heroes in my book!

The mid-range customers shop at stores like Albertson’s or Fred Meyer (a Kroger concern in the northwest).  If there’s a cart-corral somewhat close, they’ll usually make the effort.  But sometimes they’re in just too much of a hurry and so the cart will be left where their car used to be.  The cart-return behavior of these people earns them the moniker of “Almond Joy Shoppers”:  Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t.  (Substitute the phrase “returning your cart” for the word “nut” if you’re too young to remember that old advertising jingle.)

And then there’s Wal-Mart.  Oh, scum of the Earth! Wal-Mart shopper is thy name!  Every time I drive through our local Wal-Mart parking lot it is littered with shopping carts everywhere.  In the middle of the road where they’ve rolled, next to (or up against) a parked car in the space next to where they were unloaded, and the one that really gets me worked up into a lather… the people who park right next to the cart-corral leave the cart right there on the outside of the corral where they loaded up their car.  They can’t take three steps backwards and then push the cart into the corral with the other few carts that a few lost, responsible souls actually managed to put away.  There’s a reason that you Wal-Mart shoppers have a website dedicated to you!

So please, dear reader, the next time you go out shopping – take a look around and see where the shopping carts are at your local store.  Shopping cart profiling can be fun, doesn’t cost you anything and gives you something to look forward to when you visit different shopping centers in your area.

Oh, yes… one last thing:  put the damned cart away when you’re done shopping so I don’t wind up writing about you!

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It's time for a little "truth in advertising" here.  The above photo was staged.  Absolute fakery involved... nothing real about it.  I had to pull the cart OUT of the corral and place it where you see it.  Why?  Because my shopping cart profiling WORKS!  This Walmart is located in The Villages, Florida – a golfing retirement community boasting a population of 100,000 according to a recent Bloomberg article.  The point I’m making is that THESE people are active, responsible and basically give a crap about their surroundings.  (I stopped at a Walmart in Gainesville yesterday where the opposite was true; I SHOULD have take a picture there.  No alteration would have been necessary!)  The Villages’ Walmart accurately depicts the caliber of its shoppers!

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They Only Come Out At Night?

In the first installment of this article, I sang the praises of The Villages’ Walmart shoppers, and how nicely they put their shopping carts back after loading up their cars.  When I observed this pristine quality, it was in the morning hours. 

I forgot two important factors:  this Walmart is not exclusive to the residents of The Villages.  The outlying community also shops here.  And perhaps the most important rule to remember is that the “real Walmart shoppers” only come out at night!

I had to make a quick trip to the Walmart to pick up an incidental item for my wife: a seam ripper.  There was a Walgreen’s much closer to our vacation rental, but they sell the seam ripper in a combo pack with a measuring tape and added almost three dollars to the price.  No thanks.  I’ll take my chances and go walk around those who only go to Walmart at night.

There’s a certain corner of the parking lot I usually pull into, away from most of the turmoil of people trying to find something close to the front door.  True to form there weren’t many cars out there, but what should greet my unsuspecting eyes?  A plethora of shopping carts left anywhere but in the corrals.  I counted eight carts in total just in this small, uninhabited corner of the parking lot.  (Who knows what kind of cart carnage could be found in the rest of the lot?)

Really?  I can see the cart-corral from here!  It's NOT that far!
It took more energy to tip the cart over than to put it away!

Three were placed with the front wheels tipped up into the curbing of the landscaped edges of the parking lot.  Three were just left in spaces next to where their users loaded their cars, one was conscientiously pushed up against the cart corral (exactly like in the “staged” photo above) and the final cart was just lying there on its side, partially out in the lane.

I snapped the photo of that cart, and then righted it and pushed it back to a nearby cart corral, only about three parking spaces away from the cart’s “resting” spot.  Then I walked toward the entrance of Walmart, knowing that I would be walking amongst a different caliber of clientele: the Walmart shoppers that only come out at night!

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Do you have any “award-winning” stores that you frequent where the parking lot looks more like a war-zone than a loading zone?  Share the juicy details with us by leaving a comment!

Touchdown!

Valerie and I are both letter carriers working for the United States Postal Service; we’ve both been employed there since the mid 1980’s.  I’ve been on the same route for almost 15 years; sometimes the territory changes when those much wiser than us decide to “adjust” the routes.  A carrier might lose a little bit of their route and gain a portion from another carrier’s loss.  Over the years my route hasn’t changed very much, and as a result I’ve gotten to know many of the families residing on it.

Besides the people, we also get to know their pets.  Sometimes this is a good thing; other times it’s not so hot.  The official position of the Post Office is that if you feel threatened by an animal in any way, do not attempt to deliver the mail.  Safety first.  Of course, to feel threatened one needs to realize that a threat exists.

When I was a brand new letter carrier (still had that new letter carrier smell), I successfully bid and was assigned to my first route.  This route was in Boise’s North End: an older, well established neighborhood – the crowning glory being Harrison Boulevard.  In the easternmost corner, and also the beginning of this route, was a little one block section of North 16^th Street.  In fact it was the last block of North 16^th!

This was a walking route, or more correctly described in the postal vernacular as a “park and loop” route.  What that means is a letter carrier drives a postal vehicle out to the route, parks and then walks a few blocks in one direction, crosses the street and then returns back to the vehicle (usually to reload and walk down the street in the other direction, and then back to the vehicle once again).

This first block was a little “shadier” than the rest of the route, with a couple of houses that had high fences and unseen – but not unheard – dogs.  The barking was not of the “Hi, how are you?” variety, but more of the “I’m going to eat you alive” genre.  One day, as I walked up that one little block of North 16^th Street, I got to meet the source of the barking.  This would not have been my first choice!

Running toward me at full speed from the side of a house was a Doberman.  He was barking, growling and showing more teeth than I really wanted to see, and apparently he was about to make me his chew toy.  Or maybe I was just going to be his lunch… I wasn’t thrilled at either prospect!

Just as I was bracing for impact I was side-swiped by a force that I hadn’t counted on:  Touchdown.  A stocky, and thankfully very friendly, yellow Labrador was taking the shortest distance between two points toward the Doberman ( a straight line, and I just happened to be in the way).  Touchdown almost knocked me down, but when he hit the Dobie… it was darned near a knock-out!  Growling, barking, a cloud of dust as they briefly fought – and then it was over, with the Doberman running like a whipped puppy around the house to his back yard.

Touchdown came walking back to where I was standing with what I can only describe as a smile on his face and a wag in his tail that generated a small breeze.  It was almost as if he were saying, “Well?  Did I do good?  Huh?”

It’s needless to say that Touchdown became one of my all-time favorite dogs, and that I’ve come to respect and admire yellow labs.  They might seem to be a mellow, easy going breed… but they can certainly step up when the occasion warrants it!

The Big Adventure Begins

Our tandem and the case it packs into.
(Click on the photo for a larger version; give it some
time to load as this animated GIF is a large file.)

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Blah, blah, blah... how many times have we all heard that?  (How many times have some of us actually said it?)

Still... that saying manages to ring true.  We are embarking on what will be the start of the next big adventure of our lives; you might say that we are laying the groundwork for our golden years.

We've packed up the tandem and will be boarding a flight to Florida in the morning, with the goal of trying to find property or a house, while getting in some quality riding time around the area/s we'll be house hunting in.  (And we'll also be riding in the Florida Tandem Rally, which will come at the end of our Florida vacation.)

The photo I've posted is an answer to the question that a lot of people ask; "how do you travel with your tandem?"  Hopefully the device you're reading this entry on supports animated GIF files, and if it does then you're seeing the bike being packed in a case, layer by layer, until it's ready to travel with the rest of our luggage.  (If not, then you're just looking at the opening photo with our bike and the case it breaks down and goes into.  Trust me... with a little patience and a LOT of cussing... it all fits!)

It takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to either break the bike down and pack it in its case, or to reassemble the bike once we reach our destination.  When breaking the bike down, I often take my time to try and clean the frame up a little bit when normally hard-to-reach spots are suddenly accessible.  When putting the bike back together I sometimes take it slow, if only because I'm not a mechanically-minded person and find turning wrenches frustrating at best!  (And then there have been the rare moments when I was able to get the bike up in running in under an hour... the exception rather than the rule.)

For years, travel-bikes were normally the folding variety -- some looking much like standard commuter bicycles of the day, and others looking rather goofy (small wheels, long seat tubes and handlebars).  Along came S and S Couplers, and the travel game changed radically.  While all travel cycles benefited from this innovation, tandem cyclists suddenly were able to buy a standard sized bicycle that was as sturdy (or even stronger) than a bike without the couplers, comfortable to ride (because the frame was of a standard size and geometry) and that would break down into suitcases that the airlines will take without much fuss at all.

The ability to fly with our bike is a game-changer; we love to vacation with our bike and now there's no limit to where we can travel to with our bike packed neatly in its case.  That being said... we've got an early flight to catch so I must power down (literally and figuratively) until my next post from the Sunshine State.