I Love the Buddy Bike

side by side tandem

So I’ve been thinking about the elements of a great cruiser ride. I won’t go into the obvious ones right now, but I want to share one of the ones that’s not so obvious.

Getting a lot of people into a small area.

If you’re throwing a party, you want to fill the room. That’s when the energy rises to that special point, and people start to dance.

On a bike ride, it’s the same. It won’t have that party ride feeling unless you’ve got a lot of people in a small space. But how do you do that on bikes without causing accidents? Well, you get tandems and rickshaws and fill them with people. Then you pick a relatively flat, easy route, and keep the speeds mellow.

The element of conversation is so much nicer when people are close together. And the music doesn’t have to be turned up as loud when everyone is close enough to hear it.

As long as you’re going to involve tandems in your cruiser ride, you might as well seek out a “Buddy Bike” or Side-by-Side tandem. I should be careful using the term “Buddy Bike” because it’s now a company making special-needs tandems (bikes that a ‘normal’ adult and a special needs kid can ride together.) “Buddy Bike” used to be a small company making side by side tandems. It’s an idea that has never ‘caught on’ but will, once there is a healthy bike cruising scene in every city and town in this country.

Thao and I rode a Side By Side tandem at the Oregon Country Fair and the experience was so much nicer than any other tandem I’ve been on. Yes, front-back tandems are fast and sleek, but they don’t give you that “Slide over baby” feeling. The people in the picture above seem like they have a death grip on the handlebars. But it wasn’t hard to ride with my arm around Thao as we cruised the outer grounds of the Oregon Country Fair. The tandem has two wheels, i.e. it is lots of fun to take turns and coast down hills. Some side-by-side tandems have three or four wheels. This may seem obvious to you, but bikes with more than two wheels aren’t bikes at all. So they may have great characteristics and they may be lots of fun, but they won’t feel like a bike. They won’t take turns like a bike. The side by side tandem may catch a lot of wind resistance, but it’s fun to ride. And when you’re cruising, fun trumps speed.

I am hoping to build up a side-by-side tandem in the next year and put a sweet little sound system on it for the SF Cruiser Ride.

http://www.cyclelogicpress.com/US/26USA.html

http://www.citynoise.org/article/917

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~tandem/gallery03.htm