The Costly Punisher

The best laid plans of mice and men go astray, and in the case of Tandemonium they have.
Mikeal (he who is prone to pestering his pope) and I will not be riding the tandem in the Great Lake Cycle Challenge this weekend. The One Hundred and Sixty kilometres of bunch mayhem will be missing the destroyer in it's midst.

The reason for our non-attendance is due to some unforeseen, off the bike activity, and while this activity did involve incarceration, neither Mikeal the Onanist or myself were incarcerated, but someone we both hold close was, and as such it has ruled out our participation.

In hindsight this maybe a blessing, but at the moment it's a curse. On the up, Mikeal won't get the opportunity to overcook a corner and get eighty plus kilos of me using him as a landing pad.

I was hoping from some outrage from the fixie wannabe bunch about my deriding them slightly recently, but not a peep. I'm saddened by this as I'm certain that they would have iphones and twitter and all that social networking stuff and that somehow this would have hit their radar.

Obviously not, maybe they are too busy DJing and lugging their record cases around in their tight jeans. Either way, if you do know any of these miscreants be sure to point out the error of their ways.

Lastly, I hear that there is an angry Russian looking to make amends for his curtailed K2 at Taupo. Be warned, the spa scene in Eastern Promises will be mild compared to what will be unleashed on Saturday.

No more shall we part

Well, here we are, two weeks on from being petrified and less than manly, Mikeal (Spiller of seed) and I have mastered the two wheeled, two seat bicycle.

We saddled up, and mounted the object of fear the other day. I can't say it went seamlessly, but it was a victory. We wobbled our way about for a while, then entertained the commuting traffic around Point Chev with a snake like wobble, several curses and the threat of intra-fratenal warfare. That was the low point.

A stop in a workshop later and corrected seat height and we were fearsome. From there we rode smoothly out to the Rosebank Road go-kart track and proceded to lap it around the tight track, no traffic, few distractions and no laughter from the two builders and their dog. We were a unit, at one.

On our return to town we sped along the bike path, with the eighty kilometre per hour traffic inching past us, we were a missile with two men atop. Homeward we made it all the way with no further incidents.

This weekend we will attempt a whole one hundred kilometres, although I suspect I may need to change my bare SLR saddle to something with even a modicum of padding to avoid a minor meltdown. Apart from that all will be good.

As a complete aside, I did have a wager on the Round Taupo a couple of years prior. This wager was around myself and Gordon McKendry on a tandem to beat two comparative whippets on another tandem. Thankfully Gordon was less of a man than me and chickened out. I suspect that while, our combined two hundred kilogrammes plus would have been a trifle slow up hill, based on my current tandem experiences, I would say that we would have been unable to even ride it in a straight line far enough to reach the control gates, all five hundred metres from the start. That would have been the nadir of my cycling career.

Candy and a currant bun

The tandem, what, in all that is holy, ever inspired a man to create that infernal object of debasement? As earlier mentioned, Mikeal, he of the monkey gland and monkey hand, and I rode the object of terror this afternoon.

The plan we had agreed on was that I would be on the front, and he would be in the rear. Earlier Mikeal had suggested that we just get on and ride the thing, even suggesting riding the metal roads of the Coromandel as a way of getting used to it. He nagged, suggesting an afternoon's cruise through pre-rush hour traffic on Tamaki Drive, complete with traffic lights and other road-users.

Thankfully a modicum of caution prevailed. Dressed inappropriately we attempted our first ride, slightly downhill, on the footpath, thinking that having grass either side would be a good thing. We started, stuttered, wobbled, cursed and never got up to any pace greater than walking. The problem was that the rear component of the human factor was unable to relax and leave the control to the front half, as a consequence, his attempted steering, moving his body and cursing, made steering for me all but impossible and the tandem writhed like a worm in hot water. Coordinated pedalling was impossible. Dignity was stripped in an instant. Grave doubts assailed us.

We decided that maybe we swap positions, with me in the rear, being slightly more relaxed, but still terrified. This time we set off down the road, around the corner and down a stretch of straight road, it all went pretty well. We stopped in a drive, turned the ocean liner around and set off again, wobbling badly, with curses flying from the front half. We amused a car load of onlookers with the sight of two grown men looking terrified on a bike, together, in decidedly non-cycling appropriate apparel, the front wearing jandals and the back in red band gumboots. We managed to turn the corner and ride up the slight rise to the safety of home. There we contemplated what lay ahead.

With a few modifications, bike shoes on this time, we headed out in the rain for another brief sortie. This went much better, with straightline being straightline. Problem was that the street was slightly downhill and wet, ending with a T intersection with a major arterial road. The front half started braking, and found the brakes were a little wanting, the back half, me, started to get very anxious and rapidly assess a way to abandon ship. Finally, after several, eternal seconds we halted without entering the arterial road. Heart in mouth stuff.

We turned the beast around and rode home. Bewildered, but not beaten.

There is going to be a moderate amount of practise required before the end of November methinks.

Ian and Myra

Tandemonium.
No, it's not some wierd new element created by firing neutrons, positrons, electrons or other small bits of matter at slightly larger bits of matter and hoping that something sticks.

Instead think:-
Burke and Wills
Nelson and Hardy
Achilles and Patroclus
Bonnie and Clyde
Fred and Ginger
Roy Rogers and Trigger
Michael and Bubbles

This is a new unholy union that, hopefully, will be remembered for all the right reasons, and not for scarring the eyes of thousands with Mikeal's (you know, him, master of chicken feeding) backside encased in mid 'eighties Tinley swim/ride apparel.

The union we are contemplating is a tandem assault of the Round Taupo. We want to behave like a great white shark, gliding effortless through the shoals of riders, snapping their legs when we hit the flat and making grown men go bug-eyed.

This is a venture that is filled with positives, we are fit and strong, we have ridden the event before, we enjoy riding bikes, we will be a satorial trainsmash, we have little fear. There are only a few negatives, neither of us has ridden a tandem before, we have a tendency to argue and bicker, we are both a little stubborn, we have only four weeks to get our act together.

This afternoon we will rip the seal from our tandem chastity, having borrowed CTB's tandem, we have decided that we will just get on and ride. I'm prepared to wager very good money that there will be several near crashes, several sets of shouted instructions, several attempts to stand in unison, some bewildered pedestrians and motorists, a truckload of laughter and a pair of grins a mile wide.

I will post an update, and maybe a photo, after the trembling subsides tonight.