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Archives: 2001 - 2002
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News Headlines For More Information.
So, What's the
Future Hold For The Bulletin Board? I'm not really sure. The Blog has been much easier
for me to use for my miscellaneous ramblings so I don't see the
Bulletin Board being used for those types of updates. Moreover,
I'm not a real big fan of cross posting so I don't see myself
replicating blog entries here. So, for the most part, I suspect
this will become an events and links update section, with perhaps
occassional industry updates. I'm also toying with the idea of
migrating the whole site to the iWeb software to gain access
to some of the more advanced web tools and design options. Stay
tuned.
2010 Harpeth River Ride Focuses On
Adaptive Athletes:
Les Wooldridge, HBC River Ride's Adaptive Athlete Coordinator,
wrote to let us know the HBC will once again invite and focus
attention on adaptive athletes during its annual River Ride.
The 2010 Harpeth Bicycle Club (HBC) River Ride will be co-sponsored
by Nissan and expects to draw 1500 riders to middle Tennessee
on June 12th. Les came to us on a referral from Sue Buckley,
a visually impaired cyclist and tri-athlete whom we've come to
know through tandem-related cyber-discussions. Sue, Les
and Mike Willman, the 2010 River Ride Coordinator, have all attend
one of the Paralympic Training Camps at the Olympic Training
Center in Colorado Springs where Sue trained as well. It was
that experience that inspired Les & Mike to make adaptive
athletes a major focus for the River Ride.You can learn more
about the River Ride by visiting their Web site HERE.
Who's on Facebook? I've heard rumors that suggest FB
is pretty popular with a lot of other folks and have found that
at least one tandem club - Tailwind Tandem Club in North
Carolina - has migrated away from its Web site format and is
now hosting a FB page instead. More recently I also stumbled
onto Co-Motion's FB page when someone let me know my little Blog
had been mentioned, causing a rather large spike in 'hits' on
my Blog: 355 to be exact. Yikes.
Anyway, since I'm
not a FB member I had to use something of an end-run with Google
to find the Tailwind page on FB and while I was surfing the FB
pages I found a few other tandem-centric pages that I thought
I'd include in a short compendium that will eventually get incorporated
into a redo of our Tandems
page and Tandem Club
page, as appropriate.
* Bilenky
Cycle Works
* Bob
Brown Cycles
* Bohemian Bicycles (Blog)
* Calfee
Design
* Co-Motion
Cycles (Blog)
* daVinci Designs
* Erickson
Cycle Tours
* KGS
Bikes (Blog)
* Rolf
Prima Wheels
* Ruegamer
Sports
* Santana
Cycles
* Tailwind
Tandem Club
I would note, there
are several other tandem personalities who have personal FB pages
such as Craig Calfee, Sherwood Gibson (Ventana USA), etc who
I have not included here. I suspect that most of these
folks would rather leave their personal pages focused on personal
friends with their 'fans' using their business' FB page.
Still Openings
for the Tennessee
Tandem Rally & MATES
Rally in Warrington, VA:
As often times happens, a couple of folks have had to cancel
their plans to attend the Tennessee Tandem Rally in June. Therefore,
if anyone had considered attending and was disappointed to learn
that the 50 rally registration slots had been filled, two of
those team slots have now opened back up. Registration and rally
information can be found HERE.
It was also noted
the Mid-Atlantic Tandem Enthusiasts (MATES) rally in August had
just a few registration slots left open as well. For more information,
visit the MATES
Web Page.
 Team
LM & Team TG Team-Up! Excuse
the use of my Bulletin Board for personal fund raising, but so
be it....
As you can see from
the hot-linked image of our Personal Page at the Tour de Cure
Web site, several fellow employees have formed a corporate cycling
team and we have been recruited as members.
The team's goal
is to support two major fund raising rides each year; the one-day
Tour de Cure in the Spring (diabetes) and the two-day MS150 Tour
(multiple sclerosis).
Therefore, given
my wife and I are likely in this for the long-haul, it is my
hope I can encourage many folks to make a couple modest contributions
vs. making those somewhat more substantial donations we all often
times reserve for religious and community groups, cancer research
via the 3-Day Walks for Breast Cancer and LiveStrong, never mind
our AeroClub, March of Dimes, Children's Health Care and disaster
relief contributions.
Therefore, I humbly
invite you to visit my personal Blog with links to our Tour de
Cure donation page.
http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR/TourdeCure/TDC218008030?px=5721655&pg=personal&fr_id=6865
Yes, it all adds
up... but all for a good cause and it serves to remind those
of us who are more fortunate than others that we can still have
some control over where our 'contributions' go vs. those somewhat
less voluntary ones.
Tandem Rally Updates &
Announcements
Road Tandem Events: http://www.thetandemlink.com/RallyInfo.html
- PANTHERS
Lake Wales Ride on Apr 9 - 10, Lake Wales, FL
-
DATES Stoker Appreciation Ride on May 22-23, Dallas, TX
-
PANTHERS Vero Beach Ride on Jun 4 - 6, Vero Beach, FL
-
Canadian Tandem Rally on Jun 4 - 7, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada,
eh?
-
Paired Iowans Going Somewhere Rally on Aug 6 - 8, Ankeny,
IA
- Walloon
Lake Tandem Weekend on Oct 2-4, near Petoskey, MI
Off-Road Tandem
Events: http://www.thetandemlink.com/dfevents.html
- Appalacian
Off-Road Tandem Adventure (AORTA) on May 21-23, Asheville,
NC
- DOGS
Allegrippis Weekend on Jun 11-13, Lake Raystown, PA
Registration for 2010 Southern Tandem
Rally Now Open
- Jack
& Susan Goertz, hosts of the 32nd Southern Tandem Rally,
wrote to let us know registration is now open! STR '10 will be
held in beautiful Florence, Alabama on Oct 15-17. The STR
'10 Web site
has links to the Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa for advanced
reservations (which works just fine, by the way) as well
as the downloadable Rally Registration form and various other
useful information and links to local attractions. Florence is
located in the extreme Northwest corner of Alabama.
Only Five (5) Spots Remain Unclaimed
For the 2010 Tennessee Tandem Rally - Tom
Spears wrote to let us know that 45 of the 50 team openings for
the 2010 edition of the Tenneesee Tandem Rally have been filled,
leaving only 5 spots open. The 2010 edition of TTR is being held
in Franklin, TN, just south of Nashville on Jun 4-6. Visit the
TTR
Website
for more details and a downloadable registration form.
Hey, You've
Updated The Banner & Bulletin Board? - Yes, we did. We are pleased to add Israel's flag
to our line-up of nations with tandem clubs to recognize the
CanVelo
- Israel Guide Dog Center Tandem Club. You can read more
about this new club in our Feb 6th Upate, below, or at their
Website. Although their website is written primarily in Hebrew,
it can be translated
using Google. I will also be updating the more detailed US
and international tandem club pages in the not too distant future
to add CanVelo as well as the new San Diego based U.S.
Blind Tandem Cycling Connection's club to the rosters.
We've also added
buttons to the upper right hand corner for our new Blog
and the always useful Captain
Bike Website created by the late, great Sheldon Brown. You
will also find a link to the Tandem
sub-forum at BikeForums.net where yours truly hangs out and
posts under the pen name (nom deplume) 'TandemGeek'. Links
to Tandem@Hobbes and Double
Forte remain in place, although I must warn you that the
once always useful search engine hosted by Alex Wetmore stopped
archiving Hobbes posts about two years ago and is no longer able
to pull up more recent postings. Although I have made several
personal pleas to Alex for a fix, I fear his interests in cycling
have migrated away from tandems and towards touring, randonneuring,
650B classic bicycles and the like. Of course, at the moment,
it appears his entire server farm has suffered a failure that
has taken everything from his search engine to blog off-line.
The
Tandem Survey - Winter 2010, Part Deux - Ok,
it's been a really long and somewhat more wintery-winter this
year in most parts of North America. While my 2010 Survey was
interesting as always, it wasn't really FUN.
So,
here's a bonus survey that looks at what we ride: tandem stuff.
You know, what do you ride, what kind of computer (if any) do
you use, do you buy into (literally) the high-tech cycle racing
stuff or is it all a bunch of hooey.
Here is the link to this year's 2nd survey: The
Annual Tandem Cyclists Survey (Winter 2010, Part Deux)
Note:
The second response to Question #9 on off-road tandems should
have been:We own and ride a rigid off-road / enduro tandem
Graphed
results to questions #1 - #9 will appear at
this link
as they come in.
Question
#10's write-in comments & my feedback can
be downloaded here (.xls)
Mind
you, if you are one of the first to submit instead of the 150th
the results page / graphs won't be all that revealing. Therefore,
and in the mean time, if you'd like to see the results from the
eight (8) previous year's surveys, you can find them HERE.
NOTE:
The server will only register one survey submittal per computer
and, as before, let me remind you that these surveys are intended
for entertainment purposes only and responses are not being collected
for commercial purposes. Additionally, no names or identifies
are collected or associated with the completion of the surveys
on the OpinionPower.com website or by me.
Survey Says... Interesting Stuff, As
Always - Well, it's been about a month since
I launched my annual Tandem Survey back on January 17th and with
just a few responses trickling in now, five in the last week
and the last on February 17th, I figured it was time to give
the results a look see and offer up my analysis. Because the
questions covered more or less a potpourri of topics there's
not much to summarize at a macro level, other than in spite of
the economic down turn tandem cycling has seemingly held it's
own this past year. Steady growth is the norm, folks are riding
as much or more and while we hear a lot of chatter about problems
with tandems, the reality is that quite a few folks don't have
many issues with their machines (or themselves). The latter suggests
what we always expect to be the case, which is for every problem
or complaint you hear about on the internet there are 4x - 10x
as many folks who have no such problems.
Anyway, I've compiled
a snap-shot of the results as of February 18th and provided my
analysis of the responses to each question. You can find the
results HERE.
If you'd like to
see the results from all eight (8) year's worth of surveys, you
can find them HERE.
Finally, because
it's been such a sensational winter for so many folks, we may
launch a second survey here in the next week or so. There were
a number of things that came to mind and that many folks who
wrote to us suggested that might be 'fun' to explore to melt
away winter blues. More to follow.
Spring Is Just
Around The Corner... Really! I
say this because Don Walker's North American Handmade Bicycle
Show is next weekend and the Mid-Atlantic States' tandem specialty
dealers have firmed up the dates for their annual Open House
& Demo Days events.
Mt. Airy Cycles Spring Demo day on
April 11 at Mt. Airy, Maryland. You can find all the details at their Website or by going directly
to their flyer by clicking HERE.
Tandems East's Open House on March
28 & 29 at Pittsgrove, New Jersey. As mentioned in an earlier event update for
Tandems East, this year's guest speakers on Saturday the 28th
will tentatively include tandem industry folks like Co-Motion's
component buyer Chuck Hood, daVinci Design's Brian Davis (always
entertaining), ATOC/Thule & Draftmaster rack-master Charlie
Buchalter. More info can be found on their Website.
We
Told You So #2; Tandem Rallies Are Filling Up Quickly - As mentioned just two weeks ago,
if you plan on attending a tandem rally this year where sign-ups
or hotel rooms are somewhat limited you really need to jump on
it.
- Southwest
Tandem Rally in Paris, TX (Apr) has FILLED their rally and
registration is now CLOSED.
- Georgia
Tandem Rally in So. Carolina (May) is FILLED and the waiting
list is pretty long.
- Tennessee
Tandem Rally near Nashville, TN (Jun) opened registration
on Feb. 15 and is nearly FULL.
- Midwest
Tandem Rally at Shipshewana, IN (Sep) has now opened registration.
- Mid-Atlantic
Tandem Enthusiast Society (MATES) rally at Warrenton, VA
(Aug) has opened up registration and only has room for 40 teams.
- Tandem
East's Weekend at Cape May, New Jersey on Sept 10 - 12 is
50% filled.
There are many other
tandem rallies across the US and around the world that are now
open for registration or will be soon. As always, we try to keep
most of them listed on our events page which you can find HERE.
 Tandem
Club of America Membership: I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up - I
received my 2010 TCA Membership Roster and, as I have done for
the last seven years, I thought I'd share a quick look at the
Tandem Club of America's (TCA) demographics. As always, my hand-tabulated
counts from the membership listing were entered into my spreadsheets
and looked at on a state-by-state basis in comparison to data
from last year's Membership Roster and for reasons I explain
in my more
detailed report & analysis, the January 2008 membership
roster. You can find my highly unscientific analysis HERE.
In summary, and
based on what was published in this year's 2010 Membership List,
TCA membership at approx 765 is down 16.3% compared to last year,
with a net reduction of 149 members.
Sadly, the prediction
in my editorial from last year's analysis was correct and this
was the largest single drop-off I've seen since keeping track
of the membership trends.
Looking back and
comparing membership to 2002 when I first started following the
data, overall TCA membership has fallen by 692 or about 47.5%.
- 36 of 50 states
saw net losses in membership while only 4 saw a net increase
of one-each.
- Leading the pack
(not surprisingly) was California which lost a net of 21 members
in the last year, down from 111 in 2002 to 47 members as of January
2010.
- For the first
time since watching the data there are now only members in 49
of the 50 US states, as the one lone tandem team from Wyoming
dropped from the roles this year.
- Wisconsin was
another state that stands out with the loss of 12 members, down
from 46 in 2002 to just 19.
Editorial: Just
as I noted last year, unless TCA abandons its laissez-faire approach
to managing the club and develops some type of vision for how
it will deliver value to members in the future, I would expect
the slide in membership to continue until the revenues from memberships
will no longer cover the cost of printing and mailing out DoubleTalk
and Web hosting fees. At that point, I'm not sure what happens.
Just looking back two years 25% of the long-time TCA members
have dropped from the roles (22 of 87) and of the 273 or so newer
members who joined TCA during 2007, 131 (48%) of them have not
renewed their memberships.
We
Told You So; Tandem Rallies Are Filling Up Quickly - As mentioned earlier this year,
and as noted in our tips for first time tandem rally goers, you
really need to make plans to attend rallies early so that you
can be sure to get a room at the host hotel and secure a registration
for the event.
- Sebring
Tandem Weekend in Florida is just a few weeks away and has
30 teams signed-up.
- Southwest
Tandem Rally in Paris, TX (Apr) had just 15 slots left as
of last weekend.
- Georgia
Tandem Rally in So. Carolina (May) limited to 100 teams is
essentially sold-out.
- Tennessee
Tandem Rally near Nashville, TN (Jun) opens registration
in Mid-Feb.
- Midwest
Tandem Rally at Shipshewana, IN (Sep) has now opened registration.
- Mid-Atlantic
Tandem Enthusiast Society (MATES) rally at Warrenton, VA
(Aug) is now setting up shop.
There are many other
tandem rallies across the US and around the world that are now
open for registration or will be soon. As always, we try to keep
most of them listed on our events page which you can find HERE.
CanVelo - Israel Guide Dog Center Tandem
Club - Moti Regev
wrote to let us know about the CanVelo Tandem Club in Israel,
a part of the Israel Guide Dog Center (Can = Canine / Velo =
Bike). From Moti's note, CanVelo is a "team of 20 visually
impaired stokers and 40 captains with 14 Cannondale MT tandems,
3 Cannondale RT tandems and 3 Cannondale street tandems that
ride as a team every weekend. Although their website is written
primarily in Hebrew, it can be translated
using Google to learn more about the group or you can just
check out the photo galleries.
 Tandem
Bike: Those Darn Accordions Provide Tandem Enthusiasts With A
NEW Musical Standard
- Let me be the first to admit that I have never been all that
enamored with Harry Dacre's 1892 Daisy Bell's lyrics, although
the music still lends itself to some very nice renditions like
Will Fly's
solo guitar piece. It's just that, as a tandem enthusiast,
it never captured the spirit or 'fun' of tandeming. So, you can
only imagine how excited I was when a fellow Hobbsian (i.e.,
a Tandem @Hobbes list subscriber) shared
a link to a contemporary, upbeat and fun song about tandem cycling
by a San Francisco-based accordion quartet called Those Darn
Accordions hosted on YouTube.
In fact, I was so taken by the song that I contacted the band
leader for Those Darn Accordions, Paul Rogers to learn
more about the song's inspiration and how it came to be. It's
a great story and I've now posted all of the information about
the song's origin, links to the YouTube video, the group's website
and the lyrics to a
new Web page here at TheTandemLink.com. . In the interest
of equal time I also included a link to an authentic 1920's -
1930's audio recording of Harry Dacre's 'Daisy Bell and the lyrics
for anyone who may have never heard it or who have forgotten
it. You can find the new Web page HERE.
- The U.S. Blind Tandem Cycling Connection is
a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation whose purpose is to, "increase
the participation of individuals who are visually impaired or
blind in the exhilarating sport of tandem cycling by connect
blind and visually impaired cyclists with sighted cyclists, educating
people about tandem cycling, disseminating information about
cycling clubs, events, and opportunities for visually impaired
cyclists and otherwise addressing the needs of the blind tandem
cycling community. Christine Tinberg had contacted us a few weeks
back to let us know about the pending launch of her organization's
Web site so we're thrilled to see that the site is now up and
running. You can visit the site by clicking HERE.
 Anyone
Need Any Tandem Decals? -
During the early years of 'TheTandemLink.com' we used revenues
from the sale of tandem decals to defray the costs of hosting
the site and it worked out pretty well. However, we may have
saturated the market early on, as sales of the decals have fallen-off
quite a bit from the 'boom' years right after they were first
introduced. More recently what had become about the norm for
annual sales fell by 40% in 2008 and then another 60% in 2009.
So, to those who have asked, 'Why the Google Ads?' for things
like tandem-shaped objects... it's simply become an alternative
source of revenue for the site. Since we are essentially non-commercial
and don't do much in the way of promotion or advertising those
Googe AdSense revenues aren't all that much, perhaps 1/3 to 1/2
of what we generated in decal sales back in 2000-2002. So, please
accept our apologies for the ads if they seem bothersome or don't
always align with the values or views of TheTandemLink.com, it's
just a necessary evil to keep the fires buring, so to speak.
 So,
how goes the Survey? -
Well, it's been over a week since we launced this year's survey
and about 270 folks have been kind enough to take some time to
be respondents. If last year's survey is any indication we'll
probably get perhaps another 20 or so responses. In four of the
eight previous surveys we did get some pretty big response rates;
however, in those instances it appears that the survey audience
extended well past the normal Hobbes / BikeForums/Double-Forte
on-line communities and beause the questions were more consumer-based,
e.g., how many bikes do you own, what types, etc... Anyway, I
won't delve into any of my armchair analysis just yet. There
are indeed some interesting trends in the data and, at least
for me, it has been insightful to see the results. Speaking of
data, just for kicks I took a look at when the 270 responses
came in following the launch of the Survey last Sunday night.
Monday was a big day with 140 responses and it's tailed off from
there. More to follow.
Central Florida Now Has A New Tandem
Club: The PANTHERS -
Per their official 'press release' this afternoon, the PANTHERS
Tandem Club, Inc., was organized by nine teams in Central Florida.
The club will hold weekly tandem rides in and around The Villages
with additional organized events held in other locations throughout
Florida. The PANTHERS Web site is now up and accessible at the
following URL: http://www.floridatandemclub.org/
The club hopes to promote safe cyling and to encourage the cycling
sport of tandem riding.
Tandems East Announces 2010 Events - We received our annual event notice
from Mel & Barbara Kornbluh at TandemsEast.com this past
week... who probably just finished up leading a 3-week tour in
New Zealand. Anyway, their annual Open House will be held
on March 28 & 29 in Pittsgrove, New Jersey and this year's
guest speakers on the 28th will tentatively include tandem industry
folks like Co-Motion's component buyer Chuck Hood, daVinci Design's
Brian Davis (always entertaining), ATOC/Thule & Draftmaster
rack-master Charlie Buchalter. More info can be found on
their Website in a
few weeks after they return from New Zealand and make the updates.
The TandemsEast Tandem Weekend will be held at Cape May,
New Jersey on September 10 - 12.
It's Time for the Annual Tandem Owners
Survey - Given the weather was
still not cycling friendly and the playoffs were on, I've gone
ahead and used last year's write-in suggestions for future topics
to create this year's annual tandem owners survey.
As always, the annual survey is your chance to anonymously share
and compare information about your tandem team, experiences,
and riding habits with other tandem enthusiasts.
Here is the link to this year's survey: The
Annual Tandem Cyclists Survey (Winter 2010)
Graphed results will appear at
this link
as they come in.
Mind you, if you are one of the first to submit instead of the
150th the results page / graphs won't be all that revealing.
Therefore, and in the mean time, if you'd like to see the results
from the seven (7) previous year's surveys, you can find them
HERE:
NOTE: The server will only register one survey submittal per
computer and, as before, let me remind you that these surveys
are intended for entertainment purposes only and responses are
not being collected for commercial purposes. Additionally, no
names or identifies are collected or associated with the completion
of the surveys on the OpinionPower.com website or by me.
Link Updates:
Rally
info added for:
- Sebring Weekend
in Feb, downloadable application/info added
- Alabama Tandem
Weekend in April upated
- Appalachian Off-Road
Tandem Adventure (AORTA) in May added
- Saranac Lake Tandem
Rally in June added
- Co-Motion Classic
Stage Race in July / Aug, dates added
Others
added:
- U.S. Blind Tandem
Cycling Connection on the Links page (Website under development)
- http://www.gorgeousjewelrydeals.com/Bicycle-Necklaces
offers a nice, inexpensive
tandem necklace and has been added to our Gifts, Jewelry and
Collectables links.
Tandem
Clubs added / removed:
- Updated - WABITS
now listed for Virgina, Maryland & DC
- Added - PANTHERS
of Central Florida
- Added - Tandem
Wing of the Harpeth Bicycle Club
- In Limbo - Many
clubs we've not heard from in a while
- Removed - Florida's
FLaTTS, TASTE, Flyers & FLIRTS and Ohio's GOATS
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