Truck!

Learning to ride in harmony on the tandem has, at times, been challenging. At other times it has been downright scary!

Let me explain the way the tandem works. There are, needless to say, 2 seats - the rear seat has a regular foot-crank, which is pedaled from a semi-recumbent position, while the front seat is equipped with a hand-crank, which also acts as the steering. Brakes can be applied from either position though Rob controls the 2 front disks, while John controls the rear disk. This is a good time to point out that the trike has 2 wheels in front, one in back. Gearing is all performed from the rear seat. In total there are 48 gears. So, Rob in front steering and braking, John in back operating the gears. Simple, right!

One morning, early in our training, before we became the seamless operation people witness today, we found ourselves at the top of a short but steep climb, facing Highway 16. Our intended route required us to cross the Highway. Unfortunately the road was only visible for a few hundred meters to our right where it dipped out of sight. No problem, we just had to be quick. Rob being the eyes and ears of the duo scanned for traffic and seeing and hearing nothing, yelled GO! The smart ones among you are asking yourselves how, if John is deaf, could he hear such a command - the answer is that John is only partially deaf and can generally, if there is not too much other noise, hear Rob screeching commands from up front. Therefore John heard Rob yell GO! What he didn't hear was Rob telling him to select an appropriate gear to cross the Highway - remember we had just climbed a steep hill and we were in a way low gear. He didn't hear it because Rob didn't say it, he'd forgotten to. And so we ended up frantically pedaling into the middle of the Highway (all 3.5 meters of us) but getting nowhere fast. By the time Rob had figured out what was happening a large red truck came barrelling over the hill, headed straight for us! As luck would have it, there was a small fruit shed with a car park on the far side of the road, just big enough that the driver was able to swing around us and get back onto the road - the fact that he did is a testament to his skill. On reaching the fruit shed car park, sitting a couple of inches higher in our seats, we took time to reflect on our strategy.

We have vowed to shout the driver of that truck the drink of his choice should we ever meet him (and he doesn't punch us out).

And so we survived, of course, and we learned from our near-death experience, so why did the trucks come for us again...?