A bicycle built for two … lighter guys (Part 2) (Comments: 2)

(Be sure to read Part 1 before you read this post. It may not help, but it probably won’t hurt.)

An elevation map of the completed portion of our ride.

It doesn’t look all that bad when you map out the elevation on the graph above. A few hundred feet of climbing, a couple 4% and 5% grades, but not too bad.

Oh wait, I forgot that there were 400+ pounds of Rotarians on one bike. That’s why it was so hard.

The plan was a simple one: Keep the gears low. Have the SAG wagon stop every couple miles and wait for us to pass. Take a break whenever necessary. Don’t fall of the bike, get crushed by a tractor trailer or keel over from the exertion. No problem, right?

We rode and climbed and rode and climbed. A few miles along, there was our SAG wagon. Pren gave us the mileage count (there was no computer on the bike) and we kept going. We had enough air in our lungs to chat most of the time, and we told each other about our careers, our families, and why we would never, ever, ever, ever, ever volunteer for anything at Rotary ever again. Ever. Really.

Bill and me, smiling through our tears.

You know how when you have a really nice bike seat that’s like a couch cushion and you’ve been riding it for years and then you switch to a hard bike seat with no cushy properties at all and your rear end really hurts? No? Well I do. The seat on the tandem was apparently an unpadded piece of steel, possibly studded with spikes. I neglected to wear padded cycling shorts under my clothes. I never do, because the seat on my Xtracycle is so comfortable that I could bike naked if I wasn’t afraid Marlin Perkins would be overhead in a helicopter with a dart gun.

This bike seat, though, would have been better suited to transporting prisoners during the Spanish Inquisition. A few miles on this thing and they’d be converting to Catholicism faster than you can say, “Fetch the comfy chair!” I could go only a couple miles at a time before I had to stand up and stretch my … um … whatever it is that stretches down there.

Bill, meanwhile, had seat issues of his own. His seat wasn’t actually screwed tightly onto the bike, and it was constantly shifting position, forcing Bill to hang on for dear life like a rodeo rider on a bucking bronco. To Bill’s credit, he never said a word about it. Hey wait a minute — he kept offering to switch seats. Biiiillllllll! (Picture me shaking my fist.)

Another few miles, more hills, Pren in the SAG wagon. Nine miles (halfway there), more hills, Pren in the SAG wagon. Twelve miles, more hills, no Pren, but he must be just up ahead. Thirteen miles, more hills … uh … where’s Pren, exactly? I’m sure we’ll see him over the next hill. Nope. Maybe the next one. Nope. Maybe–

What’s that noise?

At about 13 miles we heard a sharp metallic pinging sound, followed immediately by a rubbing sound. (Excuse all the technical language.) I don’t know about other physical activities, but those sounds usually don’t accompany successful cycling trips. We hopped off the bike to see what was what, but we didn’t spot anything. I thought it might be the rear brake, which I’d had to disconnect and then reconnect when we changed the tire at the gas station back in Part 1. Soon, though, Bill figured it out: We’d broken a spoke and the wheel was becoming less round than is ideal for a wheel. The rubbing sound was caused by the now elliptical wheel wobbling into the brake pads.

I don’t know how well you know Bill and I, but although we’re renowned for our looks, charm, virility and spring-fresh scents, we are not, apparently, known for our brains. “What the heck,” quoth we in beautiful harmony, “it’s only six more miles. And we’ve got no tools! And our SAG wagon is missing! Let’s do it!”

We were entering East Greenbush, which meant a long downhill into the town of Rensselaer before we crossed the Hudson River and reached Albany. Bill suggested we go slowly down the hill, using only the front brake and the gears to control our speed. I did my best. We made it gently down the first hill and up the next.

Well, we made it most of the way up the next hill. At about 14 miles into the trip, we heard, and I quote:

Hisssssssssssss…

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here, but unless you’ve brought a snake on your bike ride, hissing ain’t great. The wheel, which had been rapidly deteriorating, finally got to the point where it pinched the tube, which popped, letting out the air in our rear tire.

We pulled into the first driveway we came to — a Burger King. We had no means of repairing the bike, and no SAG wagon. Even better, as I might have mentioned earlier, Bill didn’t have the cell phone number of the SAG wagon driver, so we had no way to contact him. Nor did we have any idea where he was. “Maybe he went on to the auction without us,” we thought.

We sat in a booth in the Burger King, where I put on a paper crown while we tried to figure out what to do next. I used Bill’s cell phone to call my wife, but she wasn’t home. While I was calling her, I noticed that the phone was nearly dead. Bill said he’d charged it fully before we left. We hadn’t reckoned on the cold, though, which must have sapped the battery. We probably had enough charge for one more phone call.

It was then that Bill remembered that he had the number for Wolfert’s Roost Country Club, where our fellow Rotarians were having lunch and the auction at that very moment. Also at the meeting was Greg, who had brought his pickup truck for the express purpose of delivering the tandem bike to the winning bidder after the auction. Bill called the Roost, the Roost found Greg, Greg found us, and all was well.

As we crammed into the cab of Greg’s truck, we inquired about the health and safety of our SAG wagon driver. “He’s in the buffet line at the Roost,” Greg said. Ah.

Within a few minutes we were at the club, where we entered to thundering applause. We auctioned off the bike (and many other items) to raise more than $5,000 for various international projects, including ShelterBox, clean water projects, and Rotary’s nearly complete effort to eradicate polio from the face of the planet.

In the days since our ride, Bill and I have received even more money than was pledged to us, which will enable the club to buy a third Shelter Box.

Richard, who won the bike, discovered that in addition to the broken spoke, we’d also bent the axle of the rear wheel. He had it repaired and all is well. He will now be tormenting his teenage daughter by making her ride tandem with him.

My rear end has recovered, and Bill and I are already planning our next adventure. It will probably involve bikes. And maybe weight loss. And definitely cushier seats.

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