Odd Days: Tandem

First of all, I have this to say to Pope Gregory: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice....uh, how does that go? What I'm trying to say is that I shall not be fooled twice by a calendar system that occasionally places two odd days right next to each other. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just fergedaboudit.

So anyway, guess what I got for my birthday!



If you've never been on a tandem, here's what you need to know. The front driver is the "Captain" and the rear rider is the "Stoker." That's not the part you need to know. But remember those exercises you did in psychology 101 where you pair up with someone, put on a blindfold and fall backwards, hopefully into the arms of your partner? Remember? It's a *trust* exercise.

Using that exercise as an analogy, the stoker is the blindfolded person. The only thing she has to do when riding a tandem is trust the captain. That means trusting the captain when he tells her to keep her feet on the pedals even as the bike is listing dangerously to the right. It means trusting the captain even when the bike is weaving all over the road and the captain is muttering, "oh shit, holy crap, uh oh" and other words of the same ilk.

How did we do, you might ask. Well...Pikes Peak Road Race, here we come! Soon. Sometime this decade.