Tandem Shopping

[Joe.B]

Looks terrific 

We're camping near Skipton next week so a ride over to JD will defiantly be on the cards.

[Butterfly]

That looks fantastic!

[The French Tandem]

...and flinches at traffic.

Tandems are an excellent thing for people who do not cycle for this reason!

A

[Joe.B]

I had the chance to take a gander at a Sapphire in JD earlier this week, not at all envious, honest

[David H]

We went for the Sapphire in Candy Apple Green  4xss.  Picked it up February and we are loving it. Will try and post a pic.

[Russell]

Apologies for the late arrival at the admiration party sg.  Looks very nice and I hope you get as much pleasure from it as we do from ours.

Interesting that you feel that it is more sprightly than a Lightning.

Russell

[bhoot]

I'm even later but still admiring! Hope you have a great time riding it. It looks a lot lighter than our big heavy orange beast!

[Lightning Phil]

Lovely colour that and looks like it has couplers for transport.

[PhilP]

Lovely tandem - we ordered the same model at the start of July!
We’ve had a holiday from tandems for several years, but after riding the Sapphire pro, buying was an easy decision for us.
I’m trying to resist calling Ruth each week for a delivery date update.....

[sg37409]

We are loving it.  The weather has been mostly great here this summer, and the couplers have made it much easier to get away to new roads.
We have another wee away day planned tomorrow. 

The colour seems to glow on overcast days.
IMG_2309
by sg310, on Flickr


My wife is not an experienced cyclist, and after she'd been saying she was getting sore on it, I adjusted her saddle to be a touch nose down. That seems to have made quite a difference    I find it very comfortable, although my shoulders enjoy a break after a while.

[The French Tandem]

...and the couplers have made it much easier to get away to new roads.

Just a bit curious about the reason why you do appreciate the couplers so much. You have a smallish car? You take the train?

A

[Russell]

Butting in on the thread, we have pretty much the same frame and we asked for couplers to make transporting it easier.  To date, given the current circumsatance, we have uncoupled it once and that was to bring it home.  At the moment maybe it was a waste of £700 - time will tell.  I have thought that if we were to suffer an unfixable mechanical at the roadside, an uncoupled tandem would probably fit in one of those MPV style taxis that are common these days giving us a rescue option.  That does however depend on having the spanner with us!

We did also buy their Tandem Swing roof rack carrier to give us an alternative transport method.

[PhilP]

regarding couplers, we've had a Thorn tandem with couplers, and there is no way that I want another tandem without them, so it was a must have for our new Sapphire Pro, in fact it dictated that we bought a steel bike.
We used the couplers a lot to transport the tandem long distances inside a VW Golf estate car, also could bag it up (Ground Effect bags) and take it on Eurostar.
Yes, the couplers are expensive, but if you have an estate car, then you don't need a roof rack and the consequent poor fuel economy.

[sg37409]

hi, I know some people can manage to transport their tandems without couplers, but for us they are a huge benefit.

The alternatives for us would be:
Roof rack:  We find it hard to lift the bike off and on to the car (Mondeo), and I don't leave the roof rack on the car. (arguably I could now that the car is doing much less miles) - So the roof option gives us a lot of hassle.

Inside the car: It would need a fair bit of dismantling and faffing about with seats. We've managed it in the past but manhandling a long and heavy weight into position after partial disembly was also a lot of hassle for us.

Public transport:  We've never tried this: Tandems on trains seem to be a major blocker and I can't see ourselves even wanting to fly with it.