Riding in the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA) for the first time in two weeks!

The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA 2013) is about to begin in a little over a week.  My husband and I will be riding in it for the first time.  We will be riding our Hase Pino tandem.  It's our first week-long ride on the tandem and our first ride together with camping at the overnight stops.

We plan to do a self-supported bicycle tour around the perimeter of the U.S.  The first leg of the tour will begin in September with the Pacific coast going from north to south.  GOBA 2013 will be a great adventure for us, in and of itself,  it will also be a great first step in preparation for our Big Ride beginning this fall.

I'll be posting about GOBA as we ride...

Midwest Tandem Rally

This past weekend my husband and I went to our first tandem rally. We had owed our tandem for five whole days before we went and had probably put only 20 miles on the bike, so we were really "newbies" to the tandem world. 

It was amazing to see so many tandems in one place. I think there were about 1,000 bikes there. Of all the tandems, there was only one other bike that was configured like ours with a recumbent seat in the front for the stoker and an upright seat in the back for the captain. So many people asked questions about our bike. I wouldn't be surprised if the bike shop we bought it from gets lots of calls this week. 

We finally have a picture of the two of us riding the bike. Here it is! 

Our first picture together on the Hase Pino

There were lots of fascinating bikes.  Some of my favorites are the quads and quints.

An example of a quad.

A quint!

It's really fun to see so many tandems in one place.  It was quite an event!

I was the "captain" today on the Hase Pino!

We are learning to love our Hase Pino partial recumbent tandem more and more each day.  We bought it with the hope that we could take turns being "captain" (on the wedgie seat) and stoker (on the recumbent seat).  My husband is 5'11" and weighs about 175.  I'm 5'3" and weigh 139.  We weren't sure if I'd be able to handle holding the bike upright at starts and piloting the bike during takeoffs.

This morning, I decided to give it a try.  First, I took the bike out by myself solo.  I quickly discovered it was very easy to handle and soon thereafter I was doing figure 8's on our little dead-end street.  That's a sign of confidence on a bike when I can make tight turns in either direction.  After about five minutes of riding, we made a quick adjustment to lengthen the boom so my husband could ride in the recumbent seat in the front.  Off we went!!!  I felt very confident steering from in the back.  On level surfaces, I can easily maintain the bike on starts and stops.  At stop signs on steeper hills, it helps that Jim's legs are long enough that, if I need him to, he can put them down on either side of the boom while we are stopped to keep the bike  from rolling.

This is a fun bike, there is no doubt about it.

I'm really excited.  I'm sure now that we will be able to swap positions on a long tour to give each of us a break in our sitting positions and our leg muscles used.  How great is that!!!

More on the Hase Pino!

Yesterday, my husband and I woke up bright and early to drive five and a half hours to Pella, IA in the rain.  We were going  to test drive a Hase Pino. It was the closest one that we could find to us to try out.

 It's a fun tandem that's a combination recumbent and hybrid bike.  The stoker sits in the front (the princess seat) and the captain sits in the back in an upright position.  We both really enjoyed riding the bike and decided to take the plunge and buy it for a self-supported tour we plan to do next spring as soon as he retires.

It takes a little learning to be able to ride this bike.  First, an experienced captain takes the new captain out for a ride in the stoker's position to see how it feels.

My husband, Jim,  in the "Princess Seat" on his virgin ride on the  Pino.  It's a little scary that first time.  The man in the back is Marty, the owner of the LBS (local bike shop), in Pella, IA.

Next, the new captain rides the bike solo in the captain's seat to get used to the bike.  After that, the new captain takes the experienced captain for a ride....

Finally, the new captain, "Capt'n Jim" takes the new stoker "Princess Kay" for a ride.  Wheee, what fun!!!  I have no pictures of both of us yet on the bike.

We felt like the bike would be awesome for enjoying our long tour together next summer.  We can easily talk to each other as we ride, and perhaps take turns in the each position to give each other a break from being in the same position for hours on long rides.  The bike is great because it can be easily broken down into two pieces to fit inside our Prius, or to go into bike boxes to get the bike on Amtrak etc.

All good bikes have to have a name...so on the five and a half hour drive home, we thought of names...Silver, Germinator (the bike is from Germany and we wanted a strong name kind of like The Terminator), Ra (number one Egyptian sun god...also short for "the Relationship Accelerator"  which TreeHugger.com coined the Pino), but we think we might call it JaK....a combination of Jim, the captain,  and Kay, the princess.  We'll see how that name works.

After plunking down a lot of money for the bike and spending over eleven hours to and from the not so local LBS....JaK is sitting in the back of our Prius this morning waiting patiently to be unloaded and strut his stuff....

More to come on JaK and the adventures of Capt'n Jim (CJ) and Princess Kay (PK)!

Found the Hase Pino for sale!

Are we nuts???!!!

After calling around in the Chicagoland area and finding no Pino's anywhere, my husband and I decided to branch out and call dealers around the country.  Amazingly, we found not one, but two Pino's for sale in Pella, Iowa....a MERE five and a half hours drive away from where we live.  One is a used older model Pino that doesn't break down into a smaller size for transport.  The price was good, but it's a "no go" for our car...a Prius.  The second Pino is a brand new Pino, but it's not really set up for touring and a lot would need to be done to it to get it into a more "touring ready" type bike.

We are really intrigued by the Pino, but I'm hesitant to pay so much for a bike that's not really what I want.

So the question becomes....do we drive 11 hours to test drive a bike that isn't really what we want?

Depends on how crazy we are!!!!

We have all day to think about it as we do the Round da Manure Tour in Sharon, Wisconsin.

My latest obsession...the Hase Pino

What is a "Hase Pino" you ask?  It's been called the "relationship accelerator".by TreeHugger.com.  It's a head turner where ever it goes.  It's a beauty and it's caught my eye.  It's also been called a partial recumbent tandem bicycle.  Here's a picture of one taken from it's manufacturer's website:

Isn't it a sight to behold?  My husband and I want to test ride the touring version pictured above.  We are planning doing long distance touring after he retires next June.  Oh what fun to plan and obsess over touring bikes.  More to come!!