Very interesting!
2010-12-11 21:36:03
17
Side by side tandem
Kind of cool story about this bike. A blind person wanted to ride a bicycle with his father. His dad was an avid cyclist and he designed and built it so they could ride together.
2010-12-11 19:30:42
Cool.
Side by side tandems have existed before though, since the dawn of bicycles really.
2010-12-11 22:02:18
aww that is so nice!
2010-12-11 22:35:57
Is this local? 2nd photo looks like East Carson St. It'd be cool to meet up with this pair.
2010-12-11 22:38:21
I didn't even consider it being local. I love stuff like this.
2010-12-11 22:45:28
Looks like this bike is on WIkipedia as well: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sociable_1.jpg
Along with a news story supposedly from 1934: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sociable_2.jpg
2010-12-11 22:49:56
The bike was for sale on Craigslist but the add is now gone.
2010-12-11 23:56:26
The term "side by side tandem" has always bothered me. The word tandem refers to the orientation of the riders, not just the fact that there are two. A tandem could technically have any number of riders oriented in a straight line behind each other. I'm not really sure what this would be called, but its not a tandem.
Then again, who cares?
2010-12-12 22:12:56
Wikipedia says such bikes are called sociables (among other names).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociable
2010-12-12 23:31:59
Interesting.
Then again, who cares? @Ricky, people who care about words do!
I was looking for a term from horse carriage racing because that also uses 'tandem,' if one horse is behind the other. 'Troika' is three horses side by side....some other funny terms here, but nothing equivalent to the sociable. Now we know!
2010-12-12 23:36:31
I absolutely love the name "sociable" for a bicycle. It is perfect. Steering looks a little tricky, but it looks much more fun than the regular tandems (which look like a lot of fun themselves, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on tandems, just super loving "sociables").
2010-12-13 14:48:27
I was also wondering about the steering issue. Seems like pedal strike would be a huge, huge problem. That is, if you actually plan on doing any high-speed cornering on such a contraption.
2010-12-13 15:10:27
a friend of mine owns one of these. she lovingly calls it the 'buddy bike'
2010-12-13 20:48:50
i thought this was the buddy bike: http://buddybike.com/
2010-12-13 21:10:40
Cornering? I guess you just get good at getting the pedals level, or up on that side, whichever works. I'd be more concerned about uneven braking, i.e., person "L" applies brake while person "R" clamps down hard.
2010-12-14 02:16:32
I wonder how this would look as a TALL bike?
2010-12-14 15:59:55