Tandem Takeover

Not every telephone call the bike shop receives is checking to see if we can deliver water bottle cages to a hotel downtown, but this phone call was. After a few moments of disbelief followed by a credit card transaction we had a delivery to make.

I was expecting to leave the bottle cages at the front desk for a pair of cycle tourists but I walked into a registration area and amazingly bumped into the customers right away. (I know this because everyone was wearing name tags!) They thanked me and invited me into a staging area where several people were attaching brake cables and making sure all the gears were shifting on their tandems.

A room full of tandems! Plus another room full of tandems in boxes! Plus this was registration day! About 100 tandems will be taking over Memphis today and Sunday. After the Memphis visit the group will board the American Queen River Boat and sail on down the Mississippi towards New Orleans.

Many of the tandems there were Santanas, who also happen to be the tour organizers. You can find out more at http://www.santanatandem.com/. Their 2015 Memphis to New Orleans tour is 80% booked so get going. If you are in the market for a great touring tandem you can also check out Tandems, Ltd. When they aren't doing support for the Santana Tour they run their shop in Birmingham, AL and focus just on Tandems and Recumbents.

When you see them out be sure to say hi! I just hope they aren't uploading to Strava; I'd hate to have to battle the power behind four legs!