The Proper Method - The Video

This is about tandems if you're interested. I subscribe to a tandem-centric mailing list where people converse about all things tandem. Occaisionally, a new team will post a message along the lines of "New to tandeming. Finding it difficult to get started smoothly." It can be a challenge to get two people synchronized and get the bike balanced at low speed if you don't know the tricks. These kinds of posts generate a chorus of responses which generally describe a technique known as - The Proper Method. There are completly different ways of getting started (and stopped) on a tandem but one method - The Proper Method - is what most people use and try to teach to tandem Newbies.

The Proper Method - usually shortened to just TPM - is generally credited to Bill McCready who is the founder of Santana Cycles - one of the largest and arguably most influential tandem makers. Bill knows a lot about tandems and if you don't believe it, just ask him. He has very definite ideas about the way things should be done and the merits of Santana bikes. He is also very much an advocate of tandeming in general and pushes the envelope in tandem design and product development for all builders and parts suppliers. People on the list seem to either love him or hate him but all, I think, respect what he's done for their sport and the industry. Anyway, Bill is credited with describing TPM. He basically said this is how I think it should be done - the proper method for getting started and stopped on a tandem. It has become so ingrained that it took on a formal name for itself - The Proper Method.

So back to the Newbie asking for help. The replies describe TPM or send the requestor to some other web site which describes the method or whatever. This process is repeated for each Newbie who doesn't bother to search the archives to see if someone else has asked the question already (hint, hint you Newbies). During one such event, someone said "You know, someone should really make a video of TPM and it would make the whole process easier to follow." Well, given my interest in video editing, this sounded like a fun project to tackle. So Deb and I drafted Carly to take some video of us starting out on the tandem using TPM. I edited the footage together with some text instructions and produced TPM - The Video. It's a small video file that you can download and play in pretty much any browser. It's located here

After I made the video, I notified the list members and invited comments. Everyone seemed thrilled that I had done it. There were comments about how they did it slightly differently or whatever but most people thought it would really help out the Nubes.

My next tandem video is going to be "How to Stand". Most teams find it even harder to get smooth enough for both riders to stand and pedal at the same time. Deb and I couldn't do it at first but we kept working at it and have now gotten pretty good at it. One of these days I'm going to make a video that shows the steps we took to figure it all out.