Showing posts with label Jack Heid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Heid. Show all posts

19 October 2012

For Two, For History

As I've mentioned on other posts, I haven't spent a lot of time riding tandems.  Logistically, it's more difficult than riding a single:  You need, in addition to the bike itself, a partner, a place big enough to store the bike and money, for tandems tend to be high-maintenance.  

Once I was the pilot (the cyclist in front) for a blind woman on a charity ride.  I was riding a basic heavy-duty tandem--from Schwinn, if I remember correctly.  I think I rode a lightweight road tandem only once.  It's something I wouldn't mind experiencing again.  However, if I were to ride a tandem, I think I'd be even more interested in riding a track tandem.  I mean, for two riders to pedal a fixed gear, both have to be skilled cyclists who communicate well.  Were I to do a ride on such a bike with such a rider, I'd probably feel supremely confident in my abilities as a cyclist.

And I think I've seen the tandem I'd like to ride:

From Classic Rendezvous


This Schwinn Paramount track tandem is  believed to be the very first one ever made.  Jackie Simes and Jack Heid pedaled it to victory in a three-mile tandem race that ran through Johnson Park in New Brunswick, NJ in June 1951.  It would be the last professional bicycle race held in the United States for nearly a quarter of a century.

Johnson Park is near the campus of Rutgers,where I did my undergraduate degree. I took many a ride there, and witnessed a couple of races.  I knew that some important cycle races had been held there, but I didn't know, at the time, that the last professional race was run in that bucolic setting.

Check out this detail of the front"