My issue with the couplers are that they're expensive and take forever to use. My first tandem had couplers and disassembly took 2 hours (with two of us on it), and assembly took an hour. And this was after we'd gotten good at it! And of course, take pictures when you first get the bike or you'll never be able to pack it away in the boxes ever again!
Anyway, after I'd had enough of this, we finally sold the bike, and bought an uncoupled tandem. We took it to Europe, and this time, wrapped pipe insulation around the tubes and took it with us on the plane unboxed. They bent the deraileur hanger, which cost me 5 Euros and 15 minutes to fix at a local bike shop. On the way back I removed the deraileur and had no damage to the bike. Packing time: 5 minutes. Unpacking time: 5 minutes. (Removing and putting pedals back on) All through Europe the trains took our tandem and us, no problems. All the
hotels also found a place to keep our bike.
When we flew to Colorado last year for a tour, we had to box up the bike. On the way there, we got a Santana cardboard box (cost: $45), and took it with us on the plane ($80). Packing time: 20 minutes. On the way back, we rode to the Denver International Airport, bought 2
United Airlines boxes ($20), packed the bike there and then (20 minutes), and brought it back to San Jose International. The airline scratched the front saddle and gave us a $20 United airlines coupon for a minor scratch, we reassembled the bike (10 minutes), and rode
home. In Colorado we just kept our bikes in the hotel room with us.
Both my experiences travelling with the uncoupled tandem were superior to travelling with the coupled tandem in a hard case. We spent less time packing, and more time enjoying the biking. (but note: we don't have a carbon fiber bike --- those might be more fragile, in which case you might have no choice but to go S&S)
Finally, this year, I went to Europe again on my single. One of my friends brought a single bike with ritchey breakaway coupler. It took him more than an hour to assemble the bike! And more than 1.5 hours to take it apart at the airport. For myself, I would not pay the extra cost in either time or money, just to save the 15 Swiss Francs (30 for a tandem) it costs to take a bike on the train.
One of the couples in the club I'm in has both an S&S Santana and an uncoupled Calfee. They're signed up for 2 Erickson tours this September, and guess which bike they're bringing? The uncoupled Calfee. Even though they're retired and have lots of time, it's still less fun assembling and disassembling bikes than riding them, and they'd rather risk damaging their $10,000 bike.
I ran into a cyclist last year who said he surveyed every tandem couple he met while riding because he was shopping for a tandem. He said that whenever he asked about couplers for couples that had them, the usual response was "We thought they'd be a good idea, but we've
never used them." For those couples, maybe the cost of the couplers meant they didn't have any left over to take a vacation, but still.
There are a few good applications for couplers:
- Private plane owners. You're not going to fit a full sized tandem on a propellor plane, no matter what. (When travelling, every time I could have taken a prop plane I could also have taken a ferry, so it's not an issue that comes up unless you're a private pilot)
- Cruises. This was what S&S was designed for --- so you can bring your bike into your stateroom disassembled, get off the cruise boat, and assemble your bike and ride around town. A folding bike is probably cheaper for this task than adding S&S couplers to your Calfee.
- Frequent domestic flights. At $80 a pop, if you take 13 domestic flights, you've made back the cost of the couplers. ($2000 after you throw in the suit cases) Of course, after you've done the assembly once or twice, you might discover (as some folks I know did), that you'd rather *drive* to your domestic destination than go through the assembly/disassembly process again.
- You can't bear the thought of a $10,000 bike being protected by a $20 cardboard box, even though in my experience the $20 cardboard box in 10 years of travelling has never failed me.
[Update: there have been recent reports that even coupled S&S tandems are no longer escaping airline domestic charges. In addition, real world experiences have vindicated this article over and over again, as described in a later blog entry]
posted by Piaw Na @ 6:25 PM
14 Comments:
I picked up a Dahon 7 Speed Folding Bike for just over $300
In the UK the charges have changed for carrying bikes or tandem on our plane network. As low cost airlines dominte the British skies and have fantastic offers (sometimes) I have found the extras such as extra weight for liggage has now got very expensives.
On airline charges £5 pe every 1kg above their maximum weight. And each bag you wish to go in the hold, costing around £5 each way.
I dare not consider he cost of a tandem and have little trusr that it will be respected anyway, with a turnaround time of 25 minutes to get everyone seated and luggage on board.
In short any savings on the airfare are now taken up by luggage costs and for bikes as a whole, has become very expensive.
Mark
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You say that they aren't worth the trouble, yet you admit that your bike was damaged twice by the airlines, and you were charged to take it on a domestic trip. And how long did it take to find a bikeshop to fix your bent hanger? Probably somewhat more frustrating that screwing together a couple of S&S fittings.
This is all very interesting as I've trawled through the Tandem @ Hobbes archives looking for reports on people's experiences of the couplers, and the majority of people have the opposite feelings.
I'll be in the market for a good tandem sometime in the next year so I'm genuinely interested. The way things are going with airlines they are getting nastier and nastier when it comes to luggage, particularly anything oversize. And the cheaper carriers are switching to Airbus 320s etc that have a smaller luggage hold that won't take something as long as a tandem.
The majority opinion is always going to be positive towards Couplers. Just like someone who's bought a $3000 Mac isn't usually going to admit that Windows does a lot of things better (and I'm a contrarian there to), someone who just burned $3000 on couplers isn't usually going to admit that they've made a mistake.
(And indeed, whenever I've seen S&S coupled tandem for sale on tandem@hobbes, I've asked the folks there what happened and usually they've admitted that they didn't use them at all, and that purchasing a bike with them was a mistake)
It didn't take us any time to find a bike shop, because we didn't even try --- by setting the bike to friction mode, we were getting around just fine. But upon emerging from a train station near Munich, we saw a bike shop, and they pointed us at a shop literally around the corner which had the proper park tool. It literally took the guy 15 minutes to fix, and actually, if I had carried a spare deraileur hanger with me (which I should do), I could have performed the fix in the same amount of time.
As for the scratched saddle, I'm still riding it. The minor damage is not worth even thinking about.
Comments about S&S etc. I much appreciated the gorgeous fotos and facts on Switzerland, but the S&S commentary does not line up with our experience-- which is twelve years of international touring with solid (uncoupled tandem) followed by a coupled tandem which solved ALL of the hassles with the solid bike (of which there were legion, in virtually every country on the European continent.) Perhaps the distinction has to do with destinations: anyplace beyond a major hub airport (Paris or Frankfurt) has always meant hideous delays and confusion precisely because a full tandem (in a box or dedicated case) won't fit in many small connecting airplanes and even some busses; I further wish I'd had a coupled tandem when we tried to take the solid one on a train out of Split, Crotia to Zagreb. We finally coughed for a coupled CoMotion and took it into Slovenia last season, starting from Venice: absolutely no way that would have happened without a coupled bike. There's no buyer's remorse to hide here-- we love the thing! I would also observe that something is missing in the extended take-down/re-assembly times: I'm usually at 60 minutes on either end, max. Granted, using Santana's full size box is deliciously quick in terms of packing/unpacking, but it is a complete bear in every other respect (as suggested above.) As for packing as protection for a bike, we had a hard case for the uncoupled tandem, and it survived five trips abroad before Delta literally destroyed it (saved the bike except for scratches, but its an indication of what they can do.) I made cardboard boxes work (as you've described) but still the size was an issue, as above. As for simply wrapping tubes, sometimes you can get away with it inside Europe, but not otherwise anymore.
There's lots of people that get into tandems who don't stick: I doubt S&S is the determining factor. It'd be interesting to check some broader feedback: my hunch is "the exception proves the rule." Gary in Pasadena
Of course, there are people who can make S&S couplers work for them. However, I know many more people who've gone the other way (S&S bike to normal bike) than your way.
A follow-up question then: you say you know many more who've gone from couplers to standard. I guess I am curious to know where you live (the market) and where the folks who've made the switch to std are riding. For several years I worked in a tandems-only bike shop with the largest volume sales for several manufacturers:pretty much anyone who had a tandem and had been touring and was looking to upgrade purchased a coupled bike.
Gary/ Pasadena
I get e-mail from all over the country. Locally (San Francisco Bay Area), I know several folks who've gone from S&S coupled tandems to uncoupled tandem for their second tandem. The touring they do is mostly European or US centric. Major airports, etc. The folks involved seem pretty affluent (as you might expect from people who can afford $5000 bikes, which is what an S&S coupled tandem would run you). As a result, finding a direct flight and paying for it to a major European airport just isn't an issue.
And of course, trains in most of Europe (excepting the French) also happily take tandems, and many of these folks are very comfortable with trains, and so would rather do a longer journey on a train than a shorter one involving multiple hops with a bike.
I have no doubt that if you needed to fly into Macedonia, cycle through Africa and then hop onto a puddle jumper in Kenya to get into South Africa, an S&S coupled bike might be exactly what you need. Most people don't do such tours, however (though many aspire to and frequently overbuy as a result).
Two strands here: first, cudos on the Hendaye to Med France trip; did you follow the Raid Pyrenees route and checkpoints?
Second, to wrap-up on the S&S coupler debate, I would suggest there is some degree of "we see what we are looking for" going on. It's your blog of course, but putting information out there obliges some degree of 'fessing up about one's biases: obviously there is a broad variety of experience out there about touring with and without couplers. And as I've stated, we've got abundant experience on both sides personally, as well as via connections in retail and the industry. To say unilaterally that couplers are "useless" is simply not true, and deters folks from seeking the honest information that would help them make their own decision specific to their interests and abilities. I guess I am against both absolutism ("couplers are useless") and extremism ("only nutbars aiming for Macedonia & beyond, with $5000 to drop on couplers" would find them useful.)Again, experience trumps hypothesis (or at least balances hyperbole): our travel has been limited to western and eastern Europe during the past 18 years, so we're not that far off the map; airports as "large" as Geneva, Graz, Warsaw and others have all been problematic with a full/uncoupled tandem. Second, statements like "tandems are welcome on trains (except France--"--true)is misleading, since we've encountered difficulties and prohibitions with increasing regularity across the continent. And as for expense, it is all relative; there's plenty of people who think it insane to ride a tandem much less pay for one. And what we've spent we've scrimped and saved for, because its a HUGE part of our life and pays big returns over time. "Overbuying" is applying your own values to someone else's decisions.
So I would humbly suggest that good advice to those perusing your rich and otherwise rewarding blog would be: question deeply what you want and how to get it, gather all the UNBIASED info available, and make your own decision about equipment, places, pace, etc. The main thing is Go Do It!
gary / pasadena
No, as independent tourists we always have the option to do different cols from the Raid Pyrenees route. As unsupported tourists there was no easy way for us to make the time cut off, and the point of touring is to have fun anyway, so putting time restrictions into our ride didn't make sense.
It's ironic, but as we were having this discussion someone on my other S&S page just commented with his experiences about S&S, which were also largely negative. Also note that I point out the many places where an S&S coupled bike makes sense.
This is the internet --- my blog/page doesn't have to provide any "balanced" account, since a web search for "S&S couplers" invariably turns up S&S's page as the number one hit, and they have plenty of well-heeled and well-paid customers/testimonials. Providing balance to that page was one reason for me to write this article, and if it's caused a few people to spend more money on traveling instead of on S&S couplers, I have no regrets.
When I moved to Munich this time I also moved the tandem via Lufthansa. It was no problem at all. Real world experience traveling with the uncoupled bike has not been in congruence with the "you will damage/lose/destroy your bike without couplers" camp.
OK, I'm getting a clearer picture, especially since you've been speaking to the issue of couplers for more than a year. Certainly no one solution answers every dilemma, and insofar as S&S appeared to be THE answer then I agree a more tempered approach is warrented. But what sparked my response was (again) the lack of a tempered/reasoned approach to the issue. Perhaps the initial response you received of "derision and scorn" contributed to that-- or maybe that's the climate of blogs = which may be why so much discourse these days is in the mode rant instead of reason. Biking is fun, healthy, green, etc. and we should be able keep that as the baseline to everything that follows. What supports that is allowing that differnet people have different interests, different talents, different tolerances. I can support your expressing your experience, your opinion and your assessment: but in the interest of a civil culture AND holding to that "it's mostly fun" baseline that would welcome others into greater cycling, then your input is best and most compelling when it makes its assertions without deriding others, especially their experience which is equally valid. And where it has gaps in logic, then those are open to naming and correction.
Finally and FWIW, one of the highlights of our tandem riding career was to become the first American tandemists to complete the "touriste" version of the Raid Pyrenees in 2005-- on a standard old Bilenky, no couplers. Your photos match our wonderful experience, which we commend to those with a love for grand vistas and high places. And good wine.
gary / pasadena
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I definitely am not saying S&S is unsuitable for all purposes, but I definitely express the opinion that they are all too frequently pushed. And clearly, given my high ranking within search results, others find that opinion useful.
I used the S&S couplers on our Santana Cabrio for car travel. Our 10’ + bike wouldn’t fit in our Toyota Previa minivan normally, but I could stuff the big bike inside by removing the wheels and popping the back section of the triple off. It took about 15 minutes with four couplers (and practice); reassembly took about the same amount of time. I carried my Park PCS-1 work stand in the van to facilitate disassembly and reassembly. This is an off-nominal use of the S&S couplers, and worked quite well.
As for the normal S&S use, we tried the ‘converted’ mode of our triple once, as a tandem, and it was bad enough that we never tried it again. Our uncoupled Burley was a lighter, much better handling tandem. We planned one trip with the triple, and I thought, after a long flight, of moving my cranky family and 75 lbs. of bike through CDG, and reconsidered.
Yeah, if you have a triplet, you might not have a choice but to use S&S couplers to move it around in a car/van. For a normal tandem, though, you can just use a Honda Fit, pop off the front wheel, and you're done.
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