OCR Text |
Show .. -f V. V T-' ' .1." V ' . r . . ... ..- - (,- . i v. i X . , " : ; . 1 . A , i J' .. " Linda and Jim Rasmussen. pho,os by Nan Cha,at Togetherness on two wheels A tandem honeymoon y . : ( ''.v -C-v . ... v ' by Nan Chalat When Jim and Linda Rasmussen were married in Park City on March 25, all of their friends and relatives knew just what to get them for a wedding present. They chipped in to buy the couple a tandem bicycle. "We didn't want pots and pans and all that other stuff we would never use," said Jim Rasmussen. Instead, they wanted to spend their honeymoon on a tandem bicycle trip from Park City to San Diego. According to Jim Rasmussen, Rasmus-sen, the best tandem frame is made by the Santana Tandem Co. in California. "A tandem frame has to be real stiff so the back doesn't whip back and forth," he explained. "On a single bike it is not as critical, you can get away with more." The tandem has 18 gears and extra-tough 48-spoke rims on the wheels. (Most bicycle wheels have 36 spokes.) Jim and Linda picked out a sky blue tandem from the Santana San-tana catalog and had it shipped to Park City. One week after the wedding, wed-ding, Jim and Linda packed a tent and sleeping bags onto the bike and headed out to U.S. Route 40 to begin the long ride to San Diego. They were loaded down with 50 pounds of gear and the temperature was only 28 degrees F. The plan was to ride down U.S. Route 89 to Arizona. In the process they rode through three snowstorms, and just made it through Spanish Fork Canyon before the mudslide closed the road. "The road had buckled and crews were trying to stop the mud, but I guess they couldn't because we heard the road closed the day after we left," said Rasmussen. Miserable weather followed fol-lowed them through Kanab, Jacob Lake and Flagstaff. "Once I even put my thumb out for a ride," said Linda. Of the tough times, when they were cold and exhausted, ex-hausted, Linda said, "Mentally "Men-tally it is easier to ride one bike together. If I had been on my own bike I think I would have sat down by the side of the road and cried." Both agreed that the important part of the experience experi-ence was going through the tough times together. "Sometimes we argued about who hurt more," Jim admitted. After Flagstaff, Arizona the weather improved. "We finally took off our wool tights and rode in T-shirts and shorts," said Linda. At Tecate they entered the 73-mile Tecate to Ensenada annual ride which attracted 12,000 participants, including 20 tandems. The Rasmus-sen's Rasmus-sen's Santana was the first tandem to cross the finish line. Tandems can be exceptionally excep-tionally fast, they explained. They are harder to pedal uphill than a standard ten-speed ten-speed bicycle and require a lot of gear shifting. "But they are very, very fast downhill," said Jim. "This morning we passed a car going down Parley's Summit on 1-80. We must have been doing about 60 mph." Jim and Linda didn't end up riding all the way to San Diego. They called Linda's mother from the California border to ask for a ride. When they finally reached their destination and took the packs off the bike, Linda said, "It felt like we were flying." The Rasmussens are convinced con-vinced that a tandem "Is the best thing in the world for a couple." Jim and Linda, now both in Park City, use the bike for trips to anywhere from Salt Lake to the Alpha Beta. "This morning we passed a car going down Parley's Summit on 1-80. We must have been doing about 60 mph." |