Gene & Rosalyn’s Story

In 2016 I rode across the country with Bubba’s pampered pedalers. The route was across the Southern Tier and seemed like a once in a lifetime bucket-list adventure. When I returned, I told my wife about the challenges and wonders of the ride, finishing with, “We could do it on a tandem.” With a little research we decided that a DaVinci tandem was best with my fragile knees. I found a used DaVinci and we started training and learned how to ride together. Within two years we did our first metric and full centuries and learned to ride clipped in.

Inspired by our adventures on the tandem, we bought an even better, Joint Venture, DaVinci tandem and converted it to electronic shifting. By 2020, we were feeling ready to cross the country when Covid hit. For several years we hunkered down and rode miles and miles in the beautiful Oregon countryside just outside Salem Oregon where we live. Then in 2022, we decided that it was safe to attempt a cross country ride. By his time, I was 72 and my wife Rosalyn was 70. We trained, packed and took off. Then on the second day, we crashed and Rosalyn had an almost complete tear of her hamstring. We left the tour with the feeling that our chance to ride across the country together was past.

But as the seasons progressed, Rosalyn got back on the trainer, we got back on the tandem and started doing hills. We rode the Crater Lake Rim ride that Fall and it seemed we could try again. In 2023 we were back on an airplane to San Diego, giddy as kids about a new chance to cross the country together. On the second day we passed our crash site and Roz started singing for the rest of the day.

Although I was a much more experienced bike rider than my wife, I didn’t seem to be recovering quite as quickly as I normally do. I started noticing a measles-like rash on my skin that progressed from my arms to my chest and back. At rest stops I would shiver uncontrollably and had to get back on the bike to get warm. Ultimately the spots faded and I started to feel better.

We finished the ride with our bike working beautifully and feeling much stronger than when we started. We were glad to have finished, but proud to have done the ride together. That summer I tested positive for having Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It is a miracle I didn’t feel worse on the trip. I include some pictures.

One thing we discovered was that we rode faster and more comfortably with 700-32 tires than with 700-28. With our combined weight, 700-32 tires near 100 psi are much faster than 700-28. We bought some Donnelson tires on the road and then replaced them with Continental 5000 tires. We had no flats on the 700-32’s for over three years of riding including the last 750 miles of the cross country trip and numerous adventures in Oregon, Illinois and Tennessee. We had our first flat (a wire) last week.