{"id":3624,"date":"2014-12-09T17:07:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T22:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sevencycles.com\/blog\/?p=3624"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T15:49:08","slug":"tandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/tandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Tandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tandemic is an epidemic of tandem-riding. Tandemia (another word we made up) describes the mania for tandems that most anyone who has ridden one succumbs to at some point. Matt O., our production manager, has a serious case of tandemia stretching back many years, and many bikes. He and his wife Susi<\/a> have been serious tandem riders since Matt’s days at Merlin<\/a>. Back then, they were only riding tandems when they were “going for a bike ride.”<\/p>\n

Then Matt salvaged two old Schwinn cruisers and welded them together to form this bike, a homemade two-seater for rolling around town, hitting up cafes and restaurants and for visiting friends.<\/p>\n

Then this bike entered their lives, a small, yellow, folding tandem that someone had (not so) lovingly left out with their garbage for disposal. A friend<\/a> of Seven’s salvaged it and gave it to Matt and Susi as a gift. This one, dubbed the “Circus Bike,” was a small revelation. It’s smaller wheels and smaller overall size made it much more maneuverable in the city. They began riding it more and more.<\/p>\n

The Circus Bike turned out to be a sort of proof of concept. Eventually, Matt built a new tandem, the one below.<\/p>\n

Matt built it here in our shop to take the best elements of the circus bike, its smaller wheels and ability to break down, and incorporated it into a better, cleaner package. This bike will pack into a hockey duffel, so they can throw it in the back of the car for a weekend trip, or fly with it. This is the bike they brought with them to the North American Handmade Bike Show in Portland in 2008.<\/p>\n

\n

And this is the bike they do longer trips on, their custom Axiom SL 007. You might see them at D2R2 <\/a>on this rig. They’ve ridden it in Chile and Australia in an ever-changing configuration, Susi always smiling, trying to get Matt to stop for ice cream, to see a friend, or to take a picture, Matt always trying to keep it rolling.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the Circus Bike lives on. Our own Skip Brown, ruler of the Seven tool shop, dark lord of heavy machinery, uses it to ferry his daughters around Somerville.<\/p>\n

Photos of Skip and his girls by Ecker Power Photography<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tandemic is an epidemic of tandem-riding. Tandemia (another word we made up) describes the mania for tandems that most anyone who has ridden one succumbs to at some point. Matt O., our production manager, has a serious case of tandemia stretching back many years, and many bikes. He and his wife Susi have been … Continue reading “Tandemic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[444,41,405,12,404,443,442,441,440,445],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-ecker-power","tag-friends-of-seven","tag-matt-o","tag-mm-racing-matt-mo","tag-skip","tag-tandemia","tag-tandemic","tag-tandems-2","tag-tandems","tag-two-seater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18012,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/18012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sevencycles.com\/7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}