a bicycle built for two

a few weeks ago, i mentioned in this post that ryan and i have been wanting a vintage tandem bike for a long time.  when we were in honesdale, we walked into a bike shop that had a vintage schwinn twinn tandem bike from the 1970 for sale.  it was charming, and we wanted to take it home with us, but it was crazy expensive and it needed a lot of work.  plus, there was absolutely no way that it would have fit into my tiny little car.

a few days later, i received an email from a reader named darlene, who happens to be a neighbor of ryan's aunt and uncle.  she said that she had a tandem bike that she wanted to sell.  she saw the post on the blog and was wondering if we would be interested in purchasing her bike!  it's funny how things work out sometimes.

darlene sent us a picture of the bike, and after emailing back and forth a few times, we decided to buy it!  the only problem was that darlene and her husband ken live 3 1/2 hours away.  so, we decided to make a little road trip out of it.  on saturday, we made the 7 hour round trip out to the middle of nowhere pennsylvania to pick up the bike, armed with a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies.  (you know, my mother taught me to never go to someone's house empty handed.)

darlene and her husband ken were so sweet.  they welcomed us with open arms and treated us like family.  darlene made us lunch, complete with homemade syrian bread.  we sat on their gorgeous screened-in porch and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the middle of nowhere pennsylvaia.

after figuring out how to make the bike fit in the back of our suv, we headed out and made the trip home.  (that husband of mine sure is skilled with bungee cords!)

the bike is in great shape!  it is a red kent tandem 5-speed bike, and it is about 22 years old.  it may not be the vintage schwinn twinn bike that we originally had in mind, but it's cute and it has tons of character.  when we got home, ryan put a little elbow grease into it and gave it a little tlc.  (i can't believe how nice it shines now!)  it did need a little work since the back drum break was jammed, but ryan was able to fix that in no time.

since the weather was so beautiful on sunday, we took our new bike out for a spin on a local bike trail.

neither one of us had ever been on a tandem bike before, but we got the hang of it right away.  (we really do make a great team!)  it rides great, and it is a lot of fun.  we have already taken it out for several rides.  it's amazing how many heads turn when we ride it!  you don't see many tandem bikes in our area i guess.  we absolutely love our new bike!  we're going to have a ton of great adventures together on this bike, i can tell.

here is a little video that we made of our bike ride on sunday . . .

{music: "lucky" - chord overstreet and dianna agron}

love, laurie