Little tandem time

So this week has seen me to Tranquility 3 times. Once on the CX bike, once on the SS, and this evening on the tandem.
Woah. Great fun of Stumpy and Big Al!
First I will preface this by say that I like to ride to Tranquility from Waterloo. its about 12 miles each way and only 5 of those miles are in heavy traffic on Fort st. Kind of dicey.
But anyway, we rolled into tranq and proceeded to cruise about. It is not often that we have had the Opportunity to ride the tandem on singletrack so this was a pretty exciting experience. Tranq is a pretty tight course with some pretty sharp switchbacks. Some things I gleaned

• Gear down prior to making the sharp turns (unless you want to here your stoker screech "GGEEE-EEAAHHH" while turning the cranks at about 12 RPM's)
  
• trackstanding a tandem is possible, but you both look really dumb doing it.
• when navigating the sweeping corners the captain steers and the Stoker initiates the leans, its pretty had for the stoker to over lean unless to do not have enough momentum (then you just fall over).
• Which brings me to my next point, since you can't really lean when your are in uphill turns you have to work the very outside edges of the trail with your front tire. This is why I run the biggest nastiest DH tire on the front (2.6 Maxxis Ardent.....they do not make this size anymore:-(
• Communication is of paramount importance.

I am finally getting the faulty compression dampener replaced on my newer reba. The lockout has never really worked, and shutting down the flood gate to compensate just resulted in a sucking sound (I looked at the fork and was like, "you are doing it wrong")
Also have some new surprises that should arrive next week.