The person on the back that sits around doing nothing - The Stoker

If you don’t ride a tandem, you may not know what a Stoker is. It’s simple, it’s the rider at the back of the tandem. The rider at the front is the pilot (or Captain). Riding at the rear, the Stoker is an essential contributor to the tandem’s motion rather than a passenger with their feet up at the back.

Ideally the stoker needs strength and endurance and an awareness of when extra power is quickly needed to help get over a hill and be able to provide that power. The stoker needs to know how to lean into a turn and to move smoothly on the back so as not to unbalance the tandem. Other roles can be negotiated; such as signalling, passing food forward, telling the pilot what to do and so on.

We ride a tandem because Kate had a serious accident whilst cycling back in 2013 which resulted in traumatic brain injury. Not a fun time. It was unclear for the first couple of weeks whether she would survive. It occurred to me that we would both want to continue cycling so when I knew she would be coming home 4 or 5 months later, I bought a tandem, balanced her on the back and off we went! She had no choice - at the time I had to do most things for her so she just did what I said.

One consequence of the accident was that she only knew she had a cycling accident because we told her, you know those films when someone is living a lie following an accident and those around her know that it wasn’t really a bike accident? It wasn’t one of them. By the way, she was convinced she was 21 years old. Sadly, she also seemed to think we had 3 children and even more sadly, we have 4.

I won’t describe all of the effects the accident had on Kate, but the most challenging were, visual impairments (she now has a white stick and a guide dog - but luckily some useful vision); difficulties with memory, balance and difficulty with coming to terms with the impact of the accident (also difficulty with memory and balance).

But Kate also had, and still does; perseverance, stamina, power and competitiveness.

The greatest benefit of cycling to Kate is probably the same for all of us - our mental health. The tandem has enabled her to continue with her love of cycling and me of course.

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