I’m Tracey, he’s Marc. In our 30+ years together we seem to have this penchant for going ‘two-up’.   We started out paddling a double kayak in various canoe marathons in our 20s, and we bought our first tandem bike a bit over 10 years ago.  One tandem led to another (plus a tag-along/trail-a-bike) and then a triple. We’ve covered a bit of distance here and there with our three girls, as well as just the two of us.

The history of our family tandem adventures is on this old blog (which is slowly falling apart with broken links.)   And we actually did one other tandem (just him and me) unsupported tour way back – a round trip from Sydney through the Hunter Valley.

These days it’s just the two of us riding, with our three offspring now young adults and well and truly flown the nest.  We’ve now chalked up a handful of tours (check the sidebar) in between never-ending house renovations which have severely cramped our style over the past several years – and will continue to do so for the next many more.
(There is some debate between us as to a realistic forecast on just how many.)

I threw this WordPress site together in September ’16, just a few days before we set out on our first big tour in several years.  Marc had been talking for some time about going to the States to buy a new tandem and then riding down the west coast.  I wondered why we weren’t touring in our own country. And so, suddenly, there we were riding from home to Sydney as a ‘practice run’.

On that trip, I experimented with blogging on the go from my Samsung Galaxy S2. My patience wore a bit thin, but it served, at the time, to keep family and friends up to keep tabs on us.
At first, I was trying to write the whole blog post at the end of the day. That proved too frustrating on a phone, and I opted instead for several updates (usually with a photo or two) during rest stops.   When we returned home I did a major edit and split each day into two – a factual ‘map and notes’ post as a resource for others, and a more diarised blog of each day’s experiences.

In September ’17 we picked up our new Co-motion Tandem from the factory in Eugene, Oregon, and then rode out to the coast and down to San Francisco – approximately 1200km all up.   Here’s the link to that tour.

I soon discovered that at the end of each day I didn’t have that much energy left to blog in too much detail, so I resorted mostly to uploading photos for the sake of friends following from home.  I’ve tried to get back to edit and include maps, but probably haven’t done that great a job of it.

In October 2018 we rode Sydney to Melbourne. (with, thankfully a phone upgrade!) … In 2019 we only managed a three-day local loop (in honour of our 30th wedding anniversary), but plans are now underway to head to Europe in September next year. Stay tuned!

Edit:  Well, we all know what happened in 2020. In the January we had actually booked flights for August/September, and I’d meticulously planned our approximately 1200k route from Prague, south to the Adriatic, and flying out of Venice.  I had booked accommodation – with all bar one having free cancellation.

Luckily we only ended up losing $100 on that one accommodation booking. We got flights/points refunded, and I was able to cancel all the accommodation.

We only managed the one local tour in 2020.  I’ve had a Northern NSW/Qld tour plotted out for a while now, but border closures messed with that. At one point there in 2021 (I think!) we were all confined to our local LGA, and we even toyed with making a tour out of that.  Then we started talking about Indipac… and… well, here we are now in 2022, about to set off and attempt The Crazy.