VENTURA : Tandem Bike Trek Provides Duel Goals

Ventura teacher Jim Sather remembers clearly what a bicycle salesman told him when he bought a tandem bicycle for a 1,700-mile trek with his sweetheart.

“This,” the salesman said, “will make or break your relationship.”

Indeed, if Sather and his fiancee, Diane Shaw, had been trying to devise a survival test for their relationship, their bicycle trip from northwest Washington would have fit the bill.

Sather and Shaw, who stopped in Ventura on Thursday on their way to the Mexican border, said they embarked on the trip for fun rather than to test their compatibility.

But the couple, who are both Ventura teachers, said their grueling ride that began June 28 has had an unforeseen benefit for their relationship.

They are arguing less over trifles, said Shaw, a first- and second-grade teacher at Poinsettia School.

“We don’t worry about day-to-day things,” she said.

“You get back down to basics,” agreed Sather, who teaches math at Anacapa Middle School, “food, water, shelter.”

The couple, who will be married Aug. 8, took their tandem by train and ferry to a port north of Seattle where they began their ride.

They have traveled 1,500 miles so far, riding up to 83 miles in one day, and plan to leave today on the last 200-mile stretch to the border.

Except for other cyclists the couple have met in campgrounds along the way, the two have spent all of their waking and sleeping hours only with each other.

Even on the tandem, they have conversations.

Although they have heard of other tandem-riding couples who have fought over who would sit in front and how fast to go, Shaw said these issues never presented a problem.

She was happy to let Sather, who had made this same ride once before on a single-seat bicycle, take the front seat. And Sather was reasonable about slowing the pace when Shaw asked, she said.

Although this was Shaw’s first long bicycle ride, she said she is already planning their next trip across the country to the East Coast.

Whether they make another long ride or not, Shaw has preserved memories of this ride for future generations in a carefully kept diary.

The diary begins: “Dear kids:”