Club uses tandem bikes so blind can ride

Associated Press

LOVELAND, Ohio

Most members of the Tukandu Cycling Club who pedal bicycles built for two along the Little Miami Scenic Trail are drawn by something other than the pretty views.

“I’m totally blind,” said Robert Rogers, 74, of Covedale, president of the club. “The challenge of riding — to me, that’s the thing of it.”

Sighted members, called captains, steer and brake the tandem bikes. Blind members, called stokers, ride on rear seats and help pedal.

“It’s a partnership,” Rogers said. “If you don’t pedal, it makes it hard for the other person.”

His wife, Joyce Rogers, 68, a member who also is blind, coined the name Tukandu. It connotes “two can do,” something that one might not be able to do on his or her own.

The friendships forged between sighted captains and blind stokers is one of the best things about the club’s Saturday outings, which run 9 a.m. to noon about every three weeks from April to October, Robert Rogers said.

“We enjoy each other’s company,” he said.

Rides always begin and end at Nisbet Park in Loveland in southwest Ohio, but the Tukandu Cycling Club brings together blind and sighted people from throughout the region. It has members in North Bend on the West Side, Covington in Kentucky and Pierce Township in Clermont County.

The club has a dozen tandem bikes, some of which have 32 speeds and cost about $2,000. The cost of the first four bikes was covered by the Kroger Co., where Rogers worked 42 years as a computer programmer and systems analyst. Other bikes have been purchased by the club or donated. Members are always on the lookout to replace worn-out models.

The bikes are garaged in Loveland, but it can be a logistical problem to arrange transportation to the park for some club members who are blind.

“My task is to try to find stokers and captains who live close together so they don’t have to drive long distances,” Rogers said. “Our biggest challenge is getting enough sighted people. There are a number of visually impaired people I cannot take care of adequately. I can’t get enough captains to pick these people up.

“We’d like to have more members,” Rogers said. “We’d like to have a balance of sighted and blind people.”

While the club has about 40 members and enough bikes for 24 people, the typical outing consists of 10 to 12 riders. Captains must be at least 16, but the youngest current member is in his 20s.

“The first rule of our club is to have fun,” said Jim Cable, 50, of Pierce Township, a sighted member who co-founded Tukandu in 1999.

“The initial idea for this came from Terry Davis, who is a stoker,” said Cable, a senior applications developer at Fifth Third Processing Solutions. “Terry told me he knew where he could lay his hands on four tandem bicycles, and asked (whether) I could get three other folks interested in captaining.”

They ended up with 16 people riding eight tandem bikes, four of which were rented for the day, Cable said.

“It was supposed to be a one-time event, but everybody had so much fun that we decided to keep doing it,” Cable said.

The first few years, they rode on Shaker Trace Trail at Miami Whitewater Forest near Harrison. But the 7.8-mile oval got to be boring, Rogers said. So the club switched to the Little Miami Scenic Trail, a paved path that used to be a railroad along the Little Miami River.

“I encourage the captains and stokers to talk to each other,” Cable said. “There is not much noise as far as traffic, and the captains as they are riding along can describe the area — especially if we see deer, cardinals, squirrels.”

Club members don’t have to ride in a group, Cable said. They can cover whatever distance at whatever speed a captain and stoker agree upon.

“It’s not a race,” Cable said.

However, Rogers prefers riding about 18 miles an hour.

“What’s the point of going slow?” Rogers said. “I like to get out and go.”

Rogers said he likes to ride from Loveland to Morrow in Warren County, where he and his captain can stop for ice cream at a shop along the trail before heading back to complete a 26-mile loop.

Some club members might bike just a few miles, but it’s important for the public to realize that “blind people do things,” Rogers said. “They’re not just lumps who sit around. We’re intelligent people. Many of us are professionals. The only difference is we don’t have vision.”