Re: [CR]Oddball tandem

(Example: Framebuilders:Bernard Carré)

From: "Martin Appel" <martin@camelot.de>
Subject: Re: [CR]Oddball tandem
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 10:41:32 +0100
In-Reply-To: <3c.2ab245d8.2b5b9956@aol.com>


Hi Larry,
>I looked at that and am dubious.
>Not only does the seller have a low rating,but his name is
>SNAT 11,

? I'm not sure i understand what that means?
>and there are some questionable words in the description

really nothing suspicious about these words - the writer has a few typos in there and obviously a broken shift key, so that might have confused you (or babelfish? :-)
>Wird

is merely an auxiliary verb beeing used for future tense ("wird fahren"= will ride", or passive ("wurde gefahren" = "has been ridden")
>Rucken an rucken fahren

...means "riding back to back"
>Janus

that, as someone else already mentioned, reflects to the two-faced roman god janus. The name was also used for an oddball microcar from Zuendapp (they also built bicycles, iirc, so we're still on topic here...) in the fifties, which also was almost symmerical and had the passengers sitting back to back. (picture on http://www.traumautos.ch/flops.htm second from top) so "Janus" is a common word to describe bach-to-back-vehicles of all kind. this setup is not uncommon with recumbent tandems by the way, and some of these are also called "janus"

http://www.ostrad.de/ostrad/janus.html http://www.flevobike.nl/images/tandemkl.jpg

Martin Appel
Munich, Germany