The worst ride sagas got me thinkin' down....so I instead thought about some of the best memories. Recent mention of Hurtu made me recollect this beat old tandem Conrad LeMaire had. Some of you may know Conrad's brother Paul, a builder from Newport, RI. (He built my main rider 20 years ago.) Conrad was a mechanic that guided me in my neophyte years, lauding the merits of TA handlebar bags and glorying names like Singer and Herse, and the carrying capabilities of the Moulton.
Well, we decided to do a weekend tour on the Hurtu. We loaded it with sleeping bags, tent, wine, cheese, and french bread. Attired with berets and I think knickers for me, we set off to American Legion state forest. So there was no front derailleur....did we care? We stopped for the manual change over on hills. It was a great weekend and I remember waking up to fined Conrad "mummified" atop a picnic table.
Searching the net for Hurtu, I discovered an interesting site. This link is for the Yahoo english tranlation page:
http://66.218.71.231/
Mark Hoffman,
New Britain, CT