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  In Tandem
"What trip?" Larry
Kassman '69 joked. "Is Jan telling people we took a trip? She just woke
up one morning and said, `Larry, I had this dream about bicycling across the
country.'"
But Dean of Students Janice Kassman, Larry Kassman's wife and his summer-long
companion on a bicycle built for two, has the pictures to prove that this was
no dream. One shows a huge, pink, plaster cow somewhere in the Midwest, with
the Kassmans' tandem parked next to it in an artful display of scale. There's a
picture of pig races in Bear Creek, Mont. And there are a lot of signs:
"Missouri River," "Banner, Mont. (Pop. 40)," "Welcome to Canada, The World Next
Door."
There are lots of memories, too.
The Kassmans set out on their cross-country ride on May 31 in Portland, Ore.,
and pulled in to Portland, Maine, on July 28--that's 3,100 miles in 58 days.
Larry Kassman, who is director of emergency services at Mid-Maine Medical
Center in Waterville, says the 60-80 mile per day pace was normal, even a
little slow, for a long bike trip. "We weren't in a race," he said. "We wanted
to see things, meet people." They stopped for visits with friends, saw Mount
Rushmore and Niagara Falls and took a few rain days off. Though they hauled
some camping gear along, they mostly stayed in motels along the way.
Janice Kassman says the tandem bike was a conversation piece. "We looked so
unusual," she told Echo sports editor Ryan Mayhugh '97, "and people were
fascinated."
"Two people bike at different paces," Larry Kassman said, explaining the
decision to ride a tandem. "That can be frustrating for both; one's always
waiting, one's always rushing and riding faster than they want to. A tandem
averages things out. We could stay together and talk the whole way."
Was there too much togetherness?
"We get along best when we're together," Larry Kassman said with a laugh. "I've
seen some relationships where that's not the case. There were no fights. We
might disagree on how many miles we wanted to cover, but that was about it. We
like being together." Their marriage throve through 100-degree heat,
discouraging head winds, serious uphills (like, the Rockies), one broken chain
and three worn-out tires.
Larry says he gives Janice lots of credit for putting up with riding shotgun
day after day. Like regular bikes, tandems are adjusted specifically for those
who will ride them; Larry is taller, he had to ride in front. He steered, he
shifted, he was the one with the straight-ahead view.
In biking terminology, he was the "captain," she the "stoker." Janice didn't
like the semantics: she called herself "the admiral."
"Jan is used to being in charge," Larry said. "This was hard for her."
She compensated by making extensive use of her mirror. "The way she got
involved in the decision making was to tell me about every car and truck coming
up behind us," Larry said. "These numbered in the hundreds of thousands." When
he began to ignore Janice's "truck coming" warnings, he says, she began to say,
"Big truck coming." And when that stopped arousing his interest, she
added another "big," as in "Big big truck coming." Eventually he
convinced her to worry about wide loads only. "And every time one came along
she was sure we were going to die," he added.
This was Larry Kassman's second cross-country odyssey--he rode solo along a
more southerly route in 1982. Janice Kassman says she would consider making the
journey again, too, along a new route. But for now the pair are satisfied to
savor their experience.
"My view is, you enjoy a trip three ways," Larry said. "First you plan it. That
takes a year or more--as this one did--and that's enjoyable. Then you do the
trip; and that's enjoyable. Finally you think about the trip you took, you
enjoy those memories for a while. If you immediately start planning another
trip you overlap those things, you rob yourself of part of the enjoyment."
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