Sometimes all it takes to get a date is the right profile picture. Carol posted a brain scan as her profile picture on Facebook after she found out she had a degenerative eye disease and was rapidly losing her sight. But tragedy took a surprising turn when a passing acquaintance from a bike group saw the picture. Jeff reached out and invited her to go on a bicycle built for two. It turned out their first date was on a Da Vinci tandem. Soon after Carol quit her job and they became bike packers. They kicked things off with the Ride the Rockies and Tour Divide tours and were hooked. Carol had always been quite the athlete and the tandem gave a way to continue big hard adventures sight or no sight. With Jeff piloting they have been on adventures throughout the U.S. as well as Spain, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden is up next. They have a full-suspension Da Vinci Symbiosis with S&S couplers that they shove into two duffle bags when they go to a new destination. Jeff reassembles the bike right in the airport and out they roll with one change of clothes and enough gear to take on about whatever the world can throw at them. As Jeff says, “we don’t know what to do with a car anymore. We aren’t against indoor lodging but we are ready for anything.” One of the best things for them about the Da Vinci’s independent drive is less communication. I mean when you’re on a tandem together for 6 weeks with one change of clothes, less can be more. Or as Carol said “without the independent drive I don’t even know if we’d tolerate each other!” According to them they can corner better and you can scratch an itch without having to tell the other person because as Carol puts it, “we have enough controversy out there, we don’t need more.” Tandems literally bring two people together, but with Jeff and Carol it was so much more