Riding a bike: How else can you feel hip, environmentally righteous and physically fit while also making your butt numb and wearing scandalous Lycra and a Captain Dorko helmet?

If you ride a conventional bicycle, whether street, mountain or hybrid (my hybrid gets fantastic gas mileage and is nearly silent!), you will quickly find yourself wondering about the … kinkier cycling options.

Recumbent bikes, for example. Looks like a lot less fertility-threatening pressure on the personal regions -- and yet, how Lance Armstrong can you feel in the same position you assume to get your teeth cleaned?

And then there are the parents pulling the little pup-tent trailers behind their bikes, hauling toddlers wearing oversized sunglasses that make them look like Elton John. I wouldn't be surprised to see a tyke sipping a latte and texting back there while Mommy pumps away the last of the baby weight -- by towing the baby weight.

But none of these has the cachet of the tandem. A bicycle built for two comes with an inescapable air of romance; it's an ungainly contraption that seems to endow its riders with a serene harmony, even if that's only because it's very hard to have an argument on a tandem bike.

So there we are at the bike rental, my steady and I, and he suggests a tandem. After briefly envisioning the two of us falling over in unison in a crowded park, I throw caution to the wind and agree.

We put down our deposit and take our ticket to the bike barn, where a guy fetches us a genuine bicycle built for two. He eyeballs our relative stature and leg lengths, and I watch as he unlocks the rear seat and pushes it down, down, down.

Ah. So I'll be sitting in the back then.

I'm 5-foot-2. I have spent my whole life standing on boxes, bending microphones downward and dragging car seats forward to where my feet can reach the pedals and the air bag can propel me into the trunk.

So I know when a seat is being adjusted for me. And I couldn't help being startled that Bike Dude didn't even ask who wanted to be in front. He just went about preparing the rear seat for me.

According to Wikipedia, the front person on a tandem is called the captain, pilot or steersman and does all the steering and braking. The back person tries not to fall off and is called the load.

No, sorry, that's wrong. The back person is called the stoker or navigator, though I prefer rear admiral.

As a practical matter, I was not all gung-ho to be the one in charge. The last thing I need is more responsibility, and I always enjoyed the idea of lounging in a boat with a parasol while some strapping fellow rowed us to a nice picnic spot.

But as I pointed out to the captain when we wobbled off on our ride, I couldn't actually see where we were going -- which he would have been able to do if he'd been in the back.

I had a lot of time back there to wonder. Is this an echo of the motorcycle thing where no self-respecting man sits behind a woman and lets her drive the bike? All the pictures I've seen of couples on tandems show the woman behind -- except a cartoon I found where the woman is in front and looks terrified.

You can't both be the captain. It's like ballroom dancing: Somebody has to lead, and traditionally it's the man, though when I took dancing classes I found myself leading now and then just because it's best if the leader is the person who can count to four.

To be fair to the captain, he offered to stop and switch places. But I didn't want to spend our precious rental time jacking seats up and down.

I did some research when I got home, and there are reasons for making the woman the rear admiral. All Bike Dude would have had to say was, "It works best for the shorter/lighter person to be in back," and I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Maybe there's a lesson there about achieving serene harmony only by giving up the need to steer. Still, there's something to be said for seeing the potholes coming.