This Bluffton bicycle built for two has two wheels but many,many more stories

A Bluffton riddle: Can you steal a banana yellow bicycle built for two and get away with it?

Uh, no.

It happened this week when Jay Doty left the carefully restored 1973 Schwinn Deluxe Twinn Tandem bike beside his house in the Bluffton Park neighborhood.

It was gone when he got back from a spin on his other vintage bicycle, a Swing Bike — the ones with independent steering on front and rear wheels that were coveted by helmet-less kids in the 1970s because, as the ad said, “You can invent wacky maneuvers which leave everyone else bug-eyed in amazement!”

Doty put the word out on social media Wednesday morning that his yellow tandem bike was missing.

By that afternoon, someone said they’d seen a couple of guys riding it on Simmonsville Road near the Hidden Lakes neighborhood. He said they looked happy.

On Thursday, Doty posted it on Facebook.

That night, he sent me a note:

“I got it back today. It was spotted in a yard on Simmonsville Road. The guy said it was in his yard Wednesday morning so he stood it up along the road figuring someone would come along and claim it. He thought it was a really nice bike and someone would be looking for it.”

Doty had not reported it to the police because he thought maybe neighbors were borrowing it. But Bluffton Police went with his wife when they picked up the bike.

The distinctive bike gets ridden all over town by people of all ages.

“All the time, people ask to ride on it,” Doty said. “And when you get on a tandem bike, the first thing that’s going to happen is that you’re going to smile. It’s fun stuff.”

The bike is beginning to have as many lives as a cat.

Its story for us begins in a garage in Port Royal Plantation on Hilton Head Island. Eric Ruhlin was starting a complete remodel of the home and the only thing in it was this worn out bike. The home owner said he could have it, and when he got it home, his 12-year-old son Will went nuts over it.

“It was a big hit for kids all over Wexford,” said his mother, Kelly Ruhlin, a Realtor who is busy this week trying to sell the house in Wexford once owned by Michael Jordan.

Kids attached a trailer to it and four or five of them would cruise around on it — with no brakes.

The bike was featured at the 2013 Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival and Concours d’Elegance, but not before it was restored by Frank Craft, who specializes in restoring classic cars in the Tillman community of Jasper County.

When Will Ruhlin got into a motorized bike, the tandem bike was once again spending all its time in a garage.

Kelly Ruhlin said she sold it to Doty because he loves bikes, and he said that if her boys ever wanted it back, they could have it.

“I’m not attached to material stuff at all,” Doty said. “If it was a beach bike that disappeared, I wouldn’t care. But this one is a little closer to the heart — and to other people’s hearts too.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2017 at 1:04 PM with the headline "This Bluffton bicycle built for two has two wheels but many,many more stories."