Saturday, December 20

Overambitious

After lazing out for most of the holidays so far, I wanted to test out my unicycling progress with an ambitious target: Cycling to school and back. Luckily there was hardly any traffic on Victoria Street, and I could enjoy a long, uninterrupted straight stretch of road.

The freemounts in between worked out quite well, not really instantly, as I got into the bad habit of looking at the pedal when mounting. Only as long as I didn't inhibit this habit :) I was surprised that the terrain hardly caused me trouble, even the inclines and declines went smoothly. Passing others still made me nervous, and sometimes I unmounted to pass.

I tried one of the side roads that lead to St Georges Road, the steep incline made mounting really tricky. The little reserve has a lonely bench that invited me to a break. I didn't check the time required to get there, but certainly felt good about the easy ride.

I still don't know whether I found a good position on the seat, it felt sometimes like only the right sitbone connected to it. The ride tired me a lot, although the inclines felt easy. Just before getting back on the road, in sight of a Japanese family on the playground, I wiped out big time. I went to fast, and jumped off the uni. My tired legs didn't come up to the speed, so I chose to roll over my shoulder towards the lawn. Both knees and my left foot got scratched on the concrete, looks quite bloody.

A short break later, thinking about the fact that I need to strengthen my cardio-vascular system a bit, I continued the way home. I needed to take the pavement this time, and the little stone wall of the park wiped me out again, this time hitting my left calf in the process.

All in all, an interesting mix of end-gaining, inhibition, and some successful directing in between.

Saturday, December 13

Some video