Thursday, June 04, 2009

A Loathsome Device (#4)

Dear Unicycle,
I am your master. Fear me.
Confrontationally yours,
Bill

DQ reader Sam sent in an e-mail suggesting a unicycle chart, which I thought was both entirely silly and a great idea at the same time.

Before the dates on this chart, there were about two months of desultory practice attempts, but most of the time was spent trying to help Eli 7.10. I realized, though, that I wasn't getting much work in, and I wasn't progressing, and I was tired of being shitty (hence the "Loathsome Device" series of posts about two weeks ago.

Once I start practicing along a fence every day, though, and lengthened my practice sessions to over an hour, I started getting better. Fast. And even though I'm tired and usually sore at the end of the day, it's good, because I can feel the difference. I'm doing most of my balance adjustments automatically now, and I can recover from quite a few situations that would have crashed me out only a few weeks ago.

Turning is still dicey, but I'm improving. And I still can't do a mount from a standstill--I need to be holding on to a fence or something. But I'm getting there.

The two strangest moments during practice:
1. An enormous woman (300+ pounds) who walked up one day and spent five minutes telling me that "the unicycle was just like a bicycle, only with one wheel." All I could think was that if the unicycle was covered in mustard, she'd eat it.
2. The one thing I never expected to see while I was practicing the unicycle was--another guy on a unicycle. But someone rode up one day (I practice at the high school after hours) and said he'd seen me practicing. Very nice guy, and a much better rider than me.

Okay, here's the chart. Like I said--things have changed in the last week or so.

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