The company I work for got together this year in Las Vegas for the Networld
- Interop trade show (computer geeks like me know what this is).
I had seriously considered bringing along a uni but decided I probably
wouldn’t have time to ride it enough to make it worth the trouble. Well,
once in Las Vegas I regretted the decision.
At the tradeshow in the convention center one of my co-workers mentioned
that he’d seen a guy at one of the booths riding “a big ole eight footer”.
I had to go check it out for myself and sure enough there was a guy with a
6" custom giraffe.
The guy, whose name is Scott Meltzer, got the uni out and started showing it
to me. I asked if I could try it and he let me. I succesfully mounted it
twice but couldn’t ride it very well on the carpeted tradeshow floor.
The giraffe was interesting in that the seat tube could disconnect from the
rest of the frame just above the cranks. Also the wheel was a 16" (as
opposed to the more common 20"). When I asked Scott about that he said he
had it custom made by Tommi Miller so as to be easy to travel with.
So, despite the fact that all my unicycles were safely resting at home I
still got a chance to ride. So although I’ve never riden atop a tandem van
De Graaf accelerator I can say that I have now performed at one of the
worlds largest (ok, well a big one anyway) tradeshows.
Funny thing is that in my haste to try out Scott’s uni I never asked him to
demonstrate so I didn’t actually see him perform.
-mg