I found out today I’m doing a trials demo at Australia Zoo (home of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter) on the 15th. From what I’ve heard it will involve me doing solo trials riding and talking about the sport and what I’m doing.
I’m actually pretty nervous as I’ve always been riding with other people and had an announcer to help out, but it will definately be lots of fun.
I’ll be riding on my own trials obstacles so I’ll build a few more before the weekend. There’s also a giant model of a croc that Wayne (the person who kindly got me this gig) suggested I hop around on.
I’ve got sandwich boards, gapping bars, hopping posts, and low rails to play around with (see unicycle.2ya.com’s obstacle building section for photos).
Any tips for sequences of things or particular tricks to do? Does anyone here have any wisdom to share for doing this sort of solo trials gig?
Well done, but I suggest you make sure Steve isn’t there. He’ll probably hand his baby over to you while your hopping on the big crocodile and let about 50 loose around the base of it to make things more exciting for his visitors
make the demo pretty short, knowing how kids in a zoo are…
when describing trials and unicycling, remember that you are explaining it to morons.
have a good variety, people might not realize that hopping on a sandwich board is any different from a gapping bar or gapping post. to them hopping is all the same.
make yourself out to be worse than you really are in your speech and dont tell people about people that are better. ie. dont say that some people can sidehop 97cm but i can only hop x. make them think that what you are doing is a lot harder than it really is. make them hope for a wipe out and then surprise them when you clean it. hooray.
You could slip some kid $10 and get him to look as though he is about to do something silly like getting eaten… then at the last possible second it’s Andrew Carter on a unicycle to the rescue!!!
You know that scene in the James Bond film where he escapes off the island by jumping from croc to croc? Now that would be an impressive trials routine…
Why do you all seem to like Steve Irwin guys? Most Australians seem to hate him… or have you not seen what he did with his baby?
That’s his baby in his arms, and at one moment he put his child on the ground and started to make it dance in front of the crocodile. Yeah he’s real smart ey?
Good stuff Andrew, that sounds awesome, but pretty scary! Doing it all by yourself infront of everyone, but im sure you’ll be fine. Will anybody be filiming it? if not you have to get it on video and show us all:D
You should teach Steve Irwin to unicycle, then you’ll see him feeding crocs on a unicycle on international tv and you can say, i taught him that…ok now im just getting side tracked. but well done and try get it on tape.
Will you meet the man himself? You must take pics if so!!! Must!