Just wondering on who is going to Bjc would nice to go out on a ride with people or ill just end up doing handstands and juggling most of the time
Trev
when/where is it?
I’m going, along with a few other people from nottingham uni. Look for the flag, if we can be organised enough. 
I’m only taking my 20" trials so I won’t be doing any long rides.
John
i’ll be there. with trials unicycle.
Myself and a few others are planning to go on the Saturday as it’s only a few miles from us.
Gary
i wont be able to make it.
damn
Uni at the BJC
I’m pleased to see the BJC being mentioned - as a fellow unicyclist and one of the BJC organising team, I just wanted to let everyone know that one-wheelers will be very well catered for this year.
We have a unicycle hockey tournament taking place in Derby Market Place on the Saturday morning (with the final game played in the afternoon at the start of the ‘Juggling Olympics’) as well as a uni-trials area both on site (all weekend) and in the Market Place (on the Saturday).
So get your teams sorted out for the uni-hockey and get over here for the BJC!
The BJC site offers plenty of outdoor riding space and is based around an agricultural college, so is (as you’d imagine) ideally placed for some good off road riding. There is a mention of unicycle orienteering made on the BJC 2004 website http://www.bjc2004.co.uk/unicycle.htm - how many of you folks attending the BJC would be interested in this?
Quite a few of the BJC team have recently taken possesion of new unicycles and so some of us went out for a ride around the convention site (and surrounding area) on Saturday.
The weather was a little wet and windy (to say the least) so our 7 mile ride was a bit of a challenge. I’m glad to say my new KH 24" muni perfomed very well (more that can be said for me - apart from the 'nad based discomfort, going from a 20" Pashley on a nice smooth surface to ‘The Beast’ off-road proved a challenge). But top riding prize for the day has to go to James for his stream hopping skills.
We’re all looking forward to the BJC weekend - the site location should give a real ‘festival’ feeling to the event and hopefully make it something rather special.
See you there,
Gary
Re: Uni at the BJC
What ball wil you be using? Mylec pink or flat tennis? Whats the pitch floor surface? how high are the barriers round it? What size goals are you using? how big is the pitch… tell us more.
Need to know more to decide if its worth the 9 hour drive and 50 quid ticket.
Sarah
Re: Re: Uni at the BJC
Hmm, Derby isn’t exactly the uni-hockey capital of the world and so details such as ball type and goal size were being left to Roger and the other experts coming over from uni.com (who’ve kindly ‘volunteered’ to sort the hockey out for us) - perhaps they’ll read this post and be able to advise? I didn’t realise that balls would be a contentious issue (insert own joke here).
I’m actually the bloke organising the events on the Saturday, so I can tell you all the boring details relating to that :-
- The barriers are plastic, about 1 metre high and will be ‘protected’ to stop balls (of whatever type) smacking into the general public. This has been a compromise between safety, practicality and the bloke from the council finally allowing us to have them (and he’s still got to get back to me again grumble, grumble).
- The size of the pitch is around 20 metres by 15 metres (approx. 66 feet by 50 feet in old money). The hockey pitch magically becomes the arena for the Juggling Olympics after the final game has finished, so it has to be a fair size.
- The surface is a good, flat, paved surface. See this link http://www.derbyphotos.co.uk/areas_city/marketplace.htm for photos of the Market Place - the one near the bottom titled “Assembly Rooms with bar underneath” shows the approximate bit of the Market Place where we’ll be setting up the pitch. By the way, please AVOID this particular bar during the event - I went in to ask if they’d sponsor us or if they’d do any specials on food or booze for you lot and their response was “not interested, they’ll come in anyway” (little do they know…).
Think that answers all of your questions. As to whether or not it’s worth driving 9 hours to Derby… well, normally I’d be hard pushed to convince you, but then you won’t be coming to see the glittering lights of Derby, but to enjoy the BJC. There’s a lot of effort and hard work being put in to make the BJC a rather good 'un, so I would definitely say it’s worth the money. Even us organisers have paid up (and we’re all dead tight).
By the way Sarah, I read from your location details that you’re based in Exeter, which is only about 3 hours away from here at worst, not 9… or will you be riding here on your coker?
Anyway, we’ll be very pleased to see everyone who is able to make it and I can guarantee you will be very warmly welcomed by us all.
Gary
Re: British Juggling Convention
Gary.Kelsall wrote:
> By the way Sarah, I read from your location details that you’re based
> in Exeter, which is only about 3 hours away from here at worst, not
> 9… or will you be riding here on your coker?
3 hours! Are you laying on a helicopter?
Mapquest reckons it’s a distance of about 200 miles. Anyone who can
drive 200 miles in 3 hours is probably not driving entirely legally. 4
hours may be realistic, excluding stops.
(I was a little surprised looking at the map, BTW. I thought Derby was
further North than that).
> Anyway, we’ll be very pleased to see everyone who is able to make it
> and I can guarantee you will be very warmly welcomed by us all.
Good luck with it. This will be the first BJC that I’ve missed in 10
years. Our 2-year-old might enjoy it, but we also expect to have a 2-3
week old baby who won’t be up to April camping in the chilly North of
England.
–
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
Why I like OE6 - http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/misc/oe6.html
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine
shame i’d love to come but
for a start i can’t drive and every penny i have it saving up for my 29" er oh well another year
Re: Re: British Juggling Convention
Autoroute reckons just over 200 miles and just over 3 hours drive. I usually find that it takes less time than Autoroute’s estimate in my van and I don’t speed.
Anyway it’s only 12 miles from me 
so I’ll be there on Saturday.
Cheers, Gary
Re: Re: Re: Uni at the BJC
I was thinking about round trip time (based on trips alrady done to kidderminster and lichfield from here) and day tickets for two. Given we are going even further for the BUC the following weekend I think it unlikley we will make BJC this year. limited budget … so many events to chose from.
Sarah
Sorry that some of you can’t make it, it would be nice to put faces to names/avatars.
After the Derby juggling club session last night, there was much discussion in the pub about the uni related activities that we’re sorting out for the BJC - mainly about off-road unicycle orienteering (muni-enteering for short?) and trials equipment.
These raised two areas of concern:-
-
Would enough folks be interested in taking part in a muni-enteering event to warrant setting one up?
-
What level of trials riders should we be aiming at? Do we need dozens of huge cable drums, half inch rails and lakes of burning oil to jump over, or something not quite so extreme? (This will help us decide what would be a good ‘kit of parts’ to acquire to allow the trials area to be built/developed over the weekend).
Any advice?
Cheers,
Gary
Uni orienteering has been popular in the past at other BUcs. make it accesable to children tho and encourage small groups to team up and ride together. That way the serious can do it fast, the not so serious can do it as a social tresure hunt. If you can get proper orienteering punch clips ( or ink stamps or similar), and give peple cards to punch it stops the most obvious cheating ( that where a group split up to collect check points then re-group to claim they did it really fast) .
Trials area. A mix of wood blocks, a few sturdy pallets, a cable drum or two and some scafold planks should do the trick. be vary of putting in anything with too much height or the libability issues could get nasty.
Consider if you want to have this area open all the time or only sometimes?, do you require protective gear to be worn?
Sarah
Thanks for the tips Sarah, I’ll pass them on.
Cheers,
Gary