Cirque De Poznanter

General
1

All,

This is in response to the post Nathan Hoover sent out on Friday, inviting us to
this special event, at UC Santa Cruz, to benefit David Poznanter.

David has been disabled by severe tendonitis in both wrists. He will probably
never be able to make balloon animals again (he used to be balloonatic@aol.com),
and juggling is questionable. Damage from a car accident and accumulated
wrist-intensive activities led to this problem, which currently leaves him
unable to use his hands for many everyday activities. The purpose of the show
was I believe to help him with college and living expenses.

Anyway, my wife Jacquie read Nathan’s post, and suggested we go. What a
surprise for David it would be, if I showed up and joined in the show! So
that’s what we did.

Most of the performers were friends of David, and I assume UCSC students, though
not all. There were musicians, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, a belly dancer,
and a unicyclist. Cory Tabino closed the variety half of show with a straps and
hand balancing act. He is a student at Ecole National du Cirque in Montreal,
home of Cirque du Soleil. a second half was a concert by the band Estradasphere.

My act, somewhere in the middle, had problems. I had grabbed Jacquie’s 20"
Miyata Standard, as my freestyle uni had been left at work, under my desk.
Jacquie’s unicycle was still disassembled from our trip up to Washington in
October, and I didn’t put it together until we got there. Only then did I get
reminded I had bent the wheel. There was a major S curve in the rim, from heavy
use in the WA show. Oops. But with a little help from Bruce Bundy we were able
to beat it into shape to hopefully last through the show.

Then, during the act before mine, I decided to let “a little” air out of the
tire because I thought it might be too slippery. Trying to keep quiet, I let the
air out very slowly until the tire felt right. MISTAKE. Never let air out after
the show has started! I got up on stage to find out my tire was riding real low!
I had trouble turning, and couldn’t do some of the tricks I had planned. Gliding
was even out. But I did finish by (on the first try) jumping over my volunteer,
David Poznanter.

Audience members paid a $5 admission, and a hat was passed during the show to
raise additional funds for people who could afford it. We heard before we left
that the door had taken in over $2200, not counting the hat! A great success.

Please join me in wishing David a quick recovery. See a picture of David, from
the 1998 California MUni Weekend:
http://www.unicycling.com/cgi-bin/picpage.pl?/muni/muni98/pix/towelmanb.jpg

Stay on top, John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone http://www.unicycling.com

SIGN IN A FIELD: “The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the
bull charges.”

2

Re: Cirque De Poznanter

Hi all,

Thanks for sharing about a really worthwile event- awesome to hear about people
supporting friends!

I should add something to this though, from personal experience:

In the fall of 1993 I built a basement climbing gym in my parents house, and
after 4 months of training ended up fairly fit but with a very severe case of
wrist tendonitis.

My tendonitis was as bad as Davids: I couldn’t write, open doors, open cans of
food, or shift gears or roll down the window in my car without significant pain.
I had both my wrists in casts for a while. Climbing was the central theme of my
life at the time and this was, as you might imagine, severely depressing. The
only thing that kept my spirits up was accounts of other climbers who had
similar injuries and had eventually recovered. The English climber, Jerry
Moffat, was one such climber. He had such bad finger and elbow tendonitis that
doctors said he would never climb again, and he recovered to the point where he
became, once again, one of the worlds best climbers in the late 1980’s. But I
had my doubts- nothing I did seem to make this get better and I didn’t notice
any measurable improvements for about a year, despite visiting many doctors,
physiotherapists and actupuncturists, and trying every remedy I could think of.

To make this rather long story short, it did eventually get better! In the
fall of 1995 (2 years later) I went on a 4 month rock climbing trip and was
climbing better than I was previous to the injury. I’ve never had any problems
since then, so I guess that I’m saying to David: hang on a little bit longer
and you definately will be doing unitrials and making balloon animals again in
the future!

Cheers,

Kris Holm.

— John Foss <john_foss@asinet.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> This is in response to the post Nathan Hoover sent out on Friday, inviting us
> to this special event, at UC Santa Cruz, to benefit David Poznanter.
>
> David has been disabled by severe tendonitis in both wrists. He will probably
> never be able to make balloon animals again (he used to be
> balloonatic@aol.com), and juggling is questionable. Damage from a car accident
> and accumulated wrist-intensive activities led to this problem, which
> currently leaves him unable to use his hands for many everyday activities. The
> purpose of the show was I believe to help him with college and living
> expenses.
>
> Anyway, my wife Jacquie read Nathan’s post, and suggested we go. What a
> surprise for David it would be, if I showed up and joined in the show! So
> that’s what we did.
>
> Most of the performers were friends of David, and I assume UCSC students,
> though not all. There were musicians, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, a belly
> dancer, and a unicyclist. Cory Tabino closed the variety half of show with a
> straps and hand balancing act. He is a student at Ecole National du Cirque in
> Montreal, home of Cirque du Soleil. a second half was a concert by the band
> Estradasphere.
>
> My act, somewhere in the middle, had problems. I had grabbed Jacquie’s 20"
> Miyata Standard, as my freestyle uni had been left at work, under my desk.
> Jacquie’s unicycle was still disassembled from our trip up to Washington in
> October, and I didn’t put it together until we got there. Only then did I get
> reminded I had bent the wheel. There was a major S curve in the rim, from
> heavy use in the WA show. Oops. But with a little help from Bruce Bundy we
> were able to beat it into shape to hopefully last through the show.
>
> Then, during the act before mine, I decided to let “a little” air out of the
> tire because I thought it might be too slippery. Trying to keep quiet, I let
> the air out very slowly until the tire felt right. MISTAKE. Never let air out
> after the show has started! I got up on stage to find out my tire was riding
> real low! I had trouble turning, and couldn’t do some of the tricks I had
> planned. Gliding was even out. But I did finish by (on the first try) jumping
> over my volunteer, David Poznanter.
>
> Audience members paid a $5 admission, and a hat was passed during the show to
> raise additional funds for people who could afford it. We heard before we left
> that the door had taken in over $2200, not counting the hat! A great success.
>
> Please join me in wishing David a quick recovery. See a picture of David, from
> the 1998 California MUni Weekend:
>
http://www.unicycling.com/cgi-bin/picpage.pl?/muni/muni98/pix/towelmanb.jpg
>
> Stay on top, John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone http://www.unicycling.com
>
> SIGN IN A FIELD: "The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but
> the bull charges."

Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/

3

Re: Cirque De Poznanter

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Kris Holm wrote:
>I should add something to this though, from personal experience:
>
>In the fall of 1993 I built a basement climbing gym in my parents house, and
>after 4 months of training ended up fairly fit but with a very severe case of
>wrist tendonitis.

I went through something like this too. It was around 1991-2 and the tendonitis
pain started after doing a few sessions of dirt bike riding in the mountains.
Fortunately for me, it wasn’t as bad as David’s. It only affected one wrist and
while it’s definitely not fun to live with a nagging pain all the time, I could
still type and play the guitar (at least for short periods of time).

Over the course of about 2 years, I went to several doctors, who basically told
me it was just something I had to live with. The pain was consistant for a few
months and then after that it would come and go. The last doctor I saw, a hand
specialist, said I had “lax tendons” probably from an old accident. I’ve had
many, so I couldn’t really argue the point. He perscribed strong
antiinflamatories which would help, and suggested that I take them for several
days when I had a flareup (not just enough to alleviate the pain).

I did that for a year or two and the pain was virtually gone. Now I fully use my
left wrist without pain, enjoy playing guitar and type most of the day in my
software-related job. I do occasionally feel a bit of stiffness or slight pain
in that wrist if I"ve been doing heavy lifting with it or if I have to hold a
weight in one position with it for a long period of time. But it’s temporary and
not too troubling, so I’m really thankful to have it back. I still try to be
careful with it.

Greg