Saturday night, time for a show .Leos is the first pizza cutting unicycle I’ve
ever seen, looked kinda slippery on the tomato sauce. Lars climbed into a
ballon and bounced a round, Mat showed his diabolo skills and Per ( ?) was very
funny on unicycles even though I didn’t understand a word he said. Before the
show a Bike Trials riding team had given us a demo of their skills out in the
carpark. The poor guys had never played to such a hard audience and I bet had
never had to put up with being totally upstaged by a unicyclist before, well
done Arne. After the show people when off to play more hockey or to join in a
beer relay race, ever the sucker for free beer no prizes for guessing my choice
of game. Later in the bar more beer flowed and again the talk continued late
into the night.
Sunday, again a scorching hot day, never mind I was headed for the woods…
Orienteering, my favorite type of unicycleing, geting muddy and riding the rough
stuff. Different courses for different age groups kept thing fair and made us
grown ups ride futher than the tots could manage. i really enjoyed srambling
around in the trees, I rode as much as I could unlike some who I saw running
with out unis up to checkpoints away from the broad main tracks, some even
clutching several control cards so their friends could take it easy and rest for
a minute. Personaly I belted round as fast as I could, trying for a respectable
finish time.
Sunday pm passed with Riding at the ring ( I was Kaput quite soon in this one)
playing my first unicycle basket ball and enjoying the sunshine. In the evening
came the big Prize giving do. Kicking off with the biggest raffle in the world,
surly there were so many prizes that almost every ticket holder won something.
My table was on a lucky streak, most people won something and Barry and Paul
were the lucky winners of two of the star prizes … Unicycles. Hum… we now
had to work out how to travel home with 7 unis between 3 of us ( and 3 sticks, 4
backpacks and a holdall!) on the train. This takes barrys collection of unis up
to something daft like 8 or 9 but it’s his first made by Juno.
Medals were dished out by the handfull to lots of winners, a few folk seemed
to win everything they had entered and had necks bowed by the weight of
ribbons as they clanked out of the hall at the end. The evening then decended
into dismantling unicycles and drinking beer, eating cake and arrangeing
t-shirt swaps.
Hometime had come all to soon and on Monday morning we said our good byes and
left for home. Thanks to Peter for the lift to the station, our train had a lot
of unicyclists onboard but all were to tired to do much more than doze for the
trip to the airport. Rocket, Paul and I spent the afternoon enjoying the Tivoli
gardens and some large ice creams, we also took a stroll around the university
area and found the Round-tower of unicycle race fame. The veiw from the top is
ace and the idea of racing up that sprialing ramp is enough to make the legs
ache, never mind the doing of it.
Back at London Heathrow airport the sight of 6 unicycles on a baggage carosel
made a few people stare,but all I cared about by then was getting home and
sleeping. I had a really good wekend at Eurocycle, I made some new friends,
caught up with old ones and enjoyed chatting about the different ways we live
all over europe. I hope next year at Morfelden is just as good.
sarah