First, congratulations to all who dreamt of a submission and to those who will follow those dreams with a ride.
Been meaning to respond to an earlier message to say, YES, this is the kind of event that I would make time and travel for. Later messages in the thread put forward some options for those who aren’t of a ultrauni bent, which would probably be good, but I’m up for making an event happen that includes exactly what you describe here happen.
As you mention later in the thread, 12/24 hour mountain bike events are a serviceable option for adapting existing events to unicycles. I think that is a great strategy for creating unicycle events as well. I have taken up joining randoneurring events as nice, loosely organized rides with fairly generous cutoffs. These are road events only, but I enjoy me a day long coker ride on some nice backroads too. On the shorter end of the spectrum, in Portland the unicyclists have carved out a place for themselves at the annual cyclocross race series.
At all of these events I find that people who are into cycling seem to be genuinely impressed with people who have nice unicycles, can ride them well, and come out to join them.
I hope this isn’t a “threadjack” since it does continue the conversation, stimulated by this award, of bringing the unicycle into new and exciting challenges.
Thanks Kris and everyone bringing unicycles where they haven’t been before for contributing in such bold ways to our sport!
Congrats Steveo, what an adventure it will be. I look forward to the pics and report. Concentrate on RTL, you still have almost 10 months till your trip. Congrats again.
Congratulations guys! Sounds fantastic. Looking forward to hearing a bit more about the trip. Are you carring your gear with you? Where do you get food and water? What sort of unis are you using etc? And the writeup…gotta wait for a bloody year…Damn!
My application was in Chile. I’d planned on starting off In Santiago and Valaparaiso, soing a few local trails. Then heading up to the Atacama Desert and looking at some of the flats and volcanoes there. After that the plan was to head down south and ride a couple of hundred kms down the Carretera Austral- a dirt highway connecting the north to the south of Chile. The trip had a few bits of everything- techical, distance, downhill etc.
Kris was kind enough to give me a bit of advice as he had done some riding there. He mentioned a few places in Bolivia.
And this is a go anyway- Nov.-Dec. 2008. Looking at Patagonia and Peru too and even going up to central America to Costa Rica and Nicaragua (I’ll stay way clear of Panama though!!! )
Not to sound redundant, but that looks like an awsome ride, I love desolation type trips that give you the opportunity to see places & things that the majority of the worlds people have never seen.
Congratulations on the trip of a lifetime
Hey Blunt, good to hear from you, thanks for the note.
As to last year’s Lifestyles race…I’ll attach a photo confirm the blur of dust you mentioned
Roland
ps, I think there is still space at this year’s lifestyles race
)