I was digging around for uni vids, and found myself on Vimeo. It turns out that over the last few years Kris Peck has been uploading a bunch of stuff including a full length re-mastered version of “Rough Terrain Unicycling.” I had been wanting to see it for a while, but my searches never turned up anything.
If anyone is interested in seeing some pretty remarkable riding on skinny tires, by today’s standards, check it out.
I looked on the forum to see if this had ever been mentioned, and I couldn’t find any references to it.
Wow! I loved that. It is great to see how Muni equipment has progressed (thank you Kris Holm). But it was especially cool to watch and listen to an early pioneer of the sport. I am always amazed at the first person to try something and invent new techniques. Because of guys like George Peck, we all have a great sport today.
I never broke a crank or hub growing up riding in the 80s, but then again I never rode very hard. I didn’t do jumps and barely hopped.
My uncle who taught me, who was a professional entertainer, told me stories of many broken cranks and hubs. Oddly, he never rode very hard either as far as I know. I don’t remember him doing so anyway. He did give people unicycle piggyback rides as part of his show, maybe he broke parts then not sure.
I still have my early 80s era semcycle, but have always been careful with it. I leave the jumping and such to my modern munis/trials unis. Though my first few muni rides a few years ago was with my sem. I was told it was just a matter of time till I broke the hub. Little did I know I was riding like George Peck
Wow, it didn’t occur to me that everyone else didn’t already know about this. I happened to find a link to it on the unicycle.com blog early this summer, back when I was just getting started, and I’ve been watching it pretty regularly.
It’s amazing and inspiring to see what he did with the equipment he had. What a difference. I guess 20 years actually is a pretty long time although that doesn’t seem so long ago to me. And I love his modesty about his own abilities.
“Don’t let the apparently difficulty or lack of natural aptitude deter you.”
It occurs to me watching George in action that a lot of his hands off out of the saddle riding is very analogous to ultimate wheel riding. He is not bearing any weight on the saddle, and therefore the frame, but is controlling his wheel direct through the pedals. In a lot of the hands off action he could’ve been doing the same stuff with no frame at all. Even the way the uni reacts under him is much like an ultimate wheels does.