After lurking here for a month or so, I finally have something worthwhile
to report…
The Hullabalu, Tulane’s campus newspaper, printed an enormous picture of me on
my unicycle outside of my dorm. The title read “Look, Ma – No Hands”. The
caption reads “CS Freshman Tramm Hudson goes for another four second ride. Maybe
someday he will make it across campus”. Thibeaux took two rolls of film and
around three or four pictures of me are in control and on top; the other 45 are
me on the ground or in various stages of falling.
That’s my goal --I’m working on being able to ride across campus. Unfortunately,
I haven’t even achieved Level 1 status yet. Just riding in a straight line
without help (consistently) is still beyond my abilities.
Last year, while I was at LSMSA, two of my friends on another wing in my dorm
both had unicycles. Gary was probably Level 2 and Bill was Level 1 (Not
officially – that’s about how skilled they were). I was always amazed and
really wanted to learn to ride, so I borrowed Gary’s for a while.
It was in awful shape. The pedals had almost a quarter arc of play and the rim
was bent out of shape from learning to hop curbs. I fixed it up, but could never
find a replacement tire. After ten minutes of riding, the pedals would come
loose and need to be tightened. Needless to say, I never learned very much past
riding down the hall with a wall on both sides.
At the end of last year, we were moving out of Prudhomme for the summer and Bill
couldn’t fit his unicycle into his car. It just happened that I walked out of
the dorm at that instant. He shouted “Tramm! Do you want a unicycle?”.
Originally, I was just going to hold it for him over the summer, but he called
me and told me that I could keep it.
I didn’t ride it all summer. It wasn’t till earlier this year (Now at Tulane)
that I pulled it from my basement and fixed it up. The tire had dryrotted and
the pedals needed to be tightened. The seat is ripped to shreds, but I don’t
have the means to fix it yet. When I went to buy a bike tire for it, the snobs
in the bike shop looked at me as if I were such a dweeb.
That’s how I came to own my very own CyclePro 24". Not a very prestigous brand
(I can hear the snobs already deleting this letter and turning their noses up),
but I’m just learning. Maybe if I ever acquire the skills necessary to ride
across campus, I will reward myself and buy something nicer. But, the price was
right and I’m happy with it.
The bad news is that I have not seen anyone on campus with one. I try to get my
friends to try and practice with me, but they aren’t interested. Is there anyone
else in the New Orleans area? When I do get good enough, where can I find
someone to certify me as a Level 1 Unicyclist?
The picture of me is available from my WWW server in
http://www.cs.tulane.edu/~hudson and from my machine (unicycle) as
http://butler226a.dorm.tulane.edu/ If anyone would like, I could post a
uuencoded copy as well.
Trying to stay on top, but spending most of my time on the ground, Tramm Hudson
hudson@cs.tulane.edu tbhudso@cs.sandia.gov tramm@butler226a.dorm.tulane.edu
tramm@lsmsa.nsula.edu http://www.cs.tulane.edu/~hudson 504/865-4227