Today I went to meet Mr Parr, owner of a fine collection of unicycles and wacky
bikes. Mr parr is an eldery chap who lives about a mile from me, he spotted me
on the Coker in town a few weeks ago and left a message for me at the bike
shop! Now hows that for personal service from a bike shop.
Armed with my Coker I arrived at his house to find an array of cycles in the
back yard beyond my imagining, there were 4 unis all home built and a 5th one a
modified pashley, a recumbent bike, a backwards steering excentric wheeled bike,
a steering wheeled tiny front wheeled bike, a swing bike, a steering wheeled
bike, a skate bike, a pram wheeled pedal go and a giraffe bike. I got to try
most of them this afternoon, wow what a set of toys.
To go into more detail on the unicycles all home made or modified I’ll stat with
the smallest
- a 12inch with 4 inch cranks, a nippy little thing but hard to turn due to the
crank length. - a 20 inch old Pashley with the saddle replaced with a walking stick handle,
too be riden standing up. - a 20 inch standard uni with box section frame and a foot rest bracket on the
front of the frame, unlike most mass produced unis this has the crown just
under the saddle so could take a larger wheel. With a nice chunky tyre this
was a lovley uni to ride, I found it had to get my foot on the bracket but
then I’m used to putting my foot up on the side of a crown, Mr Parr has no
problem with this as its what he’s used to. - a wheel barrow wheeled uni, this wheel is about 7 inchs wide and about 18 inch
diameter, seriously heavey and so wide with its box section frame that one has
to adopt a " bandy" riding style. - and lastly a home built 7 ft giraffe, i declined a go on this and Mr Parr says
hes too old for that kind of thing now but he used to use a step ladder to
mount it with and then pick up the ladder and ride off with it.
This chaps shed is a tresure trove, I hope to keep in touch with him and plan to
photgraph his collection. I’m discovering that reading has lots of unicyclists
hiden away, not on the net and not part of the Uk uni scene, I hope to be able
to change one of those two circumstances…
sarah