Motorama 2004

General
1

I just got back from motorama and honestly I dont have a single complaint. It was one of the best unicycling experiences of my life. It was amazing to meet Kris and Ryan and everyone else, not to mention those I’d ridden with before. Kris and Ryan tied for first at nearly 300 points! Ben and Joey were close behind. Jeff Groves amazed everyone with his skill. Nick and John from Hell on Wheel took the next two spots, with Nick nailing some of the extraodinarly difficult lines involving very small posts two feet in the air. Jeff Prosa took eighth on his 24". I got ninth. Joe Merrill, who did an excellent job organizing the event, took tenth. Everyone else did an amazing job. It was my first time riding 2" skinnies more than 3 feet high. The swing was very exciting. Pictures and videos will come soon from others, as i have none. I hope everyone that went will contribute to this thread…

Oh yeah, there were 24 (or 25) competitors total

2

Motorama was a hell of a lot of fun. I can’t wait for next year.

Here are the scores – hopefully I got everyone’s name and location correct:

  1. Kris Holm Vancouver 295
  2. Ryan Atkins Vancouver 295
  3. Ben Plotkin-Swing Boston 184
  4. Joey Cohn Boston 178
  5. Jeff Groves Toronto 166
  6. Nick Mullen Virginia 130
  7. John Glazer Virgina 105
  8. Jeff Prosa New Jersey 95
  9. Trip Glazer Virgina 92
  10. Joe Merrill New York 91
  11. Brian Maw New Jersey 72
  12. Chris Wonderly Pennsylvania 71
  13. Mike Carroll Pennsylvania 60
  14. Sam Cooksey Virginia 49
  15. Dave Kimmel New Jersey 41
  16. Frank Brown Virginia 39
  17. Dan Lucal Boston 27
  18. Bill Hamilton Pennsylvania 19
  19. Nick DiJohn Pennsylvania 15
  20. Kevin O’Brien Pennsylvania 7
  21. Mike Menichini New York 5
  22. Amanda Menichini New York 1
3

Laszlo and I were on our way at 4 AM to get there in time as spectators, but had car troubles. Sheesh. Perhaps next time.

:angry:

4

well

it was great, i only wish me and kev had gotten there sooner to have more fun. we got there about an hour late, so we didnt get as many points as we wanted, but we got to have fun all day. i liked being in the company of unicyclists again, and am looking forward to te next uni event. Jeff promised me a Muni event, but i want proof!. couldnt have asked for better.

P.S. That place should be arrested for having a monopoly on all the hot girls. Wow, there were models everywhere. :slight_smile:

5

I got to unicycle on a car!

6

Thanks again to all involved in putting it on. And to all the riders that were able to come down for the event it was a great comp.

Can’t wait to see all the pictures.

Mike

7

Many thanks to Joe Merrill for organizing a great event! Joe put a lot of time and effort into the event and it resulted in a well organized day. Joe also had lots of help from Kris Holm as they set up the lines for the U system. The event was set up to challenge the rookies and the pros. I think the U system of scoring was excellent. Kudos to Kris Holm for coming up with the U system and to Joe for choosing to use it.

This was my first trials competition and I had a great time. It was great to see and ride with some uni friends and to make a few new friends. Any one who is considering doing a competition for the first time should consider this event for next year! It was so much fun to watch the top riders working out the “impossible” lines. Equally fun was being one of the rookies who was trying to work out the simpler lines. There was something for everyone!

Highlights for the day:

  • Watching Kris and Ryan working on the section with the 1.5" diameter metal railing in front of a large group of spectators. A great round of applause followed Ryan’s completion of the line.
  • Watching Amanda Menichini (age 10) freemount on a #0" X 30" pallet, idle a few sycles and then ride onto and across an 8’ long, 5" wide skinny. A small, but very appreciative round of applause was heard after her mastery of the section. Good job a
    Amanda. On a side note, Amanda’s father, Mike, gets the Father of the Day award for helping Amanda more than worrying about getting points for himself.
  • The usual comraderie as riders at all levels encouraged, sighed and celebrated with each other’s efforts. There’s nothing better than a compliment from a fellow unicyclist!
  • Helping set up the course with Joe, Brian, Jeff and Kris on Friday. Set up was almost as much fun as riding.

Only one negative comment. If Joe had only had a Masters class for age 40 and over, I would have come in second place instead of 18th place. :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe next year? There’s gotta be some advantage to being an old fart.

Bill

8

Well that was the best uni experience of my life and one of the best experiences of my life over all. I had so much fun the entire time. Riding with people much better than me is normally discouraging, but for some reason I actually performed better than ever. Oh my god it was so much fun I can’t get over it! AAAAAAAHHHH!!! My friends and I unied for eight and a half hours straight and we had fun the entire time. I loved it so much. I really really love the U system. Thank you Kris for coming up with such a glorious thing. Now to go dream of motorama 05…

-Samus

9

One of the cool things about this competition was that it made really clear where my weaknesses are: skinnies and gaps to difficult landings. It also made me want to work more on pedal grabs.

It was also cool to see that any given moment there were unicyclists riding many sections with almost no waiting in line. Looking over at the bike comp, the lines were long as usual.

I also really liked the fact that with 36 lines, there was plenty for everyone to ride and be challenged very specifically according to one’s personal skill level.

Joe

10

i know some of you have photos. show em.

11

I’d like to thank everyone involved in making Motorama 04 such a huge success.

First thanks go to the Motorama hosts for being so open to us:

Brad Hostetter - Director of Motorama
Charlie Clement - Trials events director

Charlie and Brad have been extremely helpful and excited about promoting unicycling trials. Charlie provided us with tons of obstacle building supplies which included about 50 two by fours, a humongous tire, a 6’ high wood box, a funky obstacle that moved when you rode on it (it was a platform hanging from 4 chains), and several ramps.

Charlie’s crew was also really helpful, and provided forklifts, chain saws, and other services to help us set up. I’ll be giving Charlie a call to thank him for all of us.

Also of note, (and I’m guessing that Charlie was responsible) was the fact that the Motorama promotional materials listed trials unicycling as an event, and that all of the awards plaques at the show included an image of a unicyclist mixed in with the bikers and motorcyclists!

We were in a new hall this year - the “Equine arena.” This was a much classier and bigger space than last year, with nice spectator seats, great lighting and a dirt floor. The dirt was great because it hurt less when falling on it, and softened drops. It was also just nicer to ride on than concrete. (Course we all left smelling pretty horsey.)

The Friday setup crew consisted of Kris Holm, Bill Hamilton, Jeff Prosa, Brian Maw, and me. Setup was a blast and we learned a ton from Kris about u-system course setup. Even though it was fun, I really appreciate everyone spending the time and money it took to make themselves available. The course was great and couldn’t have happened without the input from everyone involved. Bill - Thanks for bringing all the wood, tools and building expertise. Jeff and Bryan - thank for all your hard work. Kris - thanks for everything, especially for rating the course and thinking up those crazy lines!

Next I’d like to thank everyone for coming on Saturday to ride, including the families! Walt, Mike and others - we can’t wait to see the photos!!! Also, I want to thank Walt for helping make sure the obstacles remained safe throughout the competetion Saturday.

Many travelled a great distance for this event, from Vancouver, Toronto, Virginia, and Boston. Even us “locals” travelled 2 to 4 hours. Car troubles prevented some from making it (sorry Dave and Lazslo. Wish you could have been there!), and nearly prevented others (Ben, Joey, and Dan). I’m really impressed with Kris, Ryan, and Jeff who travelled considerable distances. Ryan and Jeff took a twelve hour bus ride to get there!!

Lastly came the tear down of the course and everyone pitched in to make room for motorcycle trials. It was sad to take that stuff down!

I hope I didn’t forget anyone. Thanks to everyone. Looking forward to '05.

Joe

12

I have some photos that my mom took that I will put up shortly. Most of them are of me and Hell on Wheel because it was my mom taking the pictures but I’ll put em up anyway.

13

Isn’t it great to be Mom’s favorite? :smiley:

Bill

14

Hey Bill,

It was awesome to see that you went and competed! Way to go! Isn’t it cool to be hangin’ with some of those inspiring riders?!

Keep it up!

Tommy

15

Sounds like a cool comp, was there a tie breaker or whatever for 1st place?!

16

Plus yourself of course! Thanks Joe for helping put on such a fantastic event.

As mentioned above, this event was a huge success and was probably the best unitrials comp to date in terms of general organization and quality of the sections. Probably it included the largest difficulty range of sections too, from easy to the most difficult sections ever set for a trials comp, as far as I know.

I’ll try to put together a collection of Motorama section photos with suggestions for setting and rating sections; hopefully this would be useful for other unitrials events in future.

Kris.

17

Joe Merrill, called “The Force” by the New Jersey off-road trials riders, has this amazing presence which makes you want to hop up the stairs in the Empire State Building. Very inspiring!

18

well, i’d have to agree with everyone, and say that this event was alot of fun.
Lots of good riding, and good times. It was good to meet new unicyclists, (new to me at least) and ride with a large group.
I think we definately promoted the sport well among the bike trials people, even though we got kicked off their lines a few times. (they were just too tempting to NOT ride!!)

It was also interesting seeing the difference of the unicycle designed lines, and the bike ones. All the unicycle ones were so much tighter, and would be really tough on a bike, but then alot of the bike lines had moves that were simply too large to pull off on a unicycle. I had known this was the case, but it was just really cool to see the two side by side, being ridden by bikes, and unis at the same time.

I think the highlight was the intense game of Rock Paper Scissors that was used to decide who would win the stupidly oversized 1st place plaque.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who set it up, and all the work put in, i would have loved to have helped, but i only got into harrisburg 1 hour 30 mins before the comp started.

well, i hope to see alot of you guys at TOque. There are going to be some insanely good lines there!

-Ryan

19

Tommy

As was true at the MUni weekend in New Jersey last fall, I was amazed at how riders of all levels were riding together and encouraging one another. The New Jersey MUni weekend taught me lots, both in skills and equipment. Motorama was my first chance to see how well I had put that education into practice. My score doesn’t quite show how much I’ve learned. But that’s because the course required such a full range of skills. It was truly a test for determining an all around trials rider, even at my level.

Yes, I was inspired by those riders! I’ll be up at 5:00 am tomorrow morning to go to the gym and work on some uni skills.

Note to all riders who have never competed or attended a uni event. Make it a priority to do so! You learn sooooooo much at these events.

Tommy, come back to the East, we gotta get together for a ride!

Bill

20

Team thedan.com’s motorama adventure

I wrote a big long story about our motorama adventure.
Check it, fools.

http://www.thedan.com/motorama04.htm

Go watch pootie tang,
Dan