Last weekend when Drew (changingLINKS.com) came down to San Antonio for a Muni ride, he brought along a photo-journalist friend who did an article about us. Here’s the condensed internet article if anybody capable of reading Spanish could translate it for others to read
Google has a pretty good translation tool:
Translated article
I’m not sure what’s more entertaining – the article itself or the funny translation. 
Here’s my attempted translation.
(Please forgive any mistakes… I’m just learning Spanish, and thought this was an interesting exercise. If you spot any errors or weaknesses in the translation, I’d be very grateful if you could point them out to me).
Two Wheels Are Too Many
Nicholas J Parkinson
Sportspeople are abandoning the conventional bicycle for something more extreme.
The unicycle no longer suffers the unjust fame of being only an instrument for circus acrobats.
For a small society of sporting enthusiasts, the unicycle has been converted into an off-road vehicle used to challenge the human spirit.
Over a solitary wheel these athletes balance themselves and jump from one rock to another, and seek to take on the most dangerous mountain slopes.
San Antonio, like Austin, has a club where members gather several times a month to practice mountain unicycling, also known as extreme unicycling. In total, there are some twenty members in the club.
The “Muni”, as the mountain unicycle is called, is equipped with a fat off-road tire, which can be inflated to a high or low pressure. Some also have a brake under the seat which helps the rider to descend steep mountains more carefully.
“It takes strength, technique, and the ability to overcome fear”, says Drew Brown, who lives in Austin and has been a unicyclist for almost a year.
“Many people associate us with extreme sports because they think we’re equally strange”, he quips.
Nevertheless, most of them have left mountain biking behind. All their stories coincide: one day they came across an extreme unicyclist and became inspired to do the same.
“I didn’t know there were people who went off-road when I bought my first unicycle for $70,” says Eric Lancaster, another unicyclist. “One day I saw a video of Kris Holm, and it was a natural progression”, he adds.
The extreme pioneer.
The Canadian Kris Holm, from Vancouver, is in large part responsible for the present growth that the sport enjoys. As pioneer of mountain unicycling, Holm has crossed the most difficult terrains in the world, from the volcanoes of Guatemala to the peaks of the Himalayas.
Nowadays, the club, which receives new followers every day, tries to open the doors of this sport to everyone, who with $180 and 10 hours of patience can take the road to extreme unicycling.
some notes on the translation:
a) I had some trouble deciding on a good gender-neutral translation of “deportistas”, so I went for “sportspeople” “sporting enthusiasts”, and “athletes” at different points.
b) I’m not sure if I translated correctly the sentence that begins, “Tanto San Antonio como Austin…”. Any comments?
c) ditto with “un sillín que puede o no ser inflado”. Not quite sure if I got that right (“can be inflated to a high or low pressure”)?
- Julian
On the translation: I think the sillin is a saddle, and he’s talking about airseats, like “saddles that can or can’t be enflated”
I think the “tanto san antonio como austin” Means " san antonio, as in austin, …"
I suck at spanish too, though.
Thanks for the translations, lokks like Nick did a pretty good job on the article.
Thanks for doing that, Nick. (Maybe he is reading the forum since he is thinking about becoming “one of us”… Or is it “us of one”?)
I forgot to pick up a copy the day it came out. Is the print article the same?
Scott
I like it!
-eric
The print article is the same, but there are more pics. If you pic up a “Rumbo”, there is a full page article at the back of the paper in the “sports” section