As promised, i rode the tevatron ring (high res) road during lunch today. The distance is a skosh under 4 miles, so i went a little more than a full rev. The air temp was about 90, and there was a peaceful cooling prairie 20 mph breeze out of the west. I was on a little Sun 20" uni.
I came off the saddle about 6 times, three of them within a 60-degree section where the wind was just tough and sort of in my face.
It took me about an hour. I was for sure (!) feeling the effort, but i wasn’t all that tired. I found the stinging sweat in my eyes to my biggest problem.
Everyone at work was amazed, with about 20% thinking i’m a nutbag. I absolutely knew i’d make it, so i was simply quietly self-satisfied.
Wow, what a great ride on a 20" uni. Way to persevere.
If it turns out you like doing the distance, you might want to check out the Coker. It would make much quicker work of that circle.
PS: what is the “tevatron ring” exactly? I’m assuming it’s this same structure seen via satellite here. Looks like something the govt or military would build.
Keep pedaling in circles! John Foss will tell you that the best way to learn to spin on a uni is to practice riding in a circle then make it tighter and tighter over time. You’ve got the first step pretty much nailed :).
Fermilab is home to the Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator (and cool place to ride unicycles).
Four miles in circumference, the Tevatron is housed in a tunnel about 30 feet below the big ring you see in this aerial view of the laboratory. We use a series of accelerators to send particles racing around the Tevatron at 99.9999 percent of the speed of light in a vacuum. The particles complete the four-mile course nearly 50 thousand times a second. However, Unicycles are not expected to meet this performance data.
Congratulations on the 4-miler! Who out there will do the computation to convert the number of revs into the distance you would have gone on a Coker?..
Dropped you an e-mail (off uni subject). I think that the location of your ride is very cool. Too bad you don’t have a bigger ride to do in Waxahachee(sp).
Who’s in Waxahachee? (sorry if I misspelled that) Whoever it is, do you know there’s a Chautauqua there? Ever been? I work at the “Mother Chautauqua” in New York and would be interested to hear what it’s like at yours. We actually have some people from Waxahachee coming to Chautauqua this summer to give a presentation.
Sorry for being off topic…just had to mention that.
If I’m not mistaken, Waxahachee is the location of a failed attempt to build the world’s largest particle accellerator. I remember living in Houston reading about the project failing to be finished due in part to fire ants getting into and eating up sensitive utility conduit…does this sound familiar, BraveSirStupid?
HistoricalGoof:
Another off topic response. I’m going to be in Chautauqua, NY on the 16th of July (playing horn in the Mahler 7 concert). Wanna ride?
Congrats on the four miler on a 20" which is quite a feat. It’s nice to see someone else riding on top of particle accelerators, too.
The revs on a Coker would have been 36/20 or 1.8 (7.2 miles)
I believe that the Tevatron is the highest energy per nuleon accelerator at 1000 GeV for protons and anti-protons, both AMU 1. The highest energy accelerator I believe is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab. It accelerates colliding gold beams, AMU 197, to 30 GeV per nucleon for a total ion energy of a little over 6000 GeV. More energy per ion but not as fast.
> I have seven words for you. “get a coker, um, get a coker.”
>
>
> –
> halfbike - Obsessed Rider
>
> We should make a law against gravity!
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> halfbike’s Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/9428
> View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/41013
you and Tom Blackwood… in fact a coker is my goal, no question about
it.
>
> If I’m not mistaken, Waxahachee is the location of a failed attempt to
> build the world’s largest particle accellerator. I remember living in
> Houston reading about the project failing to be finished due in part to
> fire ants getting into and eating up sensitive utility conduit…does
> this sound familiar, BraveSirStupid?
good thing they killed it when they did, i was thisclose to going down
there. Now it’s a giant hole filled with municipal refuse.
> Congrats on the four miler on a 20" which is quite a feat. It’s nice to
> see someone else riding on top of particle accelerators, too.
Thank you. I believe your accelerator requires a smidge more control
to ride on… (which begs the question of who rode on Brookhaven’s
TVG (tandem vandegraf)
>
> The revs on a Coker would have been 36/20 or 1.8 (7.2 miles)
>
I rode again this evening, taking the Main Injector (the other big oval)
for a spin of about 2.5 miles plus a few hundred meters to get to my
starting point.
So here’s the interesting part. I was wearing my shimano spd-clip shoes
by necessity instead of my squishy old New Balances. The shimano’s
provided some kind of evening out of the stress on my foot – i just
went and went and went------ until finished the day’s cours – ZERO
FAL^h^h^h UPD’s over the whole 2.5 mile course. Largely because my
feet didn’t feel like they were in their own private hibachi. I should
have taken heed the advice about Vans shoes given earlier.
I also experienced the worst case of “male numbness” i’ve ever
experienced, including 10 of K’s on the road. I was rendered absolutely
100% insensate. I’m thinking of scooping out some foam in the
necessary part of my saddle.
My static mounts still bear directing your attention elsewhere, although
i did spend a while practicing before the 2.5 miler.
So i learned a couple of things today and got better at the same time.
Seems like a good day.
