Hi everybody,
Just wanting to say there was a nice article about Billham in the Observer-Reporter today. He was riding his Coker down the road when this guy came up and asked if he could talk to him for a while. Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.observer-reporter.com/ Go to opinion (on the left side), Byron Smialek for the column.
(I’m the unicycle enthusiast from Mt. Lebanon!)
Cheers!
Unidaddy
Nice
Good work, Bilham!
An article that avoids the cliches and presents unicycling as a worthy pastime.
20 incher for mountain and 24 inches for tricks? hehe
nice article, i wish some reporter would talk to me one day…
-grant
very informative artical. good for non unicyclists who want to learn to uni.
Like a year ago I was riding my uni in front of my house when a Provincial TV reporter drove by and saw me. He stopped and taped me riding it back and forth and gave a short interview. A week later I was on Live at Five on CTV, for like 20 to 30 seconds just as it came back from commercial. All I remember (didn’t get it taped) was the anchor-women in a fake overly enthused reporter kinda voice (you know the one) saying, " It may be half the bike, but young David Archibald says its twice the fun!" Just thought are stories were similar and decided to share.
David
I wish i’d of known the unicycle was so popular before I sold it to Bill, i’d have friends and be in papers too : (
Or maybe it’s Bill thats turned this 36er into big news, either way it’s not me : (
Oh well, have fun in the parade : )
Andrew
I cant wait to ride in the parade!!! hehehe, I have to ride the KH trials in the parade, it rides so much smoother than my schwinn, i cant stop riding it, i love the thing haha
Cool article.
Just in case the link to the article goes dead in time here it is:
Thursday, September 30, 2004
This guy is a really big wheel
Bill Hamilton is head and shoulders above everyone and everything when he is methodically pedaling his way along back country roads.
There is a fundamental difference between the 48-year-old Hickory area man and your typical 10-speed tourers who ride the same hard roads. They do it the easy way. Easy, that is, if your idea of easy is going up and down the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania on anything that isn’t somehow motorized.
Hamilton does roadwork the hard way. He does his riding on a unicycle.
Yes, a unicycle, that one-wheel conveyance that only circus performers, or the fabulous Zucchini Brothers’ juggling act that was always an audience favorite on the old Ed Sullivan Show, were able to master. (Personally, in addition to unicyclists, I also liked that Gypsy guy whose whole act was keeping dozens of dinner plates spinning on bamboo sticks while the house played the “Sabre Dance.” Don’t take just my word for it, folks, but that was real entertainment.)
Hamilton, a quality assurance manager at Bolsan-Hampsom Co., a small aerospace supplier in Eighty Four, learned to ride a one-wheeler as a teenager growing up in Zelienople. He took it up again only a year ago in July when he decided that he wanted to learn to juggle. Heck, since he pretty much taught himself how to ride a unicycle, he taught himself juggling with the intent to juggle while riding a unicycle.
“That was pretty much it for me,” said Hamilton, who lives along Route 18 near Red Fox Road with his wife, Patty, who does not ride a unicycle, and their 7-year-old unicycle-riding daughter Caitlin. She rides a small 20-inch model; his road-going Coker unicycle has a 36-inch wheel. He has two others – a 20-inch mountain unicycle and a 24-incher for tricks.
“I borrowed a unicycle from a nephew, and the next thing I knew, I was hooked on it again. This is great fun and a great way to get in shape and stay in shape,” said the 6-foot-tall, 178-pounder.
The Sunday after the great floods of Ivan, Hamilton had ridden his unicycle 4 miles up and down the hills in the vicinity of Hickory on what would become a 12-mile ride. His average speed up to the point where we talked at the entrance to Mt. Pleasant Township Park was 8 mph.
“I know it looks hard to do, but it really isn’t,” he said. “I can teach somebody how to ride a unicycle in 10 to 15 hours.”
Hamilton is going to start giving unicycle lessons one night a week at Thomas Presbyterian Church in North Strabane Township beginning Oct. 12 through Thanksgiving. For more information, call him at 724-229-7141.
He and Caitlin, along with an old friend from Zelienople and his son, plus a unicycle enthusiast from Mt. Lebanon, will all ride next weekend in the parade for the Houston Pumpkin Festival.
So, what makes somebody want to ride one of those things?
“I don’t mind the attention I get when I’m riding,” he said. "But what I really like is to see the reaction on the face of the people who see me riding.
“My goal is to start a unicycle club. Riding one of these is so much fun that I want to share the experience with others.”
Senior writer and columnist Byron Smialek can be reached at bsmialek at observer-reporter dot com.
Cool Bill. Glad to the hear you are putting on miles. Have you had a chance to put you’re pictures and video from the Muni weekend on a CD yet?
Not a bad column, certainly will do more for the sport than against it. A few errors in the article, but I guess that’s the norm.
Hopefully the article will help boost interest in the uni class I am doing. I am hoping the class will give me a start for a core group to meet on a weekly basis. That will be the start of the uni club and then we’ll have millions of riders in our county. The riding a uni won’t be unique anymore and I’ll have to find another sport so I can get another article in the paper. 
Just kidding. 
Unidaddy - thanks for watching for the column and posting it. I had several people mention it at the East Coast MUni Weekend which I just got home from. We had a great time in New York!
Bill