In the midst of a busy weekend, we fit in a parade in Leaf River, IL for the Leaf River Days festival, one of the numerous small town festivals that occur throughout northern Illinois. Leaf River has a population of just over 2000 but hosts one of the biggest parades in this area. This year’s number of entries seemed down a bit but they still had 118 entries in yesterday’s parade.
We had halfway decent turnout of riders from our club including our special guest, our forum partner Steve (Sigurd) who is home from college at Univ. of Illinois. It was quite the toasty one with about a 90 degree temp. and quite humid. But we had lots of water and Gatorade so we made it through safely.
Steve and Ben wow’d the crowds by showing off skills on their trials machines. Several times, Ben jumped a couple of our riders in the middle of the street much to the delight of the spectators. The host of the parade was a local news anchor, Dani Maxwell who screamed into the microphone when Ben jumped two people in front of the reviewing stand.
I rode my Coker as I always do in order to present a variety of unicycles. At one point, I jump mounted but my front foot missed the pedal and I tumbled forward, but I was able to execute a perfect shoulder roll and came up immediately to my feet. That got me the most applause of the entire parade route. My first thought was that’s why people are such big NASCAR fans. They don’t watch a race just to see cars going around in circles, they’re there for the crashes. My favorite part of a parade is riding along the curb, doing still stands and giving out in this case low fives to the children. Their eyes get about as big as my wheel. Quite fun.
We missed Brad though because he was at a soccer game in Chicago. By the way, quick weekend soccer report; Brad’s first game on Saturday in Barrington, IL canceled due to lightning and tornados, Ben’s Sunday morning game a win at 2-1 and Brad’s Sunday afternoon game (that we missed) a blowout at 1-0. Brad’s team remains undefeated in the YSSL U-12 Gold division.
Bruce