mhm you live in the south of Australia? I once was in Queensland for 4 months and dusk was around the same time every night. On this side of the globe, the days are now getting shorter, so when everybody’s gone to bed (my wife turns in early with the baby), at 9PM I now only have maybe 30 mins where I can do some unicycling. Before I would have 1.5 hours to ride, which is good for a 12kms ride.
Like you say, with the working from home, there is no riding to the office anymore.
This week my daughter got new roller blades that roll very smoothly and I got out with her every evening to practice. That doesn’t leave much time for unicycling.
You are lucky to have such long days. I’m in Sydney, Dec 20th the sun would disappear a bit between 8.30pm and 9pm. Melbourne is even better, cause they are further south and further west (but in the same timezone) so their sun sets later in summer.
Southern NZ though, I’d see the sun still up 11pm or so. Really great place to travel to in their summer. *Sydney is too hot in summer, NZ’s summer climate is much more pleasant.
*If you live near the coast in Sydney you get ocean breezes and that’s pleasant year round, but reasonably well located homes near Sydney’s coast are very expensive so the vast majority of people live somewhat inland, and its hotter unless you live in the mountains but its a 2 hour train trip to the city from the mountains.
Our winters are pretty decent. Generally highs of 16 or 17°C in the coldest times of the year. Occasionally you’ll get a cooler day, but that’s fairly uncommon. Great temps for lunchtime outdoor exercise.
1 Like
In Sydney 
Here in Not-Sydney we get plenty of icy mornings and < 10°C days in winter.
My sister lived in Wagga Wagga for a while… we went to visit her, one evening is was 6°C, and it would have been more like 16°C here. But… I would rather be in a non locked down place right now. I’m not supposed to be more than 5kms from home atm. (I’m in a local government area subject to tighter restrictions. But my actual postcode of about 28k residents has only had 1 positive case in this outbreak). I’m over it.
Yeah, Sydney has had it pretty rough recently…
The Netherlands are then closer to the North Pole than Sydney is to the South Pole. In winters it can get down to -10ºC, occasionally lower. But nowadays with climate changes you can’t really expect anything anymore with 40ºC+ in Canada and snow in Texas.
Luckily the lockdowns that we’ve had has only been applied country-wide, so we could travel where ever we wanted. At some point there was an evening curfew from 8.30 PM, but when the days got longer they stopped that luckily.
Very difficult with Europe, you really have no way to stop the virus except to vaccinate. We relied on the oceans to protect us, and it worked (mostly), except this Delta strain infected a taxi driver who caught it from international incoming flight crew, and we’ve been in lockdown since late June. We are quickly trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible because of the outbreak. There are politics though and many people are hesitant to get the AZ vaccine… if I said it hasn’t been well managed please consider that a polite understatement.
And, I’ve just checked a sun calendar. According to it, the latest sunset in my location is 8.10pm which is at early January. It is what it is….
1 Like
Unfortunately being vaccinated doesn’t mean you can’t be a carrier anymore. So welcoming vaccinated tourists doesn’t stop the virus from coming in the country.
Pretty much everybody needs to be vaccinated. Yes, you can still pass it on, but it should give you good protection from really bad effects (eg. Needing to be admitted to ICU) and death. And if you can’t…. Well, try to not get infected. Super difficult…
I have read/saw today there are some drugs that can be taken if you are infected and they can bring your viral load down to zero. Just completed phase 2 clinical trials right now. There’s hope…
1 Like
- Organise rides and turn up no matter what.
Through STFU London, I’ve organised an urban ride every month in a different town or city in the UK since December 2016 and I’ve attended every single one. Even the ones where it was just me and one or two other people. I’ve also organised muni weekends around the UK since 2011.
Before that, I ran Voodoo Unicycles and we organised competitions and events for the urban scene.
- Help beginners. Spend time riding at the back/encouraging people who are struggling. When people feel valued even if they can’t do everything you can, they’ll want to keep riding.
In short, it’s not an overnight explosion, more like 10 years of hard work building a framework. When the pandemic happened and people started Googling unicycling, all this stuff is in place for them to find.
9 Likes