A quick pic from my latest ride. I’m working from home, and it has been raining all week, and I was just out and saw the river was high, meaning one section that is usually too rocky to swim, is now a lovely fast rapid. So, this is kind of a ride report, but a bonus river report too!
So, I rode out to the bottom of the section, passing a bunch of kids playing tennis - “Look there’s a man on a unicycle!”* Checked no-one was fishing, and that the river looked safe and dumped my running shoes there. Then I rode back to the top of the swim section, past the kids again - “Look, unicycle man again!”, in a sudden downpour, quickly dumped my riding shoes, unicycle & top and got in the river fast, before any busybody told me I was doing something stupid. Into the current - the first section was funnelling on either side of a nasty tree on so I swum hard on river right, and the current suddenly dragged me into the first wave, which was probably only a foot tall, but it felt like a rollercoaster dropping me into the trough after it. The next section I was dragged pretty fast, and even with the water a good foot higher than normal, it was a bit of a rock-fest, a couple of times I had to drag myself over them, then suddenly it comes out into deep water and it is just a lovely smooth, strong current pulling me along to my bag drop, which I just managed to spot in time to break out and get up the bank, then I bunged my running shoes and a fleece on and ran the 800m back to the unicycle (“Look, unicycle man hasn’t got a unicycle this time!”), bunged the rest of my stuff into my bag, and then rode off as quickly as possible, back home, and up my street, which is itself a bit of a muni ride, being surfaced with large rocks instead of tarmac (as was the fashion in the 1790s).
The stats:
Time: 30 minutes 21 seconds
Ride 1: 2700m
Swim: 465m (in under 5 minutes - pretty close to 400m world record pace!)
Run: 800m
Ride 2:520m
The picture shows one of the tamer bits of the river after the main rapid. I took it when I was scoping out the swim.
Joe
- It occurs to me, if one is trying to be a bit low key and not to attract attention, perhaps a unicycle is not the best choice of personal transport!
