The other day I stopped by Safeway to pick up some milk. As I was leaving I attempted to mount but I missed the pedal and my cycle shot out behind me. Perhaps it was the galon of milk in my hand, or my new extra wide pinned pedals, as I haven’t done that in a long time.
An officer standing by the door handed my unicycle back to me, and the safeway beggar guy yells “do you do that every day?” As I rode away I couldn’t help laughing out loud.
So what are some of your best/worst, most hilarious unicycle related spectacles?
Well, although it’s not that funny, I once rode past a family with two small children where the kids kept shouting “Dad, ask him, is it hard, dad, ask him is it hard…”
I found it quite funny at the time because everybody turned to look what kind of mad-men were shouting like that. And I think the father was a little embarrased.
A couple years ago, I tried a mount out in the street in front of my house. My heel slipped over the front of the pedal and I fell backwards and landed flat on my back. That wasn’t so bad, but the carload of high schoolers driving by at just the right time had a gas with it. I could hear them howling with laughture as they drove away.
Last Saturday morning I was out with Pete, unisk8r, on the Burke-Gillman Trail, a local rails-to trails multi-use path. Pete on Purple Phaze and I was on Blue Shift.
Between Pete’s better luck at a street crossing and his higher gear ratio I had fallen behind and was doing my best to keep up. I was riding at a pretty good speed (for me) when I UPD’d about 50 feet behind an elderly gentleman walking ahead of me. He did not know I was coming up behind him.
I had to do a full speed run out, straight at him. I was wearing 661 Dually’s so the flat soles were really slapping loudly on the pavement.
About the time I got right behind the walker he turned around and said, “You trying to scare me?”.
Two summers ago I rode to and back from our public library. The last bit coming back is a fairly steep hill. As I approached it I saw two teenage boys who had passed me some time back walking their bikes up the hill. I thought I’d show them what a unicycle can do and I rode up the hill and passed them feeling rather smug. At the top as I was switching over to the other side of the road to enter my development my legs just gave out and I collapsed and fell forward rather hard and inelegantly. I cut my hands and knees in the process and looked like the complete idiot. I got up, brushed myself off, remounted, and rode the last couple of hundred feet and never looked back. I can only imagine what they were doing.
I was once riding in a park, and had the worst nutbuster in months, I lay on the ground for a while writhing and groaning in agony as two loud mouthed must-be-10-year-olds walked by laughing. I was too out of it to even get up and do anything.
I’m still not a great rider but my UPDs are getting fewer and fewer. It just seems that Murphy’s Law is alive and well in that whenever I do UPD it’s seems like it’s ALWAYS in front of somebody. I haven’t experienced out and out laughter yet but I’ve crashed hard enough to elicit some sympathic groans and a few "Hey man, you alright?"s.
Well my best time ever on a unicycle, so I guess it wasn’t embarrassing, but I was unicycling around a local highschool and some highschoolers were on bikes trying to jump the loading dock unsuccesfully. While I was just gonna ride past, they yelled somthing stupid, to vulgar to say, and well anywho I rode back over to them an asked the if they would like to give it a try. Needless to say they couldn’t do it, so they gave me “Oh well he doesn’t have any balls.” So they just kinda went back to there unsuccessful loading dock jump so I went and jumped up the stairs and snaked one of the guys and did this like 180 like thing kinda on accendent but I rode off backwards and then I just kinda rode off laughing, it was awosme…
worst unicycle experience was probably when i was riding to school one day with my project (posterboard) in my back pack, and i fell right in the middle of the rode. thank goodness no one was there, i dont what i would have done. thankfully most of my falls arent around anyone.
