in the (unlikely) event of any south african unicyclists lurking around these forums, i thought i’d post info about the ongoing saga of trying to get some uni-hockey going in south africa
we’ve now found a venue, an outdoor in-line hockey rink
complete with a wall that’s about 1m high all the way around the rink
the corners are nicely bevelled and they have goal posts
all we need now are the players…
brass tacks:
Saturday 3rd of July
Ranger’s In-Line Hockey Rink
c/o Short- and Boundary Streets
Linden
(directly opposite the Linden Police Station.)
(used to be the Linden Tennis Club)
(still so indicated in the map-book)
time:
13h00-16h00 (yeah, right!)
bring:
uni (20" or 24")
street hockey stick (there r some xtras lying around)
tennis ball (we seem to pop them at a fair rate)
sensible shoes (allways wanted to write that)
sense of fun and humour
cost:
R25-00 per player (this what they’re charging us for the use of the rink)
spectators free!!
soft drinks and snacks will be on sale from their kiosk
i’ll bring a cooler bag in case anyone is in need of ‘being beered’
beer profits will go into the fund to get us to the next international uni-hockey tournament
Hockey is great for beginners because you can get from almost not riding a unicycle at all to riding it okay and playing hockey so quickly. It might be worth going to the local paper to try and attract some beginners, or people who used to ride a unicycle when they were younger.
here’s a rough draft of the press release i’m going to send out
i’m leaving it this late because i’m not sure how many people are actually going to pitch up and i dont want a journo to pitch up with only three of us playing
at least this way they’ll know about it and if there is any interest from the local press, they can phone me and we can set something up later
as for the ‘pretty organised’ part of it…
smoke and mirrors my friend
'-)
Unicycle Hockey Finds a Home in South Africa
Unicycle Hockey is a game that’s been descibed as ‘a jolly good workout,
great fun and not entirely serious’. ‘Quite so’ says Dave Walters, member of
the steering commitee working to establish this emerging sport in South
Africa, 'since a unicycle can’t coast your legs are constantly engaged in
propelling and balancing. The body’s constant micro-adjustments for balance
is also beneficial in the same posture-enhancing way as Pilates training.
Doing all of this while concentrating on an unfolding game of hockey forces
the riding to become almost automatic. Think about the skating in ice-hockey
or, more pertinently, In-Line Hockey. ’
More pertinently indeed as South Africa’s Uni-Hockey found a new home at Randburg Rangers In-Line Hockey Club opposite the Linden SAP. Richard Cook of Rangers said they are only too happy to make their facilities available to the Uni-Hockey players. “We know first hand how difficult it can be to establish a sport and we’re happy to help.”
The first Uni-Hockey meeting at the Ranger’s venue will take place on Saturday the 3rd of July at 13h00. Dave invited everybody. ‘If you’ve always wanted to learn to ride a unicycle, you are more than welcome to come around on Saturday. There will be more than anough unicycles to try and more than enough people to help. Once you’ve learnt how to ride, I can almost guarantee that you’ll want to give Uni-Hockey a go. And if you just want to come around to make sure that we’re ACTUALY going to play hockey on Unicycles, it’ll be good to have you.’
‘Remember’ says Dave, ‘it takes twice the athlete to ride half the b*ke!.’
ps. i haven’t sent this out at all so if there are any copyright issues with the half-quote lifted from the Luni website (about uni-hockey being not entire serious) or Harper’s ‘twice the athlete…’
speak now
Might I suggest that you run it through a spell check before making it “Official”. I don’t mean to be nit-picky (please note sarcasm) but I’m not certain if “anough” is actually a measure of quantity.
hey! sarcasm-junkie…
i was planning on running it through the girlfriend
she can fix grammar as well
and boy do i need it
then again, if this thread continues the way it’s going now, the spelling will be perfect in no time
maybe i should start a new thread with that piece of text as the first post and call the thread ‘Most Re-Writes’
mmm…
(btw. i spend most of my time working on a PC that does not have any word-processing software. that’s my excuse and i’m sticking to it.)
nickjb, jayne (and her recently aquired digi-cam) would be in charge of taking photos at and of the event
so i’m hoping we’ll be able to stick something up here on monday
As I am now official photographer, I’ll try to have a gallery up by Sunday. Maybe I’ll even manage to squeeze in a video of Dave saying “kewl” for all the interested parties.
after all the talk of rough drafts (ahem…), official versions and spell-checkers, check this out…
and bookmark the site
i have no idea if anything will come of it, but it sure can’t hurt
not off the top of my head
we’re in the beginning phase of creating a cyber-home for unicycling in south africa so that less people buy a uni, learn to ride and then kinda chucks it in the garage
because the numbers are so small (and most of us came to unicycling thru juggling) we decided to have only one initiative so as not to needlessly split our efforts
for more info, please visit the Yahoo group that we created
we’ll use this untill such time as www.juggle.co.za is up and running
i hope to eventually have www.unicyclist.co.za to serve the uni community exclusively
if u do know of any uni’ers in south africa anywhere, please get them in touch with me or me in touch with them?
thanx
time to BUMP this thread again
we’ve decided to move our playing time a bit later in the afternoon as summer is arriving with some conviction and 13h00 in the afternoon is still quite blistering
to do that, we had to move out playing day as well
so, in the unlikely event of any lurking south african unicyclists reading this, we’ll get together on SUNDAY the 7th of November at 15h00
if u’re interested in joining us, there are directions on how to find the venue higher up in this thread
i wish u could set a monthly BUMP on a thread
then i wouldn’t have to search to find this one again
but i’ll hang in there
fully believing that one day, one lurking south african unicyclist will see this thread and join us for a thrilling game of unihoki
we’re playing agin this sunday, the 5th of dec, at 15h00
after the game, we’ll perform the time-honoured south african tradition of a ‘bring-n-braai’
Oh no GILD! If we could, I guess many people would set the BUMP
feature on their threads, and we might spam our own forum to death.
Feel free to manually bump though, because it is driven by your
continued passion and that’s OK.
As far as I’m concerned, it would be OK if the automatically bumped
threads are copied to a separate Autobump forum - in addition to
remaining unchanged on the original forum. The Autobump forum will get
known as the forum of stuff you’ve seen before and is likely to be
outdated anyway. How many people would go there? And on a regular
basis at that, or a specific thread is already ‘bumped down’ by
others.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“Deflating pi does not reduce calories, it just concentrates them. - billham”
have no fear Klaas, i was (half) kidding
either way, i would see it as a moderator’s tool (a bit like making a thread ‘Sticky’) and not one for the rest of us to wield at will
just some feedback ref the unihoki
it’s taken since July, but we finally managed to get a ‘proper’ game of unihoki together
by ‘proper’ i mean that we had 10 players and could play 5-a-side for the first time
comparing yesterday’s play to our initial wobbles in July was kinda fun
i emailed south africa’s main ‘Cycling’ TV show, called SuperCycling , last week and told them about us and what we’re doing and basically told them that we can do with all the exposure we can get and i’m sure they can do with an entertaining filler
the guy just phoned me back 5minutes ago
sadly he missed yesterday but asked me to forward him our list of fixtures (we have a list of fixtures now?!? ) so we can get together next year as they’d love to cover it
and once we have them at the UniHoki, we’ll get them to cover the long-distance riders
we’re just waiting for some uploading to take place then i’ll post a link to the pics from yesterday
we experimented with a new photographer yesterday
by early next year we should also be able to record the games on a digi-vid cam so we can sit and do video-analysis after the game
smoke, mirrors and good fun
on the downside, the In-Line Hockey Rink we’ve been using has recently been resurfaced
they used a bitumin-based surface which is wonderfull to play on but, according to someone from the club, a bit too soft to deal with the pedals of the unis when a player falls
the indentations cause by the pedals may be a problem
we’re looking into rubber-strips to place around the ends of the pedals because we really don’t want to lose this venue
i hope u enjoyed the break 'cause as of right now, we’re ba-a-ack
First UniHoki Meet for Twenty-oh-Five will be this Sunday the 16th at 15h00
usual place
R35 per player
spectators free
if u need directions, shout
this is still an issue
Jason got a whole bunch of rubber pipes that should be ideal for this purpose
we’ll cable-tie them onto the pedals before the game on Sunday and then a representative of the InLine Club will inspect them and make the call
if they decide that we can’t use the main rink, we can use a tennis court at the same venue and look for something better for next month, but i’m hopefull
i’m also hoping that the lure of TV coverage might work in our favour:p
) so we can get together next year as they’d love to cover it
