The opening ceromany for UniconX was quite an experience wasn’t it. The closest
I’ve ever come to the Olyimpic thaing. We had seen the young Chinese riders with
banners being put through their paces earlier in the day and wondered what we
would be in for, did we have to make those perfect 90 degree turns as well or
would we get to watch.
Arriving out side the gym in the evening there was a real party atmoshpere ,
national groups were surposed to find the kid with their countries name on and
gather behind that kid in club groups. The China group was huge and included a
drum band on unis, the noise they made was nearly equaled by the Puerto Rican
contingent and their drums and whistles. The UK group sandwiched between Germany
and Hong Kong seemed very small and inconspicuous, but we reasured our selves
that our flag was bigger than any of the others. This was the first time we got
a look at other team shirts too, and many an envious glance was shot at the
Austrialian shirts, very desireable.
Eventully we paraded into the hall, there was an audience… which surprised me
as I thought every body had been out side. We filed into our alloted spot and
stood through a whole heap of speeches. Roger appeared to be making love with
his uni, steve disapeered to start videoing the scene, Isreals banner kid
started to nod off. We all started to nod off.
Freed at last from speechifying we were ushered from the gym floor to our seats.
Then the Uk team were asked to return to the gym floor as we were one of the "
display" teams. China gave a show of dragon danceing, Japan a show of grace and
astounding technicial skill, The swiss shared ballons and cow bells in a big
group formation display, the US offered us the tricks and skill of the Twin
Cities display squad. The Uk… well we don’t do free style .
But we thought we’d share a little of our native culture and demonstrated one
of the folk dances we enjoy at weddings, juggling festivals, piss ups and the
like. Our unicycle dance of Strip the Willow seemed to work out Ok, given that
only one person had heard the music before and we had never danced it with all
of us on unicycles at once before. It was fun, and we came off stage buzzing,
to hear the Americans asking if it was our group free style routine?
Routine. That was no routine, that was a dance we do at parties , it was the
first time we had danced it sober.
Remembering that the UK don’t DO free style it was an auspious start to our
UniconX experience.
sarah
More about the UK and free style in another posting another day.
