I was sitting here working from my computer while the kids were watching tv when in the periphery I noticed there was a unicyclist on TV.
It turns out it was part of PBS Kids programming on a show called “Cyberchase”. At the end of the animated episode (described below) there is a short bit of live action that relates to the topic. This geeky looking guy is planning a trip to see his sick grandmother. He has decided to ride his unicycle. He knows that he can ride 5 miles in 1 hour so he creates a chart to determine how long it will take for him to ride to his grandmothers house (20 miles).
He determines that it will take him 4 hours. The next morning he oversleeps and doesn’t leave for grandmas until noon. In his first hour of riding he goes 7 miles. He graphs his progress. Pleased with his progress he starts goofing around. It shows him riding around in stores and such. Anyway at the 3 hour mark he’s way behind and has a flat tire. Luckily he finds a friend in a minivan who is travelling his way. They offer him a ride and he accepts.
When he arrives at his grandmothers house she is no longer feeling ill. She says “I’m feeling much better. In fact, I think I’ll go for a spin on my unicycle. Do you want to join me?”. To which the geeky guy turns to the camera and groans.
Anyway I was pleasantly surprised to find unicycling depicted like this on the television. It basically implied that it’s quite normal to ride around on a unicycle. My kids (who both ride) thought it was pretty cool too.
Here are the details about the episode that I found at www.pbskids.org.
Thursday Oct 17 4:30PM
Return to Sensible Flats
Topic: Line Graphs
Something is amiss with the bliss of Sensible Flats. The reservoir is dry. The town is out of water. And the folks who live there are leaving as fast as they can. But why? When the kids and Digit arrive, they use line graphs to reveal the true story of what happened – and all lines lead to Hacker, the newest resident of Sensible Flats. The Big Idea: You can use a line graph to tell a story about how things change, and make predictions