There are a few of us heading to the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) Juggling Festival this weekend (March 11 and 12) that are interested in setting up an informal urban trials competition.
Not sure of all the logistics yet but we’re thinking we’ll basically head out for a trials ride around campus. Whenever we come across some interesting obstacles we’ll make up some lines on the fly and get three tries each to clean them. One point for each line you clean.
The tentative start time is Sunday at 11am, meeting at the Student Life Center (where the fest is taking place). Of course whether this is a go will depend a great deal on the weather. According to the long term forecast the temperature should be awesome for this time of year (10ish degrees) but there might be a chance of rain.
Regardless of whether the comp happens I’m hoping to go riding both Saturday and Sunday so it would be great to see some unicyclists in the area come out.
Info about the fest can be found here: http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~imharrow/UWFest06/
I’ll post updates in this thread as they arise. If you are interested in coming out post here or give me a shout: jason at truedimensions dot com
J
well im in hamilton so waterloo is quite close so u just might see me there. ill check back soon.
edit: i can’t come like i thought i might be able to
Just a little bump in case anyone in the area missed it.
Also, Darren will be at the fest. If you want him to bring anything let him know.
J
Our informal urban trials comp went well. There was 7 participants overall and I think that everyone had a good time.
The format worked out quite well. We went around the University of Waterloo campus and chose lines and gave everyone 3 attempts to clear it. If you cleared a line you got 1 point. A few long lines were slit into two segments so in order to get 2 points you had to do the whole thing in one shot or you could get 1 point by just completing a section of the line.
Here is how everyone did:
Jason Allemann 21 points
Devon Eidick 18 points
Bud White 15 points
Karl Roth 13 points
Thomas Roth 12 points
Jon Neill 10 points
Charlie 4 points
I had my camera on continuous shooting mode (1 frame/sec) and took 125 photos during the comp. I posted the best ones in my gallery.
http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=178360
Roman
Yeah, for a quick and easy competition I think this format worked really well, especially since it required zero cost and zero pre-planning. As long as you can find enough interesting lines in the area, you don’t get kicked out and the weather is good you’re set.
It also helped a lot having Roman as the dedicated score keeper and line maker, although everyone had input in what the lines were. I think we ended up with a good mix of gapping, high hopping, skinny riding, technical and long traversal lines.
With many more people, it would probably be better to split into more than 1 group. I could see it taking too long otherwise. Having more than one group, split based on skill level, would also mean each group could attempt different lines that were more appropriate for them.
All in all I thought it was a lot of fun. Just like going on a regular urban trials ride but with some added incentive. Thanks to everyone who participated and to Roman for running it!
J