NAUCC: My last day in Saline
Alright so this was my last day at the event. After getting to bed pretty late the night before with a plethora of drinking on my part (I think my main goal was to just get the rest of the booze down the hatch before I have Jeff inherent it all for his last night, plus feeling grumpy in general for being heat-stroked and sun-burnt.) Jamey had set his phone as the alarm for 7am.
When we finally all woke up got dressed and went for breakfast, we noticed a severe lacking in unicyclists at breakfast. I looked at a clock on the wall and it said it was near 9am. Jamey looked at his phone and it said just near 8am. We figured that his phone that is supposed to automatically change timezones didn’t change far enough, leaving us an hour behind.
Jamey finished off his breakfast, then back to the room to pack up his gear and head to the muni. I followed, but also cleared out a bunch of stuff both of us left behind (mostly the fridge). I went and checked out, and started driving even though I doubt I would have caught most or any of the muni.
I got lost.
Severely lost.
Lost to the point where I went back to the hotel to start over.
At some point when I was really REALLY close I had to stop and ask a garbage man/sanitation worker for directions. Got there with enough time to throw out a few quick sobs for being in such a panic for the past hour and a half. I was okay though.
Followed Darren and the hearse, who followed John, who I believe followed a guy named Andrew, to some sub place that Darren was all into, I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed cherry coke on the fountain even more. Then to the 10 k and uphill/downhill area.
Got there, and found Darren was entered in the 28″+ 10k race without any gear. Darren ended up wearing Jeff’s leg armour, Pete’s gloves and my helmet for this race. And I ended up having Sarah convince me that I wanted to do the 10k 24″ race with her because it was going to be a leisurely ride. I must have been still way hung over or something because I agreed.
After lots of cheers and honks for everyone who was Canadian that I recognized passing by many times over, it was our turn to get up. I grabbed my helmet back from Darren (I had my baseball cap underneath the whole time like I did most of the time when competing to keep the sun out of my eyes) and headed to the starting line.
Me and Sarah (Alice wanted to come too but didn’t have any gear and we had no time to get it off someone who finished the 28″+ race) started at the back of the pack, and pretty well stayed there. I fell off twice generally during uphills. I have very little speed control on a unicycle and on downhills it’s my plan to barrel through them just to stay on. So I would wait for Sarah as she cruised at her pace down them and she’d wait for me on up hills while I attempted to mash my way up. Nearing the finishing line (which wasn’t exactly the start line) I fell off and began walking from being way too winded. Had to get back on when everyone started going at me to ride. So I rode to the finish but promptly got off and called it a race.
Couldn’t breathe.
I definitely wasn’t prepared to ride another lap after the first one near killed me. But I didn’t really want to leave Sarah on her own. She seemed to have fun though, at the second lap around she was hanging out with someone else who was just really along for the ride, and I ended up jogging beside her from the finish line back to the start line to keep her company.
Lots more cheering and honking until the end of the race, then off to find the uphill/downhill course. I never had my tire changed out from my holy roller back to my 2.6″ stout so I didn’t feel up to doing either course. The downhill looked like fun but the decline was pretty steep and I was pretty out of it. I ended up just finding as much shade as I could and hanging out and saying goodbye to everyone as I was leaving straight from the event back to Toronto.
Finally said goodbye to most of the people I wanted to, and that was it for my NAUCC for this year.
It was pretty awesome hanging out with all the Toronto group for as many days as we did. I definitely got to know our core group a lot better from it. Also was fun hanging out with people I’d never met or talked to before. It reaffirms my suspicions that unicyclists are some of the friendliest people out there. Not admitting to being star-struck or anything, but it’s cool to meet people I’d only previously heard about (Like John, Irene, Andy etc). And it’s kind of funny having met people then realizing later just how famous they truly are (Jamey. haha).
The drive home was pretty uneventful. I stopped off for gas at one point since it’s dirt cheap in the states. And couldn’t hardly find my way back onto the interstate. Because no matter what happens, they NEVER have a sign on the side of the road I’m on, and I always have had to pull a U-ey to actually realize I’d passed it. Bloody irritating.
It was pretty amazing though, driving home and hitting no traffic and no wait at the border.
The border was funny because border control asked me where I was (Saline Michigan) what I was doing there (a week long unicycling convention) to please roll down my window… then after seeing my trials and muni with my freestyle hidden in the opposite direction of my back seat… “What, was this an extreme unicycling event?” “They had all sorts of unicycling sir, but yes, I participated in mostly the extreme uni events”
Got home in about the same amount of time it took to drive there. Straight through.
I like driving by myself because I can sing as loudly as I want, and take very few (i.e. NO) breaks to make it to my destination in the shortest amount of time possible, but I sort of like company too. See what happens next time.
