So six days after doing the velo….
I got my very own track-ready bike.
-58cm Black with Yellow steel Rossin track frame
-Carbon forks (not original steel – brake ready)
-Miche 165 cranks
-Miche BB
-Black Mavic Open Pro Rims with silver spokes
-American Classic front hub
-Miche Rear Hub
-48×16 gearing
-Vittoria Rubino Pro tires
-Deda Stem
-Standard drop bars
-Miche Post
I swear london hates me or something.
Last week while going to London to visit the Forest City Velodrome, the going there was fine (we were late for our own stupidity) but the going home SUCKED. Why did it suck? Well for a good stretch of the highway 401 heading East towards Toronto, they had shut down the highway to one lane. At 4-5pm in the afternoon on a Saturday. Why? Because the signs had us believe Road Painting Ahead. But in actuality, there was a big long chunk of the highway that was shut down so that there could be three people with what looked like floor-buffers in tight succession working together. And the highway was shut down for a while after that as well. Making me more than 2 hours late for my… uh… “date.”
This week going to London (why am I going to london so much anyways?) for the Santa Claus parade, they shut down the entire highway for a grand chunk of it, forcing everyone onto this backwater EDR (Emergency Detour Route) which took forever. I was over an hour and a half late this time. Seeing as how I planned for a 30 minute buffer due to traffic, I was an hour late for the parade. Thankfully we’re unicyclists, and we have no float to set up, just unicyclsts to get together.
The parade itself was okay. A lot of kids aren’t impressed with unicycles keep telling you to catwalk (a wheelie on a bike) and a lot of others keep yelling to do backflips, which I’ll never understand. The one group of kids I kind of thought were funny even though they were jerks, when they said “Do a trick!” I stopped riding and hopped for them. “Do something better!” So I hopped in a 180°… and that’s really the extent of my tricks. But it wasn’t impressive apparently. Meh, whatever. They’re the ones heckling people performing, not me. I got to high-five a lot of kids too, and tried and missed many others. High energy but very tiring and extremely hot. It was a really warm day for a parade, not like last year where it was freezing cold.
What absoloutely SUCKED was that we kept getting really squished in. We got put in behind a truck-float thingie, and a bunch of firefighters who were collecting canned goods. And they kept creeping up on us. To where we had less than I would say 20 feet of space for our 11 cyclists. While yes we can FIT into such a small space, it’s not impressive looking since we can’t DO anything. It got worse when they were even overtaking us, with their people who were collecting food in shopping carts were lined up right to the float infront of us, which doesn’t help US any since then no one can see the cyclists. Also there were a lot of the volunteers walking through us creating more obsticles than we really needed. I’m all for them collecting food. But the parade only goes so fast. After talking to the marshals who talked to the group they finally kept well away from us giving us room to show off and just be merry and ride around.
The drive home was thankfully uneventful, I cruise-controlled it most of the way home at about 130km/h, dropped off the kids I was driving back with their dad and drove home and got into bed around 12:30.
And was up before 4am to drive my mom to the Airport.
Thus, I’m skipping the Milton parade today, in an attempt to sleep in (got home at 5, slept from probably 6:30 until 10ish) and trying to organize a few things at home.
Sweet.
This past Saturday was my friend Phil’s birthday party. He decided to have it at the Forest City Velodrome, in London Ontario. This track is indoors, made of wood, it apparently used to be a dirt track according to some people who thought it still was, and before that was a hockey rink, and boasts that it’s the shortest and steepest track in the world.
Velodrome racing/riding is done on track bikes, basically fixed gear bikes, that haven’t touched the streets, have no breaks, and no gears. It was an IAM event so Phil named the event “IAM invades the Terrordrome” (for the terrifying size & banks of the track… and that it was supposed to be a somewhat halloween event)
Unless I’m mistaken, the track boasts as being 138 metres long, with a 50° incline. That’s short. Being the shortest and steepest track in the world. Crazyness. Most tracks have big long flat spots where you can get some of your speed, this felt like you were constantly turning. It was awesome, a headrush, and when you hit that bank for the first time you’re convinced you’re riding straight into a brick wall.
Personally I honestly did very horrid on my track time. The instructors pulled me off the track before I could try riding in a group, because I had very little control of my bike. I’ll admit I didn’t have much if any control, mainly due to the fact that I’m not used to riding a bike. I’m used to my unicycle where I use my body to move into turns (seeing as how a unicycle has no handlebars) and on the track especally it’s very important to keep upright while turning the handlebars to make any manevours.
Right now I’m looking into getting my own track bike off craigslist, and I’m looking forward to the next time we go back to the velodrome (it would definately be a fun to go again and especally if i had my own bike to go with) and generally not be as afraid as I was this time.
This picture was posted on Phil’s IAM page stating that it’s me riding. Personally I really can’t tell so I’m only going from his say so.
Tis my friend’s birthday yesterday. For the past 3 years I’ve bought him the same birthday present, his name as a domain name. It was cool the first year, and since has just become a very boring present. Oh well!
Yesterday was also unicycle club meet day so me and Phil went there first after I picked him up from work. From his house where I got to try out a very little bike, we went to the house to hang out with his puppy, another puppy-ish dog, the owner of said other puppyish dog as well as Kelly, the girlfriend to Phil.
Then we went to unicycle club to hang out, and notice how the membership for the club has totally exploded we were counting in the high 40’s for number of people who were on one wheel. That’s a lot considering when I first started all this jazz I was remembering low-teens of people showing up. The gym was definately feeling crowded and cramped. I can now mount the unicycle with the seat in front of me, and hop, but I’m trying to learn how to ride with the seat out. I seem to master everything hopping first.
From there we headed towards the bar for nacho night, where I invited my friend Alex to show up after work. I was also a bit of a dunce and told him to call me, and also didn’t put my phone on viberate. Without the viberate feature I couldn’t know that my phone had been ringing so oops, he called 3 times, then just sort of showed up. He had fun though he says, and enjoyed the nachos even though he still claims he makes better at home. I’ll…. I’ll believe him on that.
Conversations are fun though. When Kelly got there me and her had one of the most boring conversations ever, we were discussing spiral bound notebooks and colour-coordinating binders from work and/or school. I was saying how I couldn’t do the giant spiral bound notebooks because I had too many handouts and printouts so I was forced to use lots of binders. The conversation was awesome, and even moreso when we realized just how boring we were.
I didn’t get rip-roaring drunk since I had to drive home still but we stayed until about midnight. I was getting tired and so was Alex so we ditched out early and drove home. Stupid highways that shut down 4 of 5 lanes when there’s still lots of traffic on the road!!
So last Thursday I was told about a “Unicycle Workshop” being held north of the city on Tuesday (Today) and since I didn’t have a job I’m thinking “Hey, I should go and help out!”
I was told that it would be something like a “hey, try out a unciycle” type of workshop, where we would probably have kids get on the unicycle, get them to go 10 feet hanging onto us, and that’s about it. Well I said sure I’ll go, and found out that we had to be there at 9am. Ughs. The place is a good half an hour away from my house on non-traffic days. So we had to leave my house at 8am. Thankfully I lived close and was on the way, I got to sleep in the most! (I was awake at about 6:30am)
Get there, and basically find out that it’s really more of a demonstration. Where we would be doing like a demo & performance and explaining unicycles to these students being hearded into the gym.
There was Marcus from Detroit who organized it (his sister is a teacher at the school and started a small unicycle club afterschool program, so they wanted to bring some unicyclists in to show what can be done) and then Darren Bedford, Jeff, Chaim and myself. I didn’t even bring a unicycle because I didn’t think I’d need it! Silly me!
The best part is that there was two demo’s we had to do. Grades 4-7 were first, and Kindergarden-3 was second. The unicycle club at the school is geared towards grades 4-7 so we did more talking and information for them. The little kids we figured we couldn’t keep their attention as well so we just made fun of ourselves instead.
I really can’t do a figure-8 while riding, and I expecially can’t do it with a group so I kept dropping out. I could almost get the star pattern going which was at least half decent. Riding other people’s uni’s is always a challenge as well.
The kids seemed to all really enjoy it, we had to leave and I’ve been home ever since.
It was cool though, I really liked it and I really need to work on my skills!!
