Unicycle ride: Mr Toads and Hole in the Ground
Last weekend when my cat disappeared I was busy having fun doing some mountain unicycling. I might as well remember the good stuff.
Saturday a group of us rode Mr Toads Wild Ride as a 13′ish mile shuttle. I think it was my fourth time riding this trail (hopefully by writing it on my blog I can keep track better). Here’s some info here on singletracks about the ride. It is one of my all time favorite rides in California. It is very taxing on the body, and tough to ride all the way up. This was my first time riding it on the geared 24 mountain unicycle, and it was totally fun to blast past the easy stuff towards the end — nice and curvy with a few bumps and tough parts mixed in every now and again.
Nathan got a great video of me doing an epic crash:
It hurt a bit, and I ended up bending the neck of my frame about 10 degrees back. I also bent my handlebar! On the ride: Aaron, Jason, Nathan, Geoff F., Bevan and myself. We carpooled up in double priuses.
On Sunday we rode “Hole in the Ground”. Bevan captured a map with his iPhone 4.
It was about 13 miles, with lots of up and down. It feels as though you are climbing the whole time. This ride was epic; it started hailing, then turned to light rain, and later was snowing a bit. Nathan had a good fall and hurt his shoulder and fingers a bit. John Foss also came for the fun. This was my second time riding the trail; I rode it last year at muni weekend; both times on my geared 24.
This weekend I’ll be going to Vancouver for some more epic unicycling at the “VanUni” muni weekend.
Parking at West Cliff, Santa Cruz
Broken Handlebar Repair
While in New Zealand, I broke the handlebar on my KH24. The thin tubing failed due to too much stress on the joint. The braze held up fine, and it broke right above it. While in NZ, I quickly re-welded it together (temporarily) with a MIG welder and a face shield that I totally couldn’t see out of. The result was a weld that held up for a few months..but that was about it. So, it finally broke again.
I cut the bad part off the handlebar part and ground some of the paint away. Notice the replacement tube in the right.
I took off the part that attaches to the seat post and ground off the junk:
The fix is a larger diameter tube that the regular one can slide into. It is thicker, and should make it last longer. I cut a 45 in the tube (NOTE after using it: 40 degrees, or less, would have been better):
After a few swipes of a 1/2 round file I had a fishmouth that fit perfectly:
I braze it together and powder coated it red:
The angle is a little too steep, but it works again!
Tandem Unicycle Practice
I brought the tandem unicycle with me to Yosemite this past weekend weekend. I was hoping Louise and I would get a chance to ride it, but she was sick all weekend and it started raining/hailing/snowing. Luckily Scott Bond and I practice a bit before the storm set in. Here’s a shot video I made of the footage. Enjoy!
Click above for the large version, 37 MB, H.264 encoded.
Also available: Tandem Uni Practice – small version at 8 MB.
Also available on YouTube:
Photography: Pincushions and Unis
Photography: Coker in the Grass
Rob’s Ride.
We did one of our favorite ride’s today, “Rob’s Ride”, with the famous Rob, Ken, Louise and myself. I dragged my camera around and took a few pictures.
Route: http://www.mapmyfitness.com/view_workout?w=810127162306730208
Recumbent Unicycle
Not a pretty beast, and not easy to ride. It took me thee weeks of practice before I could ride it, and only after that could I “sort of” ride it. No free mounting or anything crazy like that. The balance point is just crazy difficult compared to a regular unicycle.
Here’s a video of me riding it on 1/31/2010:
I still plan to “shine it up” and build a small backrest. I originally wanted a nice large backrest, but I decided that it would hinder the ride ability of it.
Here’s the building process, which went together really fast (it is a hack):
Cut up a bike and figure out roughly where I wanted things:
All trial and error, with some guessing:
Weld a seat together out of some old bike tubes:
Weld it all together and cover the seat:
Hmm…not too elegant of “steps”.
Powder Coating a KH24 Mountain Unicycle
Louise got me a powder coating gun for Christmas, and my friend Eric gave me his old stove so I could do some homebrew powder coating. I finally got it all together and did my KH24 frame.
First, I used some stripper to get my frame nice and clean. Originally I used some orange “natural” stripper, but it didn’t work at all, and I ended up having to buy the caustic nasty stuff to get the job done. It took 3 or 4 coats before all the paint was off, which was essential in getting a good finish:
I sprayed it first with red, baked it for 20 mins, and it was done! I masked the side with some tape and sprayed again with black to leave a red stripe:
The tape didn’t work all too well, and left some rough edges and overspray marks…but heck, it was my first try, and I’m quite happy with the results.
New Zealand, UNICON, and me
New Zealand is an awesome place. The scenery is just amazing, and the country is very open to adventure sports.
I was luck enough to travel with three of my really good friends: Nathan Hoover, his wife Grace Fleming and their son Beau Hoover. Nathan kindly shared a bunch of his pictures with me, so I’d love to show them to the blogosphere.
We first arrived in Queenstown and did some various activities, including a day of trials riding. Andy Cotter let me borrow his super lightweight custom KH20 (with a titanium hub!). Here’s me hopping up a ledge, including a pre-hop that compresses the tire all the way:
I only hop “seat out” to the left, so here is a picture of the front:
One one of the beautiful days in Queenstown, Nathan, Beau, me and Scott Wilton rode up to the top of one of the local hills from the lakefront YHA hostel. Here is a shot of the scenery that Nathan took:
A day or so later I rode my KH36 up to Coronet Peak, where Grace had done some parasailing the day before. The rest of the gang drove the car up, and Nathan snapped a few pictures out the window of me grinding up the hill. This was my last real training ride for UNICON:
Fast forward a few days and we went to visit our friends John and Mandy from Escape Adventures (the guys who ran the Africa Uni tour we did the past summer). I broke my handlebar on the ride, but luckily John had a MIG setup so I could (blindly) fix it up:
An AWESOME picture of the 10km startup that Nathan took. I’m in the center in yellow/white. I got 2nd, while Scott (to my right) got first, but also crashed twice during the race! “Team USA” did awesome — Beau (fourth from the right side of the picture in white) got 3rd.
Battling Jan (from Germany) for a place during the first lap, with Beau behind me:
In the end it was the three USA guys battling it out, with Jan close behind:
The next day was trials. I didn’t have enough space for a 20″ trials uni. I was really lucky, as Tom from Australia kindly let me borrow is really nice KH20. You can barely spot me in the picture, hopping from one thing to another:
The next day was “muni”. I did the uphill and downhill, and then was fairly beat for the 8 mile “cross country” course. I ended up only doing 2 laps (4 miles or so) and saving myself for the Marathon race the next day (which was a good idea), since I’m better at long distance riding.
Nathan also got a few great pictures of me during the Marathon race. Here I am out in the lead:
That’s the short story of my NZ UNICON adventure. It was a blast, but I can’t wait to go back with my lovely wife, Louise and explore some more of the islands.