Wow, poor unloved little blog…. it’s really been over half a year since anything has been posted?  Pathetic.  This probably mean two things – random posts now end up on Facebook and… well… I guess I just don’t think about posting here anymore.  Facebook really has replaced this blog for the kinds of things I tend to post – mostly because I didn’t really use Facebook much in the past and I tended to use the blog for just kind of talking to myself.  I know – that sounds odd – but sometimes writing is like having a conversation with myself and it helps to think things through.  And Facebook doesn’t seem to work for that kind of lunacy.

And thinking about the talking-to-myself thing, it’s been nice realizing that I’ve been in a really good place lately – and it’s mostly due to getting back into unicycling.  And it was dog poop that got me back into it.  Um, what??  We were walking the dog recently, he stopped to “do his business”, and we quickly realized that we didn’t have a poop bag in the little poop bag carrier thingy that’s on the end of his leash.  Even though it was only about two tenths of a mile from the house, I didn’t feel like getting a bag and walking back – and getting in the car to drive that short distance would have just been lame.  Then it hit me – put some air in the unicycle and see if it was still possible to ride the bloody thing!

Well, I found out pretty quickly that I could still ride – and it was quite fun.  Since then I’ve been riding almost every day and slowly building up leg strength, stamina, and balance.  Each day I go a little farther and some days I work on things like riding up hills, riding backwards, and teetering.  I also decided it was finally time to finish the restoration of my Schwinn Giraffe six footer that I took apart ten years ago.  I had bought new parts and sourced some original Schwinn components on Ebay, so it was really just a matter of cleaning and repacking the wheel bearings and crank bearing, cleaning and polishing, and putting everything back together.  With some step ladder assistance in the driveway and a very nervous Barb watching, I got on and rode about thirty feet.  Did that a couple of times then decided it was time for a real road test.

The next step was to put the tall one in the back of Barb’s SUV and head over to the local high school.  Chain link fence next to a smooth asphalt parking lot seemed to make sense – ain’t no way I was ready for free-mounting.  First death grip release from the fence felt tentative at first, but I quickly got the feel for it and had a good ride around the parking lot.  Came back to the fence and dismounted a little less gracefully than I hoped, but I got on again and rode off with this ride feeling even better.  The third ride was very smooth but I quickly realized that having ridden the standard uni in the morning and then three rides on this thing in the afternoon had left me a little too tired to continue.  I rode back towards the fence, did a very well controlled dismount, and when I landed on the pavement my knees and legs didn’t absorb the shock very well – one knee screamed at me and it really did not feel very good at all.  Needless to say (or is that knee-less??) it gave me some pause and I have not been as excited to get back on the tall one.  I plan to get back into it, but it’s going to be slowly – and with shorter distances – and no knee-crunching dismounts until I talk to a PT or sports doc and make sure nothing is trashed…