Matthew likes to ride a unicycle. In fact, he can juggle while riding a unicycle. But, I never had any idea of how popular unicycling is until the National Unicycling Convention and Championships came to town this week.
More than 250 avid unicyclists from all around the country are in town for a week of activities, which include street racing, a 10K race, a marathon, mountain unicycling, and artistic competitions.
We drove over to the Goodman Community Center on Sunday to see what this is all about. There were big people on big bikes — wait, bikes have two wheels, are unicycles called uniks; I’ll call them bikes but you know what I mean! There were small people on small bikes. There were even big people on small bikes and small people on big bikes. Men, women, boys, and girls of all ages were on unicycles of all sizes. It was a real menagerie of single-wheeled cyclists and I thought that it was very interesting, though I doubt that I will ever try it.
Some streets were closed off so that the unicyclists could race around the block. I think a race consisted of four laps. It was interesting to see that it wasn’t only the big people who crossed the finish line first; many of the fast riders were small people on small bikes.
Here are a few photos from Sunday’s events.
