Third post ever (aka I wonder how long I'm going to keep this blog post counting up for)

# miles last week: 55
# miles so far this week: 8 (but its only Tuesday, and yesterday was a bank holiday)
Darmstadt fund: £2.50

Well, hokey dokey, what's been happening? Well, last Monday I chose to ride from home to the bus station in Nottingham. Only 6 miles. However, if I was to say cats and dogs, it would be a great understatement about the weather. Some of the main road was partially flooded, and it looked like it was going to rain like that for another 39 days and nights. My biggest worry was that Noah wasn't going to let me on unless my unicycle had its wheels two by two! Anyway, I got to the bus station and rung out my socks, as I'd bought clean ones with me. However, everything else for the week that was in my backpack got wet, and I had to sit for the 3 hour coach ride to Nottingham in soaking padded cycling shorts. Not plesant :-(

Overall last week was fairly quiet, and I only clocked up 55 miles. Riding home last Wednesday, and back in Thursday it was heavy rain again. Do I really do this for fun?

Well, today I got the email about the 6th international unicycle hockey tournament in Darmstadt(Germany). Although I'm not a bad unicyclist, I'm not a great hockey player. But it will be so much fun out there. The guys that went last year spent about £180. It's 12 weeks away, so as long as I can save at least £15 per week by riding instead of taking public transport, then I can justify going. I've got £2.50 so far :-)

Second blog post ever!

Mileage since start of blog - 78 miles

Ok, so I started this blog with the intention of updating it almost daily, but with the realistic expectation that after the novelty had worn off it would get much less frequent. So, 6 days after the first post, I guess it's time for a follow up one :-)

One of my aims of this is to keep a record of my achievements and accomplishments. So, here's a few stats from recent times; 3 weeks ago, 59 miles in 6 days. 2 weeks ago 66 miles in 5 days, which includes 9 miles from the porterhouse to Leytonstone without a dismount and a 42 min ride from Holborn to Leytonstone. Last week I clocked up 78 miles in 6 days, one of which was 8 miles in the morning, and 23 in the evening.

So, still reading, or has that put you to sleep yet? Well, the other bit of exciting news is that my package from unicycle.com arrived. This included Defect DVD, a crank extractor, and, most importantly of all, a new Nimbus gel saddle.

Defect was amazing! Quite mind blowing. It's certainly going to be one of those films that I will watch again and again.

The new saddle... Aaaah lovely! I hadn't really expected it to make that much difference, but it really does. The standard udc one isn't exactly uncomfortable, but after some time in it, it can make one, well, want to change positions fairly frequently. But the Gel saddle, even for the 23 miler, was great. It's a much lower profile than the standard one, which I didn't really appreciate until I was riding home the first night, and wondered why my knees were up around my ears. With hindsight, I should have known that changing a saddle which is an inch and a half lower means it needs the seat post to be raised an inch and a half.

And the crank extractor? Well, I was able to swap back my 127mm cranks for the 110mm ones today. I've been out on a 12 mile run to check them out, and although they are much much faster than the 127s, it really is at the expense of control and breaking. 9 miles in central London after a couple of beers without a dismount was much easier than a 6 mile trip to Long Eaton with multiple dismounts. I guess it's just a case of re-learning the 110s again!

First Blog Post... Ever!

Well, you know how when something happens, you sometimes think that you'd like to share it with everyone, despite the fact that no one will be interested... well, that's been happening a lot lately. It had kind of crossed my mind that maybe I should get a Blog, but it never crossed my mind at a time that I had any opportunity to do anything about it. Until now!

So... ummm... well... here's my first post!

So, what great insight in to the human psyche have I got for you to kick this all off? Well, it's simple really. Learn to do your ruck sack zip up properly. I left work this evening, and was unicycling down Theobalds Road, and had just crossed Grays Inn Road (somewhere near here; but a bit to the left - I've not learned how to position markers where I want in Google Maps yet!), when I suddenly noticed that my overloaded ruck sack suddenly felt quite light and bouncy. This is a pretty busy junction at the best of times, so I was kind of expecting to get cut up by a taxi at any moment (it happens 3 out of 5 times), but the realisation that all my clothes were streaming out of my back pack like it was a party popper suddenly gave me more fear! A quick check behind me confirmed both the good and the bad; nothing was going to hit me strait away, but, yes, my freshly folded t-shirts were lying strewn all over the road! Eeeek! Well quick thinking told me to stop suddenly, dismount, and then run around like a mad man trying to get everything out of the way of oncoming traffic. Then came the job of trying to collect it all together and fit it all back in to the thing it didn't fit in to start with. As I fished my underpants out of the gutter, I was almost expecting passers by to throw their loose change at me and mutter things like "Aww, bless. He's picking up pants from the gutter... and look, he can't even afford a whole bike"

Oh, the joys of unicycling through Central London in rush hour.

Anyway, there has been many witty and amusing incidents since I started commuting on a unicycle, and, I'm sure there'll be many more to share with you. I realise that at the moment, however, you haven't got a clue who I am, what I do, and why I keep mentioning a mythical horse-like creature with single horn on its nose. But all of that will have to wait until future blogs. This'll do for now.