Item #31 - (Attempt to) Ride a Unicycle

"Lisa, why did you start to unicycle?"
"Because my brother could and I wanted to be like him"
"Why did HE want to learn?"
"Because he thought he would be cool"
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About 10 years ago when I first moved out to Boston, I went with 2 of my co-workers up to Killington Vermont for the weekend. One of the guys had an old cabin that we crashed in for free. Yup, just 3 hetero guys staying warm together in a little cabin in the woods.

Before that, the only time I had done any winter sports was skiing a few times back in Detroit at Mt Holly, which was supposedly built on a landfill. It has a vertical of 350 feet. Killington has a vertical of 3000 feet. Mt Holly is basically a zit on the ass of Killington. Thus, learning to snowboard at Killington was a bit of an undertaking.

If you've never tried to snowboard, you're missing out on a ton of fun. However, you're also missing out on a ton of bruises on your ass (my buddy Samesh actually offered to lend me his ass pad. No really, for a mere $24.95, you can get a Butt Shield for yourself! Sadly, he did not offer any butt massages. Wait, I didn't mean to type that out loud).

 

If you want to learn to snowboard, and learn to snowboard quickly, you need to have good balance, some balls, and an ass of steel. You will fall. You will fall a lot. You will then fall some more. And the worse the you are, the harder you'll fall.

When you're good, and you can actually board with some speed, when you fall, you'll tumble, and you'll probably roll, and you'll probably come to a stop, look up, and laugh. "Hey, I bit it. That sucked. Let's go." Well, unless you fall into a tree. That probably hurts. (insert Sonny Bono joke)

But when you're learning and going slow, you typically fall by catching your front or back edge. Catch either at a slow speed though, and you don't tumble. You whiplash into the ground. It is . . . not enjoyable.

But when I was learning, I was 22 years old. I was young. I was spry. I was slightly stupid. And I operated my body with reckless abandon.Try to board. Go 10 feet. Fall. Get up. Go 11 feet. Fall. Get back up. Et cetera. And thus, despite numerous, numerous falls, and numerous bruises, and no man-on-man massages to make them feel better (dammit, why do I keep typing that), I was a competent boarder after just a 2 day weekend on the mountain.

Last week, I faced a similar challenge. Lisa (a former college gymnast, and thus, someone who has legit balancing skills) invited me over in an attempt to teach me to unicycle.  Another skill with a high learning curve and lots of potential for bruising.

 That's her unicycle, and when it's used properly, it should look something like this:

Obviously, Lisa knows what the hell she's doing. Rumor has it that's how she won over her husband Charlie.

And yes, that's her unicycling down her hallway. The hallway was probably the safest place to actually learn, mainly because my best attempt of the day looked like this:

That right there is a man who balls have shrunk approximately 73.8% since he was 22 years old. And I mean that metaphorically. However, physically shrinking by that much may have also been a possibility, as my worst fall of the day consisted of the unicycle kind of jamming itself in between the 2 walls of the hallway . . . and Alan Jr.

Artist's rendering, due to lack of a photo

9 years ago, I would have said "fuck the hallway" and immediately gone outside to take my lumps. Face plant. Get back up. Go again. Get bruised. Repeat. Be a decent unicyclist in 2 hours. Go home. Drink. Feel almost nothing the next day. Nowadays? I'm 48 hours out from my last soccer game, in which I played 90% of the game but only took one good lump/fall, and I still bypassed a run tonight, hoping to get back to 100% before running tomorrow. So there was no fucking way I was unicycling in the driveway. It's concrete. It's hard. And there are cars going by in the street I could end up hitting. And maybe a stray weed catches a spoke in the wheel.  And there might be a puddle, which along with being slippery, could soil my slacks and leave a permanent stain because I forgot to bring my stick of stain-be-gone. And the children, my god, won't someone think of the children. No. Fuck that. I'll just be rolling in the hallway dawg (that's what the kids say these days right? "dawg"?).

Rollin on a single 22" dub

So it was the hallway for me, with . . . modest results. BUT, with a body with limited bruising (the inner thighs were quite displeased the next day). And reminder that, sigh . . . I'm old.

31 . . . so old.