...still no unicycling.

I couldn't find a bearing for my uni, so I decided to rent a mountain bike and ride around. I rode up donner pass, there happened to be a 100 mile bike event going on. I happened to be riding part of it. it was the part went up donner summit. i am an ok hill-climber and it was funny passing people on my mtb. there were people on the side of the road from time to time and they were all cheering me on, "way to go" ...."nice job"....(clap clap....clap). i even got my picture taken by some people [i think they were "official" because they had cameras with huge lens]. I might show up on the cover of unicef weekly or something.

i met up with the uni guys who were riding trials. of course everyone was asking me where my unicycle was. so i've had to repeat my story about 20 times so far.... i don't mind really, it's a good conversation starter.

so I just had a beer and a red bull in that order and i'm feeling very confused right now...

i told my story to the event organizer, and he said, "oh i've one [unicycle] you can borrow" i am so happy about that. i still don't have a uni for my adventure but, i have one for tomorrow....one step at q time.

later

draino trip

last night was hell. it was the night before my big trip to draino....oops I mean reno! I was at work until midnight before I could go home. I had nothing packed. I didn't know how I was going to pack my unicycle, and I was tired.
I started to take apart my unicycle and that's when I figured out why my unicycle wheel hasn't been spinning very freely. one of the bearings was shattered. hmm... this isn't good. five hours till my flight, and just now I am figuring out that my unicycle can't go.
I had several ideas, and one of them involved using the bearing from my son's unicycle. it took me a while to take apart his uni and figure out that his bearing wasn't a match. I kind of half put his back together, and mine....well that's a sad situation.
I packed the broken pieces back together and squeezed them in place with the pedal crank. hardly a fix. :(

2AM and still not packed. I kind of felt like it was no longer a unicycle trip and I would resort to backpacking and mountain biking. still not a bad vacation, but i've been looking forward to this so much.
while packing I had to make some tough decisions on what should go and what should stay. I think I ended up bringing too much stuff, because I could hardly lift it.
the biggest problem where deciding what to wear :) heh... I didn't know how many cycling shorts I should bring. here at home I never wear the same pare more than twice with out a wash, and socks... I never reuse those. that has trouble written all over it. I need a hiking consultant.

I figured out a way to pack my unicycle too. I thought that I would bring it, just in case someone in lake tahoe has a bearing.....i guess I am more religious than I thought. ...shamelessly looking for miracles :)

I don't know how 2 became 4:30, but it did, and I was done, and my wife was waking up, so she can get me out of the house on time.

right now i'm in the plane flying to reno, and it' shaking really badly....i hope my bearings don't shake loose... :)

some video of a guy who is way better than me

warning! this video contains a clip of an elderly lady flipping someone off. sorry if it offends anyone :(


Amazing Muni Tricks - video powered by Metacafe

four year old cliff bar and one ugly girl

saturday was one of those days when nothing quite worked out. i really wanted to go for a unicycle/backpack test hike [after all, my trip is less than one week away, and i am still not used to carrying such a heavy pack]. it was about 8am when i woke up and by the time 9 rolled around i was still thinking about things. the clouds started building up and the sky was getting a bit dark. i decided to bail on the unicycle plan because my back pack wasn't filled. i still had my tent unrolled and hanging in the garage, and my sleeping bag unrolled in the living room. not that i really needed these to go on a hike, but i wanted the real load to be in my pack so i could get used to it. besides, my unicycle was just washed and it needed to be lubed real bad. so no unicycling for me today.

next on the list of options was mountain biking. unfortunately the chain on my mountain bike was full of dirt and almost frozen in its last position. i really can't ride it until someone [me] cleans it. also, i wasn't going to mention this, but my camelbak really needed to be cleaned, and i didn't feel like doing it that morning.

in case you haven't noticed, it seems that my god given talent to procrastinate, is playing another roll in my day, where nothing "works" out. i suppose it would be a much more shocking and interesting story if something did work out despite the lack of preparation and unfinished tasks.

last on my list of options was trail running. the only real piece of equipment i need for this, is running shoes and running shorts. i managed to find a pair of shoes, and barely found a pair of clean shorts, but it all "worked" out and i was almost ready to go. i needed some food because i didn't eat any breakfast yet, and i was pretty hungry. i rifled through some of the cabinets and found a cliff bar. i was a little surprised to find the flavor that i had in my hand, because it was a flavor that i used to like a while back, but i finally got sick of it. but i was in a hurry, and this was food and i was hungry. i decided that i would just make it work!

i put everything into my car and drove off to the trail head. i opened my mysterious cliffbar, and took a big bite out of it. first of all it was really difficult to bite into, i should have noticed that, but i kept going. i actually tore off a chunk and started chewing it. it tasted really bad, but i also remembered that i got tired of the taste a long time ago, that's why i stopped buying them. for the last five years or so i have been buying cliff bars every chance i got. i eat them so much, i don't even consider them food anymore. they are just something i put into my stomach so my stomach will have something to do while i am exercising. i get no enjoyment out of these things anymore. so when i was eating this one this morning, i knew i didn't like the taste anyway, so it wasn't really a big enough red-flag that this one cliff bar i pulled out the back of the cabinet tasted horrible. i actually took a few more bites and almost finished half of the bar, before i became suspicious. i looked at the wrapper and noticed that the bar will expire on april second.... hmmm, i wonder what year. wait a minute! that's not april second, it april 2002! yuk! i spit out what i was chewing and hid the rest of the bar from my sight, and tried to drink a ton of water to wash it all down. i read somewhere that water actually helps flush out any bacteria that was consumed from expired food....ok, i'm lying, i just made that up so i wouldn't feel so icky.

i made it to the trail head, and wasn't feeling any side effects from the four year old cliff, but it was raining. it wasn't just a little rain, it was quite a bit, and it even had a little hail mixed in. i love running in the rain. it is on of my favorite things to do, however running in hail is a whole different matter. hail really hurts! i've been caught in a hail a few times and it was not a pleasant experience. the worst part about hail, is that you don't know if it is going to get bigger, or how long it's going to last.

back to my story:
it looked like the hail was going to stop so i started to get ready. by the time i was done, the hail had stopped and only a light rain was coming down. this was good enough for me, so i went for it. this trail had a lot of long uphill sections and the middle miles are pretty technical. i was moving along at a pretty good pace by the time i got to those middle miles. i was running up the technical part, when two mountain bikes were heading down. i let one bike have the right-of-away, even though i know runners/hikers [people on foot] have the right-of-way. the first biker went ahead, and the second biker stayed at the top, and motioned me to go ahead. he also said [at least this is what i think i heard him say],"go ahead girl". heh..... picture this: i have a really bad 5 o'clock shadow, i have a sole patch to go with the shadow, i have really hairy legs, and i am not built like a girl! i don't think i am fat enough to have man-breast yet, which may confuse someone, with bad eyesight. i can't even imagine how ugly i would look as a girl. this threw me off for a few miles, i just couldn't fathom someone confusing me for a girl. this is probably this first time since i was an infant. even then it looked pretty clear to me.

it was actually a really good run, seven and one half miles, lots of climbing, a little bit of rain, and one really bad stomach ache. by the time i got home i had forgotten about the bad food, and the whole girl thing was so wrong it wasn't even worth telling anyone. i don't know why i am writing about it [?].


i'd better hurry and finish this post, tonight's temperature is going to be in the thirties, and i want to sleep outside one more time before my trip.

later

all up hill

I decided to go out and get into shape today. yesterday was an eating and sleeping day, filled with b-day cake. thank god i'm not another year older already.
anyway, I went out to one of the local trails today. I wish I didn't go after lunch. my stomach was hurting so badly. but I pressed on... the weather was kind of rainy (although I didn't know that at first. it was not a problem, however. I was sweating so much I almost didn' notice the rain. here is a picture of the sky


the only thing that bothered me really, was the thunder. i'd better get used to this, because my trip is going to be full of rain. lake tahoe, in late sept is pretty unpredictable. in fact I think that's when the donner party got stuck :) if I get stuck i'll be in worse shape, because I won't have any one to eat :(.

the weather made everything muddy. actually my unicycle made things muddy. this may turn out to be something I have to prepare for on my trip. i'm trying to let things dry out right now.... but I don't think it's doing any good. the sun did come out for a bit


i'd better go it's getting pretty cold over here....

i hate scales

all of them suck! i know, this subject has nothing to do with
unicycling, and i promise that this will be the only time i jump off topic like this... at least i won't do it any more times today. where was i... oh yeah, i hate scales. all the ones at my house are whack. i don't know why but i seem to have a habit of acquiring stupid scales. it doesn't matter if it's a bathroom scale or a fish scale.... they all lie.

scale one:
this was my first scale, that i had since college. my mom gave it to me and my wife, because she had too many. she was buying them at garage sales and i guess she over bought. it was this really old scale that was worn down and had rust around the edges. my wife couldn't stand having a used bathroom scale, not just that it was used... and that people stood on it with their feet... but that this scale has spent most of its life in someone else's bathroom...yuk. wow, it never really struck me until now, just how gross this thing was. anyway, my wife kept it in another part of the house...in fact it was very close to the outside of the house. this scale was only accurate to about 7lbs. so if you got on really carefully, you would weigh less. if you got on kind of roughly, you would generally weigh on the upper end of the accuracy. if you just jumped on... then you could be anywhere in the range. i don't even know why we bothered keeping that scale as long as we did.

scale two:
this is the scale we have today. it's a tanita body fat scale straight from japan. i was so excited when i first got this one. i was going to finally prove to everyone that i am as lean as a stick. it was all i japanese, so i let my wife set it up. she looked kind of confused while setting it up, and since i don't read japanese, i have to just assume that she did something wrong. there is no way i am 24% body fat! i should be like 4%. i keep telling my wife that this thing is crap, send it back. but she insist that it is measuring some kind of internal fat, not the same fat we are all used to. i don't buy it. i tried to set it up myself, not only is it in japanese, but it's metric... and i don't know who stole my calculator. i've come up with several theories as to why this thing is bogus. for years, i've blamed it on my feet being conductive, and since no one else is an electrical engineer in my house, that story held some validity for a while. i've been telling people for years, how that stupid scale claims i am 24%... and they all reply, "no way, i thought you were much less than that" this was pretty much how all my "friends" reacted to my scale story anyway.... at least until two days ago. that's when i told a long lost friend, my story. he replied, "that seems about right...." so i hate my scale.

scale three
this scale is the worst of them all. it's not even my scale.it belongs to my doctor. it's like one hundred years old, and requires someone to move little weights around in order to get an accurate reading. so i went in to the doctor's for something [i can't remember what it was, but she ended up suggesting i get a colonoscopy] and i had to get on the scale before anything. i jump on the scale fully clothed and i had kind of long hair at the time [i don't know how much hair weighs, but i just
wanted to point that out] the thing was oscillating up and down while the nurse was moving the scale, then she jots down some really high number. wtf? "hey", i said, "it didn't even stop", she said that it was ok, she knew what she was doing. no way, this is going on my permanent record. i was really not too happy about this. i couldn't let it go. after we got into the room, i brought up the subject once again, hoping
for a re-weigh. i asked her if it mattered that my clothes were really heavy. she smiled and ask how much i thought my cloths weighed... about ten pound i guess. then she smiled and started taking my blood pressure. i guess she thought i was joking, and didn't know that i was actually obsessed about my weight.

so the moral of the story is that all scales suck.

camping on the local trail?

ok here is the plan. i am going to load up my backpack with all my camping gear, strap my unicycle on my backpack and see how difficult it is to carry it around for five miles. that doesn't sound too difficult. i can trail run forever. i've run eleven miles recently over some pretty rough terrain and it wasn't too bad. five miles of walking should be a pretty easy thing to do after lunch. i know what i can do! i'll hike out 5 miles, unhook my unicycle, and ride back five miles on my unicycle while wearing my pack.

funny as i'm writing about this now i can not see anyway possible that this was at one time a good idea. i must have had too many endorphins still hanging around from my shopping spree the day before. how could i have possibly thought that this was going to go well. i had done this same route a couple of weeks prior to this, but back then it was all unicycle, and it took something like three hours. i really wish i would have done the math before i set out on this one. also, it is worth noting that my stupid scale said that my fully loaded pack with my unicycle strapped on, was only 33lbs! [if i sound a little harsh on my scale, it's because i have a real problem with all scales and their lies] anyway, 33 lbs was a lot lighter than the load that almost killed me in the store.

picture this:
95 degrees out, no shade, big backpack, unicycle strapped on, bed roll, sleeping bag, misc clothes, stove, 100 liters of water, no food, and i was about to use my new shoes! after several thoughts, i decided that new shoes would be too much for ... even me "sufferman". i set out on my test hike. i got some pretty weird looks from people. they didn't know what the heck i was up to. i wish i could say that they were all staring at me, but i think it was because i was glaring at them to see their reaction to me. i hiked along, mile after mile, step after step, hill after hill, nagging back pain after nagging back pain, weird look after weird look. the pain was getting pretty bad, and i was only about two miles into the trail.

that would have been a perfect point to turn around. it's really too bad that my brain doesn't work as well as it should. i did have a pretty "good" idea, however. i thought that whistling would take my mind off the pain... and if i looked happy i would be happy :) i don't know where i got this tune from, but it was definitely not a song i had on my ipod. it seemed to be a song that required a lot of exhaling blows. it did make things better for a couple of blissful minutes. but then it kind of made things worse because it messed up my breathing. then all of a sudden i felt really out of breath and tired.

i slowed down a bit, and talked to some people along the way. everybody was really nice. they all asked me about unicycling, and the trail, and snakes whatever. i can't tell you how happy i was to make it to my turn around point. when i got there i practically threw off my pack, and laid down on dirt floor in the middle of no where. i didn't have any energy bars, or energy drink, or ice cream... nothing! nothing but water.... and i was running low on that.

so after some rest, i put my gear together. i tightened up my back pack, and hopped on my unicycle. whoa, that was weird. unicycling uphill with a huge pack on, was really really hard :( i was really looking forward to this part of the journey. now i have five miles to go with a whole different type of suffering. i'll spare you every little painful moment. because frankly i'm really tired of writing about suffering.

one last thing that was pretty funny, as i was heading back, i could not do any thing very technical on the trail. i'm not too sure if it was because i was really really tired or that the stupid pack was not fastened to my back. it was firmly strapped to my waist, and this caused a whole bunch of problems with my balance. so anyway i was coming to this group of teenagers. they were very nice [for a bunch of punks] they were really impressed with my unicycling. i tried really hard to ride everything while they were watching. when i came to where they were i had to go through this pretty rocky section. they thought that it was pretty cool to be doing the stuff i was doing [they said so, i'm not making that part up.... really!]. i was talking to them as i was trying to make my way through the section. one kid ask if he can have my autograph. heh....i thought he was messing with me. you know the same way bullies lure their victims in, before they pull some embarrassing prank... i know. i kind of laughed, and tried to change the subject a bit with some story about guys that were way better than me on a unicycle. then this kid said, with a very serious look on his face, "so no then?" then i had to tell him, "you don't want my autograph [kid]" it was really weird, but there was no way i was going to give someone an autograph....unless i was really famous :)

finally, on the way back, i passed some guy, and he said, "what are you camping on th e trail?"

the store

i just got my new backpack the other day, along with new hiking shoes, tent and one awesome stove. a funny thing happened when i was getting fit for my pack. i was telling the guy how many days i was going for and where. i then asked him if he thought that i could strap my unicycle on the back. he was very enthusiastic, and started telling me how to strap the wheel and pedal, and how to position the weight. he didn't even question my motives. oh well, i guess this guy has seen/heard it all. i didn't ask him why he wasn't curious or why he knew so much about it. he just filled up the pack and had me walk around the store.

I went every where in the store, i even put up a tent on one of the open spots on the floor...all while wearing my pack. it hurt so badly, but i thought i was just being weak. i hate being weak. i really only hate being weak about some things. not being able to carry a huge backpack around the store was something i didn't want to weak about. my back was killing me! i was getting a little light headed, and it wasn't long before i started feeling dehydrated. oh man, i'm not even out of the stupid store yet and i'm already not surviving. i was lucky to be in the middle of civilization.

i guess i just wasn't used to carrying around such a load i'm pretty sure the guy, overloaded it just to try and make me look weak. it gave me some comfort to know that i figured this guy out. he was playing mental games with me the whole time. when i got back to the backpack section, i thought that i would play with his mind a bit. just before he removed the weights, he ask, "how much weight do you think is in here?" i thought that i would low ball the guess to make it seem like the load was nothing to me. i was sure there was about 70lbs in there, so i guessed 20lbs. he laughed... there was 45 lbs! looking back i guess that was about right.

i bought the pack and all the other gear, and played with it all night. i was so excited that i was going to try it the next day.

room

One Wheeled Adventure

One Wheeled Adventure
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