My brother Jeff called yesterday. Jeff has been one of those inspirational big brothers. He has run the St. Loius Marathon, done the Sears Tower Climb a couple of times (he's training to do it again). Way back in my first semester of college, he taught me how to juggle as a helpful procrastination method.
About 6 years ago he gave me one of his old unicycles (a classic Schwinn 24") and told me I had to learn. After about 5 years of mostly letting it collect dust, last spring I finally took to learning it in earnest. I spent a lot of time at the local tennis courts. Tennis courts are great for unicycle practice because they are nice and flat and have chain-link fence surrounding them, which is ideal beacuse you have something to hang on to. After a good bit of work, I managed to graduate to being an official level 1 unicycler who can:
- mount unicycle unassisted
- ride 50 meters
- dismount gracefully with unicycle in front
Six years to get to level 1--that's the equivalent of spending six years in first grade.
Back to yesterday's call. Usually he calls to rub in how my neice or nephew are doing laps around my unicycle ability--my nephew is working on level 2. Even my brother's six year-old neighbor is learning. My brother's latest stunt is riding 2+ miles on his unicycle.
So, the conversation progresses and he challenges me to get after progressing to the next level. I give what I think is the ultimate excuse: "I'm training for a marathon." He responds, "Then unicycle as cross-training."
Ok, he got me there. So, once a week on one of my "rest of XT" days, I'm gonna work on the uni!
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