We road the tall unicycles in local 4th of July parades in central Minnesota in the 1970s. These tall machines are not something we get to ride very often so we really enjoyed the parades because we could spend a few hours on them and ride a long distance.
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Geezer on a stick
I had ridden this unicycle in parades years ago. It had fallen into disrepair so I decided to rebuild it and ride it again. When I got on the unicycle for the first time in over 30 years the young side of my brain said “let’s go” and the older side of my brain said…
A nearly famous unicycle
This 10 foot tall unicycle I am holding was built by Brett Shockley, a young University of Minnesota engineering student who set a world record in 1977 when he rode a 53 foot 9 1/2 inch unicycle which he had built the previous week for the world record attempt. My uncle Don and his son…
A young Wheeled Geezer
My uncle Charlie, who lived in California, road a unicycle that he built himself and watching him ride it captured my imagination – I too wanted to ride one. It must have been around my 8th birthday when I asked my parents for one and they agreed to purchase the unrideable contraption from a Sears…
Pre-Trip #5 Minnesota- Part 5
We encountered a downed tree lying across the trail. I immediately starting scouting a trail around the blockage. Meanwhile Jack pulled out a saw! Excellent planning on his part. We did a fuel range test on Jack’s bike as part of this trip. We are told there are sections on the TAT where we will…
Pre-Trip #5 Minnesota – Part 4
A portion of our route included some elevation change and rocky trail. The wide angle view of action cameras makes the terrain look pretty flat so it is difficult to get a sense of the incline angle. Some of the terrain we were on was, in fact, fairly steep and this can be observed when…
Pre-Trip #5 Minnesota – Part 3
In this video we found ourselves on a particularly interesting snowmobile trail. The area where we were riding has a lot of snowmobile trails and some of these present additional hazard for motorcycles and other ‘warm weather’ vehicles because of the wet, marshy, muddy conditions. When planning your route you often do not know what…
Pre-Trip #5 Minnesota – Part 2
We experienced a lot of water crossings on the trails which were flooded by multiple days of rain. Most of the water was covering solid trail bed, however, there were some places where the water was covering heavy mud or clay which was torn up by other vehicles. This gave us the opportunity to have…
Pre-Trip #5 Minnesota – Part 1
Scott and Jack teamed up for the last pre-trip ride before they start out on the TAT in August. We purposely selected a rainy, two night, 430 mile route to test our wet gear and provide a variety of riding conditions (rock, scan, water, gravel, mud, swamp, hills, pavement). We were packed at about 75%…
Pre-Trip #4 Arizona
This is the last of three trips in the Arizona desert.