So far I've been to 3 unicons - China, USA and Japan, at all three I
have taken part in some of the competitions. Also at all three I've
gone riding with interesting people in interesting places. In the US
some of those were "organised" muni rides while one was me wanting to
do the iron horse trail on my own including the tunnel so I could say
I'd done it.
In China I rode with the American muni bunch for the first time and
we explored a small patch of ground very thoughly finding lots of
single track and thorns with in a mile of the hotel, I also rode into
central beijing with a crowd of people one eveing and one day a group
of us arranged to hire a bus and driver and go out of town to a hilly
place. None of those were "organised" events, we just skipped off what
ever was organised and did our own thing some days.
In Japan, I did a solo tour of central Tokyo early sunday morning,
I had the streets to myself and got a glimse of innner city life
from the saddle of my 29er, baseball practise, people going to
worship at shrines, people gathering for exercise sessions, the
blind runnning club training and a HUGE car boot sale. Another couple
of days Paul and I went and did real touristly stuff manageing to see 6
of the top ten Tokyo tourist sights.
So I think what i'm trying to say in a round about kind of way is.
Unicon is more than the competitions, its about meeting other riders
from all over the world, hanging out in the evening and swapping
ideas, going for rides, beers, meals. Sure I love hockey and take THAT
competition seriously but all the others I don't take too seriously
,I'll enter some of the races, and maybe show up if I havn't got any
thing more intersting planned. I'll watch a bit of freestyle , maybe
a basket ball game or too, I probadly won't bother watching standard
skill or the kids 100m races, those are days I'll go off and explore.
For some other people, those are the serious days and the hockey is
the event they will ignore.
I believe our swiss hosts are trying hard to make unicon 2006 a
convention as well as a competition and I'm looking forward to seeing
some old friends and makeing some new ones during the event.
Sarah
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sarah.miller
South West Unicycle Meet
www.uk.unicyclist.com/swum.html
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