July 5, 2019
Corvin and I set off on a long weekend trip to unicycle a few states. Our first state for this trip and our ninth completed state of the trip is Indiana. We drove through a massive thunderstorm with close lightning strikes on the way out. I was worried that we would have to ride in the rain.
Possibly more frustrating for me was that I forgot the cell phone holder that screws on to the tripod. This was going to make getting photos of us at state signs more interesting. I didn’t fully edit the photo below because I wanted you to see the white at the bottom. I put my cell phone under the windshield wiper arm to hold it in place. Then with my van holding the phone in place, I started the timer and ran back to the sign!
We picked the French Island Trail in Newburgh, IN as our location to unicycle. It was going to be right next to the Ohio river and a lock and dam. Generally trails near rivers are flat and easier to ride. It would be a great warmup for this trip. The trail turned out to be not quite flat, but easy enough for us to ride. Its worth noting that I was using a new unicycle for this trip. After the first 8 states, I decided to upgrade. I find my Coker 36″ (The Big One) unicycle a bit too large. I have issues mounting in and hills are very tough with it.
I follow the Facebook group “Unicycle Chat” and many people spoke highly of the 32″ unicycle as the best of 29″ and 36″ ownership. I went to my favorite unicycle place, Unicycle.com and ordered my UDC Titan 32″ unicycle just for this trip. This isn’t the place for a full review, but I’ve been nothing but satisfied with this unicycle! Its good enough, I wonder if I’ll ever ride my 36″ again!
Here is a shot of Corvin and I doing our best to get quality video shots of our ride. Editing of videos starting from the first state should start in the next month.
While we were out riding, we noticed a father and son with a very nice DSLR camera obviously taking our photo. We don’t mind. On the ride back to the start, we saw them again and stopped. We had a fantastic talk with Evan Ref and his dad. I’m still holding out hope he will email me a photo that he shot. Either way, we got Evan to try a unicycle and he was almost good at it. Definitely an athlete. Here are two photographs from Evan. You can see a huge difference in quality!
Here is another shot on our way back before a long hill so I could still smile.
Corvin’s journal entry
Our Strava entry.
Our map of completed states.
Stats:
Total Trip Miles: 40.07
Total Moving Time: 8h 25m 41s
Total Elevation Change: 1229 feet
Total Hogan UPD: 7
Total Corvin UPD: 2
Hogan Haake