This thread is useless without the Rough-Terrain Unicycling article from
Atlantic Monthly.
The article was published in The Atlantic Monthly back in April 1997.
It was about George Peck. A well known and well read article around
here. The Atlantic Monthly was gracious enough to keep the 'article
archived' (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97apr/uni.htm) on their
web site and keep it available for us to read and re-read.
Unfortunately it is no longer available on their web site. I missed it
and wanted to read it again. A little Google searching and I found it
posted in a newsgroup 'here' (http://tinyurl.com/atadj) and 'here'
(http://tinyurl.com/77vhj).
So without further ado, here it is...
The Atlantic Monthly; April 1997; Rough-Terrain Unicycling; Volume 279,
No. 4; pages 109-112.
ROUGH-TERRAIN UNICYCLING
Riding a unicycle up and down mountains requires the balance of a
gymnast and the temperament of a teenager
by Michael Finkel
WHY the red unicycle was left in the Seward, Alaska, dump and what
inspired George Peck's wife, Carol, to bring it home are both unclear.
"I'm a salvager and recycler," is all she will say. "She's a dump rat,"
Peck says. Carol put the unicycle in the garage, and Peck found it
there. This was almost fourteen years ago. His life hasn't been the
same since.
"I glom on to things," Peck says. "He gets obsessed," Carol says. Peck
taught himself to ride the red unicycle -- no books, no instructors. He
practiced daily for more than a month before he could wobble up and
down his driveway. Then he attempted to take the unicycle onto the
roads. Riding a unicycle is as precarious as it looks -- the "cone of
balance," as Peck calls it, is extraordinarily precise. A pebble can be
enough to put you on your back. So can a patch of sand or a gust of
wind or a crack in the pavement. This may be why the red cycle was
tossed into the dump: Seward is possibly the worst spot on the planet
in which to ride a unicycle. The place is all sand and gusts and
cracks, not to mention ice and snow and logs and boulders and
mountains.
Peck learned to ride his unicycle under all conditions. He discovered
how to make the cycle hop, and he honed the skill until he could pop
over logs two feet in diameter. He figured out how to power through
boulder fields, how to jump up and over picnic tables, how to turn in
ankle-deep mud. He became skilled at riding in dried-out riverbeds,
across frozen lakes, up mountain trails, and through wind-crusted snow.
This is clearly not what unicycles were designed to do. When the red
Unicycle fell apart, Peck drove to Anchorage and bought a new one. When
that broke, he ordered another. After a dozen more were destroyed, he
began designing his own.
For almost a decade and a half, no matter the weather, Peck has gone
mountain unicycling nearly every day -- twice a day most weekends -- in
and around Seward. People in town are used to seeing him. He has ridden
the shoreline so many times that he notices if a rock has been moved.
Seward sits on Resurrection Bay, on the eastern edge of the Kenai
Peninsula. It is separated from Anchorage by 125 miles of glaciated
mountains and sprawling icefields. The town is so remote -- a Galápagos
island of sorts -- that something odd or fantastic can develop there
and never be discovered by anyone beyond the city limits.
Until three years ago, when he attended the International Unicycle
Convention in Minneapolis, Peck was completely unknown in the
unicycling community. At the meet he learned of a handful of other
mountain unicyclists. He found out that his sport had not only other
participants but also a name -- "muni," short for "mountain unicycling"
(a name, Peck feels, that is a little too cute; he prefers
"rough-terrain cycling"😉. Later, through a unicycling newsletter, he
read of plans for an inaugural muni convention. Last October he flew to
Sacramento for the first annual California Mountain Unicycle Weekend.
Thirty-five of the best rough-terrain unicyclists in North America came
to show off their skills. No one was half as good as Peck. He is now
widely viewed as the best mountain unicyclist in the world. He is
credited with helping to invent the sport, and the cycles he has
designed are probably the sturdiest and lightest unicycles ever built.
He is riding rougher terrain every month. And he is almost certainly
the world's oldest mountain unicyclist: Peck is fifty-six.
CAROL and George Peck and their two children, Kristopher, twelve, and
Katy, seven, live in a small brown house two blocks from the center of
town. Attracted to Alaska's frontier image, Peck moved to the state in
1974, after a stint in Nepal with the Peace Corps and almost ten years
in the University of Idaho's graduate schools, where he earned degrees
in physics, law, and teaching. He came to Seward to take the job of
magistrate, a position he still holds. He met Carol Griswold in 1981.
The inside of their house, especially during the long Alaska winter, is
a scene of unmitigated chaos. Peaches and Boomer, a pair of parakeets,
like to dive-bomb visitors' heads. Berry and Jessie, two Labrador
retrievers, wrestle in the kitchen. Katy prefers roller skates to
sneakers, and Kristopher wouldn't be caught dead without his
skateboard. The living room contains three unicycles, a small
trampoline, a basketball net, an electric keyboard, two acoustic
guitars, two fiddles (Carol and George play in a local folk band), an
indoor garden, an eclectic library (one shelf devoted to entomology,
another to dog training), a general scattering of children's toys,
several of Carol's junkyard furniture discoveries, a hamster cage, a
fish tank, and a midden of unicycle parts.
"George has been a teenager for forty years," Carol says. This is only
partly true. When Peck is in his courtroom, facing the daily litany of
drunk-driving and domestic-violence cases, he is fifty-six years old.
When he is awake at two in the morning, mulling over the physics of
wheel diameter and axle size, he is fifty-six. When he is riding, he is
seventeen -- though he doesn't use swearwords. When he falls, he says
things like "Gargle!" and "Yug!" and "These shoes are explosively
decoupling with the pedals, and that's disconcerting."
Peck is a little over six feet tall and about as thin as a fence post.
He has the air of a mad scientist. His hair appears to be an assemblage
of cowlicks. He is profoundly nearsighted, and wears round gold-framed
glasses. A housewide search for his car keys is almost a daily event.
He eats dinner as if a cash prize were to be awarded to the first
finisher. His unicycle is built of top-quality titanium and tempered
aluminum parts, special-ordered from a custom manufacturer, but Peck
often rides wearing faded jeans, a stained sweatshirt, and leather work
boots. On the front of the family's washing machine, using word
magnets, Katy has assembled a succinct ode to her father: DAD IS
FUNNY.
On weekend days Peck takes his first ride soon after sunrise, usually
with the dogs. He rides along Resurrection Bay, the sharp summits of
the Chugach Mountains forming a backdrop. He pedals in fits and starts:
a powerful flurry to ascend a flat-topped rock, an immediate
ninety-degree turn on the top, a momentary pause to consider the
drop-off, and a careful hop down to the sand. His arms provide
counterbalance, waving in controlled, tai-chi-style movements. The tip
of his tongue flits in and out. In rough-terrain cycling, top speed,
even going downhill, is about six miles an hour. "It's not
exhilarating," Peck says, "but a series of little joys." He cuts
through a puddle, cracking a thin film of ice, and chugs up a dirty
snowbank. He falls twice, gracefully, and climbs back on.
--
john_childs
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