At the age of 5 or 6, my family watched the Detroit Thanksgiving Day
Parade from my grandfather's 2nd floor office on Woodward Avenue. The
street was about to be widened, and the front part of the building we
were in was going to be torn down. This vantage point was a one-time
thing, and was just about where the parade assembles.
That parade made a strong impression on me and my brother and sister,
and my grandpa (a graphic artist) encouraged us to draw pictures of it
on these huge newsprint pads he set us up with afterwards. Among other
things, I rememberd the unicycles, and noticed them in the following
years in the parade on TV.
Now I'm not sure which group of unicycles it was. I'm told that in 1967
it was the St. Helens Dill Team, but in 1968 it switched over to the
Pontiac Unicycle Club. They were the ones I saw in subsequent years.
About a year after I had finally learned to ride, either 12 or 13 years
later, I would enter the same parade with the Redford Township Unicycle
Club. In the snow. Woohoo!
I count that early parade as my main inspiration. I'm sure there were
other influences, such as Dr. Seuss with his zany vehicles, and probably
other childrens books.
Many years later in 8th grade, around the time I had been trying to ride
the P.O.S. Troxel I borrowed (which fell apart before I could master
it), I saw an even more amazing unicycle performance. This was in my
junior high school talent show, which I also did a performance in (I'm
not going to describe it and there were no unicycles involved). Jim
Bossey of the Pontiac Unicyclists performed on a regular 24" Schwinn and
a 5 or 6 foot giraffe, which he rode off a jump ramp. I still remember
thinking he was absolutely positively going to die. When he didn't die,
I was totally blown away. This was probably the Pontiac Unicycle Club's
regular jump ramp that they used in shows, to jump over prone
unicyclists. Probably a foot high or so. I remember at the tryouts that
Jim also had a 10 footer, and something I've never seen before or since,
a 10' handlebar unit. I never saw him use either of those, because the
stage was too low.
Anyway, it was another three years after that before I finally got my
hands on a "real" unicycle to learn on, the Schwinn Giraffe of Bradley
Bradley!
--
johnfoss - Walkin' on the edge
John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
"jfoss" at "unicycling.com"
www.unicycling.com
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard." -- John F. Kennedy,
1961
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