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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