Balancing Act
No longer confined to circus tents, unicyclists are taking to the streets and the mountains
By Leigh Ann Maze
The unicycle is no longer just for circus performers and jugglers. A small but growing number of unicyclists, including Nathan Hoover of Los Gatos, are pedaling the sport away from its birthplace in circus tents and into the wild.
Hoover, his second-grade son, Beau Hoover, and Beau's best friend, Trey Miller, often can be seen riding their unicycles down Poppy Lane toward Daves Avenue School in the mornings.
Although Hoover occasionally rides to school with the kids and then continues on his seven-mile commute to work as a software engineer, his true passion is mountain unicycling--or MUni, as it is called by aficionados of the emerging sport. MUni riders travel the same steep, treacherous trails as mountain bikers, except on one knobby tire instead of two, usually without brakes and never with gears.
MUni, which started in Alaska, was introduced to Hoover and some adventurous friends by Hoover's friend Bruce Bundy of Santa Cruz. Although a few isolated MUni riders may already have existed in California, Bundy catalyzed MUni into a small movement in 1995, when he brought home a video of MUni founder George Peck, Hoover said.
Kris Holm rode down this slope several times during the 1998 California MUni Weekend. Many others crashed trying.
Photograph by Nathan Hoover
"The video was made around 1989, when Peck was probably one of the few people in the world doing it," Hoover says. "Because of that video, there's now about a half-dozen of us locally who ride all the time. Every single one of my friends riding MUni is a direct consequence of that video."
Hoover learned to unicycle about two years ago, after seeing the video, and he continued the chain reaction by inspiring his son and Trey to learn. "I wish I had learned to unicycle when I was seven instead of thirty-eight," he laughs, jealous of the boys' fearlessness and sharp learning curve.
George Peck taught himself to ride in 1983 on an old, red unicycle that his wife salvaged from the dump in Seward, Alaska. Peck, the Seward town judge and an avid hackey-sack artist, learned to ride in hopes of improving his balance for wind surfing. "I eventually found it more interesting than wind surfing," he says.
As Peck improved and ventured beyond his relatively flat driveway, he found himself and his unicycle at odds with the rugged Alaskan terrain. Mountains, ice, wind, gravel, rocks, things that knock master unicyclists on their backs did not dissuade Peck. A few years and dozens of broken unicycles later, he had pioneered mountain unicycling and invented the mountain unicycle.
Meanwhile, Kris Holm in Vancouver, British Columbia, was also independently developing mountain unicycling. Both Holm and Peck are prominent figures in the emerging sport. Peck, who is in his late 50s, can ride over snow, up and down mountains, through the mud and over rocks and logs. "I've ridden the stuff around town to death on a unicycle," Peck says. "But it is still very entertaining to me, and there is always room for improvement."
Bundy, a former hard-core mountain biker who logged 16,000 miles in just 2.5 years, encountered Peck while traveling through Alaska in 1995. Bundy was intrigued by this tall man on a unicycle, and before traveling back home to Santa Cruz, he had a video of Peck mountain unicycling under his arm and had been a guest in Peck's home.
Shortly after his return, Bundy's mountain bike was stolen from his van. Bundy dusted off the video and showed it to Hoover and others in their group of midnight mountain biking, rock climbing, mountaineering friends. They decided MUni would be their next pursuit.
Bundy remembers the day he learned to unicycle: June 10, 1997. Two weeks later he hit the trails and hasn't replaced his mountain bike since. Bundy, Hoover and a handful of their techie-turned-weekend-warrior friends can be found in Santa Cruz most weekends searching for steeper, more exciting terrain.
A MUni rider expends about twice as much energy as a mountain biker would on the same terrain, according to Peck, who claims to have wired himself to a heart monitor while riding with mountain bikers. Peck, Hoover and others say that the technical challenge and the stark simplicity of the machine are what make MUni so much fun. "It fully engages your mind and body," Bundy says.
One of their favorite local rides is up Los Gatos Creek Trail to Lexington Reservoir and over the steep, rocky Jones Trail.
"When we first started about a year ago, I used to think it was impossible," Nathan Hoover says of riding the treacherous trails. "Now we just ride up with no problem, it's as easy as walking."
Beau Hoover and his father, Nathan Hoover, ride their unicycles to Daves Avenue School.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Beau and Trey, both 7 years-old, don't have the endurance or skills necessary to keep up with Hoover and his friends on the trails, but are improving their unicycling skills every day. "It was through a lot of bruises, cuts and crying that the kids learned to ride," says Grace Fleming, Beau's mother. "The kids were so determined, and that's what amazes me." Months of persistence and practice pay off as they turn heads and impress their peers while riding to school in the mornings.
Beau first picked up a unicycle last January, and Trey a few months later after receiving a unicycle for his 6th birthday. The two practiced together at Daves Avenue School. Holding onto a pole, the boys practiced getting themselves up onto the single wheel over and over. When they had that mastered, they tried riding from one pole to the next without falling.
"Sometimes it was frustrating," Beau says. "I could never get from pole to pole. Then finally I did two, three, then four poles and finally I was riding all around."
When Trey could balance on his own, he often practiced at the Saratoga High School track during his sister's cheerleading practice, measuring the progress he could make without falling first in inches, then feet, and finally laps. "I still practice at the track sometimes," Trey says.
Trey's mother, Dawn Evans, used to ride a unicycle as a little girl and hopes to learn again so she can ride with Trey. "He just took off one day, and hasn't slowed down since," she says. Trey's older brother and father have also dabbled in the sport since he began riding seven months ago. "Having a friend to learn with got them through the initial stage that can be frustrating," says Rob Miller, Trey's father. "Now it's easy for them."
The boys proudly acknowledge they are the only kids their age they know who ride unicycles. They also say it's just plain fun. "There's always more tricks you can learn, there's always a goal," Beau says. He is working on the impressively titled one-footed idle and wheel-locking.
"I like it for a lot of reasons," Trey says. "I get a lot of exercise, and it's a lot of fun." Trey is working on idling and riding backwards, which, he says with a shrug, "is not that hard." While riding together and having fun is the most important part of unicycling for Hoover and his friends, Beau and Trey, they occasionally meet with other unicyclists and dabble in competition at unicycling festivals.
In October, Beau and Trey attended their first juggling and unicycling festival together in Lodi, where they met dozens of other people who unicycle. Nathan Hoover, a juggler for the past 30 years, went with the boys to the festival where Beau, who is following in his father's track, won third place in the uphill MUni race.
"It was hard to win, especially at the end of the race," Beau says of the race, which was against mostly adults. Trey learned how to juggle with three balls at the event.
The first festival dedicated solely to MUni was held in Sacramento in October 1996, hosted by John Foss, world champion MUni rider. According to Bundy, about 35 MUni enthusiasts from across North America attended the event. The yearly MUni conventions continued to be held near Sacramento until this year, when Bundy and his MUni-riding roomate David Poznanter hosted the 1999 MUni convention in Santa Cruz, Oct. 15-17. Hoover says about 60 riders attended from across the country for the competition and group trail-rides.
Santa Cruz, situated between the high-tech world of the Silicon Valley and an individualistic university has a particularly high concentration of MUni riders and some of the best MUni trails, Bundy says. "My experience is that a large percentage of mountain unicycle people are mathematically inclined, and so the ridership tends to center around universities and employment that uses math-type skills," Peck says, adding that California and the United Kingdom have the highest concentration of MUni riders in the world.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Beau Hoover (left) and Trey Miller ride their unicycles on the dirt road next to Trey's mother's house.
Unicycling will bring the Hoover family to China next summer for UNICON, a worldwide unicycling convention. Chinese officials expect a minimum of 1,000 people to attend, making it the largest unicycle convention ever, Hoover says.
"In the U.S., we think about cars," Fleming says. "Other parts of the world think about human-powered vehicles, whether it be rickshaws, bicycles or even walking."
The second-grade boys don't have elaborate plans for the future with their unicycles just yet. For the moment, they are more concerned with soccer games, Little League and at whose house they will play after school.
MUni itself is still a growing child. The mountain unicycle is constantly being improved, and the sport is appealing to more and more people, young and old. Peck sees ridership growing, and attributes much of that growth to Bundy, Hoover and their friends, whom he calls the young Turks cycling. "They are bringing fresh ideas and technologies to a sport that has languished since the 1940s," Peck says. "After ten years of this, the unicycle will no longer be automatically connotated with the circus, but as a healthy, low-impact, challenging activity for anyone who has the interest to ride."
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
Beau Hoover leads the way going down a hill, with his friend and fellow unicycle enthusiast Trey Miller just behind him.
