Features

Photography: Nathan Hoover and Alicia Sangiuliano

Kris Holm is probably the world’s most famous unicyclist. The mountain unicycle star has won praise worldwide for exploding the boundaries of technical riding as well as improving the quality and availability of unicycle equipment. But the things Holm loves about unicycling would attract any self-propelled person:

“What I find compelling about a unicycle is the simplicity. It’s like the ultimate single speed. It takes away all the frustrating maintenance aspects of cycles and just leaves you with the fun parts, the riding.”

So what does riding a unicycle feel like?

“It makes your world a little smaller, especially off road. Little ruts become challenges, rocks, roots, pebbles, hills that were nothing to ride on a bike, feel HUGE and exciting to attempt on a uni,” said Jeff Lautard of Unicycle Bastards, a loosely-affiliated “gang” of uni riders in Portland, OR.

Donna Wood, aka Agent Joke Star of the Bay Area Derailleurs bicycle dancers, said, “I can dance with another unicyclist and it feels like we’re soaring through the air with turns and jitter-bugging back and forth. It takes skill, but you can do some of the most amazing things on a uni.

The past ten years have seen revolutionary growth in unicycling, largely due to the Internet, and the popularity of mountain unicycling, or “Muni.” The Internet has created a place for the uni community to connect and share information, photos and videos, plus it has allowed unicycle merchants access to a market which is geographically dispersed. Holm explains, “Suddenly, here was this platform where you could have an online storefront and serve a market that included an entire country.”

Nathan Hoover, Holm’s co-star in the highly acclaimed films Unizaba and Into The Thunder Dragon, was inspired to try “rough terrain unicycling” in 1997 after learning about Alaskan rider George Peck. Today, Hoover and his family are completely immersed in uni culture. Hoover has visited 25 countries including India, Vietnam and, most-recently, Kenya and Tanzania using single-wheeled vehicles for long-distance touring. “It really breaks down the barriers: everyone wants to talk to you!”

This January, Hoover will attend his sixth international Unicycle Convention. UniCon XV, the world’s biggest unicycling event, is being held Dec. 28, 2009 to Jan 7, 2010 in Wellington, New Zealand. It includes competitive events such as artistic freestyle; road racing; muni; hockey; basketball; flatland; and trials; as well as workshops, parties and a parade. “In 2000 we went for the first time to UniCon in China and we met all kinds of great people, many of whom are now good friends,” remarked Hoover by phone from his home in Los Gatos, California, “It feels like we have this big family all over the world.”

One of the places the community connects is Unicyclist.com – a web forum which boasts 22,000 members and over one million posts. Uni magazine, published four to five times a year in the UK, is also a source of inspiration and information. But the biggest attraction for new and young riders is video and social media. As Kris Holm explained, “for these kids, videography is not about communicating about a sport, it’s part of the sport. “Today a fourteen-year-old guy can pick up a unicycle instead of a skateboard.”