My Niece Nadia is a self taught Unicyclist. Her skills are beyond impressive. If I had more time I would have photographed her Unicycling with her sister on her back!!! Next time. Here is her journey:
"I’ve been unicycling for a little over a decade, or about half my life. I started when I was around eleven years old. It took me three days to learn how to ride. The first day is just balancing yourself on the damn thing. The second day is falling ten thousand times, and the third day you actually go forward more then a few feet. I didn’t learn alone, I learned at the same time my two sisters and cousin learned. So we all had the ability to ride around but we never went further with the skill. As the years went on, I rode less and less, and once I got a car, my unicycle lived in my trunk, really only riding it to prove to someone that I could, or just as a fun party trick.
I started working in security, basically sitting in a room for an eight hour shift, staring at five hundred cameras. Every two hours, I would get a fifteen minute break, and for the first year and half, I spent those breaks doing nothing. Sitting in my car, scrolling on my phone, just staring at a small screen as a break from staring at big screens. One day on break, I decided to unicycle around the parking lot, and it was amazing. So, I did it the next break and the next one, and the following days. For awhile that’s all I had, was fifteen minute rides every so often.
I ended up losing my job and all my friends because of bullshit (I’m not even going to go into that for the sake of a (somewhat) short story), and I was in a really bad place. I had nothing to do with my days, and almost no one to lean on, so I started unicycling for hours every day. I unicycled until my legs would scream for me to stop, but I would keep going. I realized why I was unicycling so much, and why I even unicycle to this day. One, unicycling is a very freeing feeling, and people can argue this, but to me, it feels like flying. Two, it silences the hive in my head. It feels like I have ten thousand bees in my head, each bouncing around with a different thought, never stopping. Except when I unicycle. When I’m riding my mind is just blank and I’m free. Even if I decided to stop learning new tricks today, I don’t think I would ever stop riding. It’s just too perfect of a feeling, and honestly, who would ever want to stop flying?"
