I am learning to ride a unicycle. My best advice: start riding before age 57 (before 17, even).

I have been riding almost daily for 4 full weeks. Each day, I ride a little farther, a little more confidently. Albuquerque has many great bike trails. Those trails along the arroyos have sturdy railings at a good height for grabbing while learning. My training route is behind the Hampton Inn near Carlisle. The route is about one tenth of a mile (although I could go many miles farther by continuing under Carlisle). I ride my little stretch out and back. Five roundtrips are a bit more than one mile. Today, for the first time, I completed 10 full laps for more than two miles in 55 minutes. Eventually, in addition to the bike trail, I’d like to ride through my neighborhood and around my park.

I get interesting reactions from bicyclists and pedestrians. Early on, several people said encouraging things — I may have looked like I needed that. A few people from a nearby law office walk the trail regularly. They are nice enough to move out of my way, knowing, no doubt, that I don’t have the means to go around them, yet. One guy said, "you went farther today," though he couldn’t know that. Today, a homeless guy looked at me and asked, "beginner?" It’s that obvious. He advised me to learn to juggle so I could make good money in Santa Fe. A group of women walked past me. One asked, "Is that hard work?" (I must make it appear so.) Another said, "you’ve got a nice ass."

Although I am pleased with what I can do, I’m well aware that I have to get away from the rail to be a true rider. However, there is one aspect of riding that didn’t occur to me until I got past the obvious problem of getting on a unicycle: riding a unicycle is very hard exercise. There is no coasting; my legs are always in motion. It’s like running — running up stairs. I ride in 40 degree weather in shorts and short sleeves and still work up a sweat. Building up to 2 miles has been demanding. Frankly, my legs hurt all the time I’m off the cycle. I think I need to be stronger before I can get away from the rail.

I thought yoga would help me with this. I love balance asanas and do passable tree and dancer poses. Indeed, yoga and tai chi are both fantastic in any context, but riding one wheel poses its own challenges.

I am a very unlikely unicyclist. No one is more surprised than I am. Oddly, I don’t remember why I wanted to ride a unicycle, although I know the idea came to me in early October, before I took a trip to DC. There is no explanation in my journal. I was reading The Art of Racing in the Rain and I do remember thinking about some of the lessons in that book about focus and determination. Not long after I mentioned the idea to Mer, an article appeared in the paper about Munis — mountain unicycles — and a group that recently rode rugged terrain in the Manzano Mountains. Yikes! Not for me, thanks.

When I mentioned unicycling on Facebook, my friend Donavon responded. I had forgotten that he knows how to ride and has a unicycle. I may even have tried to get on his cycle 20+ years ago. In October, Donavon gave me my first lessons — I would not have gotten anywhere without him. He even loaned me his unicycle, knowing I would ruin the leather seat. (In the Bronx, where he learned as a kid, if you scuffed someone’s seat, they’d never let you borrow the unicycle again.) I’ve had my own unicycle for 3 weeks, purchased from Amazon.

After I started riding, I found the blog for Gen Shimizu, who rode the Great Divide Trail this summer from Canada to Mexico (2754 miles in 88 days). I have no such ambitions, but when I don’t feel like riding, I think about him riding 70 miles or more in one day. He rode on dirt roads and over mountain passes. Amazing. I know the limits of the activity are so great it is virtually limitless for me. One of my dreams is to ride the loop road around Chaco Canyon (about 11 miles from the campground).

[reprinted from May, 2002]

Months ago, when I heard that Kurt Vonnegut would be speaking at UNM, I thought, “of course, I’ll be there.” I soaked up Vonnegut’s satire in high school, lo, 30 40 years ago. But, for no reason, I never got around to buying a ticket. Little did I realize the ironies to come when Merri said, “I have good news and bad news.”

The bad news was that Vonnegut was sold out. The good news was that I could join a couple of guys from the Daily Lobo in the Media Booth. After all, I have had a number of letters printed in the Lobo — I have written for the Lobo. When I heard “Media Room,” I envisioned a bright, high-tech space with laptop ports and phones and recording equipment. Happy with my good fortune, I jotted down “sometimes good things happen to OK people.”

To my surprise, the Media Room was more like a wide, dark closet in the far back of the auditorium. The only light came through sliding glass windows facing the hall that can only be opened so far, in an alternating arrangement of glass, opening, glass, opening. And it wasn’t just me and my Lobo colleagues — there were 3, sometimes 6, other people in the booth with us. As more people crowded into the booth, I ended up seated behind glass. Most shocking of all, there was no amplified sound, just whatever sound that could drift to the back of the hall and through the half-open windows, one of which was eventually blocked by the Lobo photographer, partly to photograph but mostly so he could lean out and actually hear something.

As Vonnegut began to speak, people in the booth shifted uncomfortably and asked each other if they could hear. One woman had very good hearing and occasionally repeated a bon mot. Now & then the photographer leaned back into the booth and repeated something, too. Several people behind us just left.

For the next hour, while 2000 people listened to one of the wittiest men alive, I strained with all my might to pick out every other word. It was like listening to a foreign language, me straining for the gist, grasping a word here and there, using the end of the sentence to infer the beginning, while the native speakers were laughing their asses off.

I did get the gist. I was particularly surprised that Vonnegut is a self-professed Luddite. A sci-fi writing Luddite? I heard enough to laugh when he said “human beings are here to fart-around.” (Me, “I love to work at nothing all day.”) I missed a couple of manipulations of the doting crowd. I followed much of the chalkboard presentation on good story lines, ending with the analysis that nothing really happens in Hamlet. (As Merri points out, Bart Simpson reached a similar conclusion.)

In the end I was exhausted from all my effort, like an ungifted student of Wit as a Second Language. Much was lost in the translation. I think I endured it for much the same reason people revere the Buddha’s nail clippings — even a fragment of greatness is better than our ordinary lives.

It was, indeed, a night of irony. As I left my deaf booth, I saw & heard the TV, carrying a live broadcast just outside the Media Room door. I saw the patron with the headset for amplified assistance. Would a Luddite begrudge us this much technology? I practically slapped my forehead when Merri said, “maybe there was a switch for speakers.” I remembered Vonnegut’s last words, sharp echoes of Merri’s: “tell me, which was the good news and which was the bad.” More than farting around, I believe we’re here to appreciate Irony. _mjh

I met Merri Rudd Friday night, October 30, 1981. My Droog, Robert Coontz, brought her home to Preston Road for dinner with Droogie John Merck and me. Mer walked into the living room sniffing the air as she walked between the table and the couch, which I thought was odd. She said she was a dog in a former life. I said I was a werewolf. The rest is history. Our story.

Happy Anniversary, Darling! xox, mjh

[photo by John Merck]