The process of learning to unicycle can be split into several milestone moments, moments when you realize you’ve leveled up. These moments also give you an opportunity to evaluate your own progress, and help to plan the future course. During my own journey, I identified these steps

Did some more unicycling in the last couple of days. In a first, I tried unicycling on grass and gravel, and the transition was interesting. Riding on the gravel, I could feel the tire interacting with every pebble and stick that I rolled on. The tire also grips so much more, due to it sinking a bit more into soft gravel, when compared to unyielding concrete, so I found myself being hyper-aware of the contours on the surface, and also how the unicycle responded to each one of my inputs. The whole session was very satisfying, and made me want to try and learn something new, like idling on a unicycle.

The weekend was quite warm, with temperatures staying above freezing for the most part. Most of the snow had melted away, and most of the water too had evaporated, leaving clean asphalt. I’d been thinking of going out to do some unicycling for a couple of weeks now, but the weather conditions hadn’t been favorable; this weekend though was looking just perfect.

This summer has been exceedingly warm; warmer perhaps than even the super-warm summer of 2014, and today was a pretty muggy day. I’d not ventured out all day, and at half past five, I was a bit miffed at having spent all day indoors. I topped up my hydration pouch, slung on my backpack, and set off with my 36-er, to try and practice for a bit. Unicycling gets a lot of attention, and before long, I was surrounded by kids in the neighborhood, asking me questions and cheering me on enthusiastically.

While I’ve been making steady progress with my 36-er, I hadn’t shot a video of my riding or mounting it, till today. Today though, as I was practicing, I saw a couple of people seated on a bench, looking at me, and even shooting a video, as I attempted to freemount and ride away.