When is a unicycle actually an Everest to climb? When you’re 14

Concussion, a busted wrist, broken foot, black eyes: nothing could deter Tim Douglas from pursing his first, one-wheeled love.

Tim Douglas

@TimDouglas_Aus

3 min read

12:00AMJanuary 12, 2023.

Updated 9:03AMJanuary 12, 2023

The allure of unicycling gripped Tim Douglas when he was 14, and never let go.

The first unicycle rolled into my life on Christmas Day, 1994. A gift from my grandparents, it had been wrapped, like some ancient curio, in a white sheet. Shepherding the angular apparition through the living room on his way to the Christmas tree, my grandfather swore loudly as the gift reared about violently, searching for a point of balance, under his hand. “Bloody thing has a mind of its own.”

When the sheet was, theatrically, removed by my pensioned progenitors, I was awestruck. A resplendent vision of chrome and rubber, the unicycle was the most beautiful thing I’d seen. My 14-year-old self marvelled at its form. A cylindrical column at one end forked around a freshly stubbled tyre, its spoked wheel affixed with a brace of spiked metal pedals. At its other extremity was a padded saddle, unimpeachably plump and sporting a small chrome mounting handle. A sticker on the cycle’s backside proclaimed “Wilson’s Bikes”. But this was no bike. This was something altogether different. This was a mountain to climb. I had no idea how to conquer it. All I knew was I was in love. Head over heels.

“Perhaps it was heels over head?” I did my best to explain the accident to the doctor, insofar as I could recall it at all. There had been a technical issue with my maiden voyage. The GP had her own word for it: “Concussion.” That fall – the unicycle having rolled unceremoniously out from beneath me, propelling me into a wall – would be the first of countless mishaps over the course of the next three decades. The broken foot, the busted wrist, the black eyes, the gaping gash in the scalp. All that was ahead of me.

For now, I was besotted. I barely emerged from my room that summer (perhaps not unusual for a teenage boy; but let’s call mine a “uninistic” pursuit). By the time autumn rolled around, I could ride with a rudimentary level of proficiency. I rolled to breakfast. I spun down to the shops. I took it to school, giving lessons in the playground. I learned some acrobatic skills and started juggling – first balls, then juggling clubs, and then mum’s kitchen knives, much to her horror. Eventually I bought some fireclubs and professional juggling knives, and found work.

Tim Douglas on one of his unicycles.

Festivals, parties, shopping centre openings, town fairs. At one point the young impresario Michael Cassel – the country’s leading international arts producer – hired me. (Okay, so he was 14 at the time but still I thought I was going places). I busked and got some work with a circus before landing a job, while at university, with councils running circus skills workshops.

That unicycle was always by my side. Within a few years, I had bought a new one. A tiny thing. Maybe a foot high. My 40-year-old hips now wince at the flexibility I must have needed to ride it, but I mastered it, impressing no one but myself.

I moved to the Czech Republic, and found Prague tragically to be devoid of unicycling shops. A year later, I moved to Edinburgh, Europe’s cultural capital, but I couldn’t find a unicycle to save myself. It wasn’t until I visited London’s Camden that I tasted the sweet succour of the circus shop. I put a deposit on a nice red unicycle before realising carting a backpack and a wheeled stick around the world might have its drawbacks. I got my deposit back, and put my bank (and corporeal) balance on hold.

When I returned to Sydney a few years later, my journalism career in motion, I disappeared into the unicycling wilderness. I got married, and my little family of wheels was superseded by far more needy human ones. It wasn’t until my elder son’s fifth birthday that I decided it was time to roll out Old Faithful. The tyre was flat. Rust had set in. It needed some oil, and so did I, and so with liberal doses of WD40 and Deep Heat respectively, we were back together. I began riding again in the wee hours, rediscovering its meditative salve, and embracing the nightly communion of breathing and balance.

My family – wheeled and legged – began expanding. With each child seemed to come a new unicycle. A caramel number accompanied the birth of my second son; and then, with the arrival of my daughter, came the piece de resistance: The Giraffe. The 2m-high, chain-driven monster is a tricky beast to master – it requires its rider to scramble up its shaft and mount the saddle and pedals simultaneously. After months of practice, I was up and riding. Until I wasn’t. The last time I was cycling at altitude — cleaning the house’s gutters (my wife’s suggestion) — I broke my foot on the dismount. It wouldn’t have happened on Old Faithful.

People generally ask two things of unicyclists: How do you do it? And, more pointedly, why?

The how is easy: practice. The why is a more complex proposition. A psychoanalyst might have a field day with it (“Which bicycle hurt you?”), but I remain steadfast in my response. When I was 14, the unicycle was my Everest. Why did I ride it? Because it was there.

Tim Douglas is editor of Review.

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When is a unicycle actually an Everest to climb? When you’re 14

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