[hpv] Rough-Terrain Unicyclist (part one)
John Snyder
((This story appears on a "forward to a friend" page on the
above website. -- John Snyder))
Rough-Terrain Unicycling
Riding a unicycle up and down mountains requires
the balance of a gymnast and the temperament of
a teenager
by Michael Finkel
WHY the red unicycle was left in the Seward,Alaska, dump and what
inspired George Peck's wife, Carol, to bring it home are both
unclear. "I'm a salvager and recycler," is all she will say.
"She's a dump rat," Peck says. Carol put the unicycle in the
garage, and Peck found it there. This was almost fourteen years
ago. His life hasn't been the same since.
"I glom on to things," Peck says. "He gets obsessed,"
Carol says. Peck taught himself to ride the red
unicycle -- no books, no instructors. He practiced daily
for more than a month before he could wobble up and
down his driveway. Then he attempted to take the
unicycle onto the roads. Riding a unicycle is as
precarious as it looks -- the "cone of balance," as Peck
calls it, is extraordinarily precise. A pebble can be
enough to put you on your back. So can a patch of sand
or a gust of wind or a crack in the pavement. This may
be why the red cycle was tossed into the dump:
Seward is possibly the worst spot on the planet in
which to ride a unicycle. The place is all sand and gusts
and cracks, not to mention ice and snow and logs and
boulders and mountains.
Peck learned to ride his unicycle under all conditions.
He discovered how to make the cycle hop, and he
honed the skill until he could pop over logs two feet in
diameter. He figured out how to power through boulder
fields, how to jump up and over picnic tables, how to
turn in ankle-deep mud. He became skilled at riding in
dried-out riverbeds, across frozen lakes, up mountain
trails, and through wind-crusted snow. This is clearly not
what unicycles were designed to do. When the red
Unicycle fell apart, Peck drove to Anchorage and
bought a new one. When that broke, he ordered
another. After a dozen more were destroyed, he began
designing his own.
For almost a decade and a half, no matter the weather,
Peck has gone mountain unicycling nearly every day --
twice a day most weekends -- in and around Seward.
People in town are used to seeing him. He has ridden
the shoreline so many times that he notices if a rock
has been moved. Seward sits on Resurrection Bay, on
the eastern edge of the Kenai Peninsula. It is
separated from Anchorage by 125 miles of glaciated
mountains and sprawling icefields. The town is so
remote -- a Galápagos island of sorts -- that something
odd or fantastic can develop there and never be
discovered by anyone beyond the city limits.
Until three years ago, when he attended the
International Unicycle Convention in Minneapolis, Peck
was completely unknown in the unicycling community.
At the meet he learned of a handful of other mountain
unicyclists. He found out that his sport had not only
other participants but also a name -- "muni," short for
"mountain unicycling" (a name, Peck feels, that is a
little too cute; he prefers "rough-terrain cycling"). Later,
through a unicycling newsletter, he read of plans for an
inaugural muni convention. Last October he flew to
Sacramento for the first annual California Mountain
Unicycle Weekend. Thirty-five of the best rough-terrain
unicyclists in North America came to show off their
skills. No one was half as good as Peck. He is now
widely viewed as the best mountain unicyclist in the
world. He is credited with helping to invent the sport,
and the cycles he has designed are probably the
sturdiest and lightest unicycles ever built. He is riding
rougher terrain every month. And he is almost certainly
the world's oldest mountain unicyclist: Peck is fifty-six.
CAROL and George Peck and their two children,
Kristopher, twelve, and Katy, seven, live in a small
brown house two blocks from the center of town.
Attracted to Alaska's frontier image, Peck moved to the
state in 1974, after a stint in Nepal with the Peace
Corps and almost ten years in the University of Idaho's
graduate schools, where he earned degrees in
physics, law, and teaching. He came to Seward to take
the job of magistrate, a position he still holds. He met
Carol Griswold in 1981.
The inside of their house, especially during the long
Alaska winter, is a scene of unmitigated chaos.
Peaches and Boomer, a pair of parakeets, like to
dive-bomb visitors' heads. Berry and Jessie, two
Labrador retrievers, wrestle in the kitchen. Katy prefers
roller skates to sneakers, and Kristopher wouldn't be
caught dead without his skateboard. The living room
contains three unicycles, a small trampoline, a
basketball net, an electric keyboard, two acoustic
guitars, two fiddles (Carol and George play in a local
folk band), an indoor garden, an eclectic library (one
shelf devoted to entomology, another to dog training), a
general scattering of children's toys, several of Carol's
junkyard furniture discoveries, a hamster cage, a fish
tank, and a midden of unicycle parts.
"George has been a teenager for forty years," Carol
says. This is only partly true. When Peck is in his
courtroom, facing the daily litany of drunk-driving and
domestic-violence cases, he is fifty-six years old. When
he is awake at two in the morning, mulling over the
physics of wheel diameter and axle size, he is fifty-six.
When he is riding, he is seventeen -- though he doesn't
use swearwords. When he falls, he says things like
"Gargle!" and "Yug!" and "These shoes are explosively
decoupling with the pedals, and that's disconcerting."
Peck is a little over six feet tall and about as thin as a
fence post. He has the air of a mad scientist. His hair
appears to be an assemblage of cowlicks. He is
profoundly nearsighted, and wears round gold-framed
glasses. A housewide search for his car keys is almost
a daily event. He eats dinner as if a cash prize were to
be awarded to the first finisher. His unicycle is built of
top-quality titanium and tempered aluminum parts,
special-ordered from a custom manufacturer, but Peck
often rides wearing faded jeans, a stained sweatshirt,
and leather work boots. On the front of the family's
washing machine, using word magnets, Katy has
assembled a succinct ode to her father: DAD IS
FUNNY.
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