Upcoming Wobble Sightings

We're indoors in the Winter at the Butler YMCA on Saturdays from 4 - 6pm (Except last Saturday of the month)We're outdoors in the other seasons (well, sometimes in Winter as well too).

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Little Bits of Progress

36 inch unicycles are popping up all over the area! Four (total) of our members will have one by tomorrow afternoon. Could this be a sign of the Apocalypse or just a stage race coming to town?

Uni-fied Wednesdays at the Skatepark have been going fairly well. We seem to be the only users who feel our heads are worth $30. It seems wearing a helmet isn't very fashionable to most of the multi-wheeled skatepark crowd. Apparently chicks and dudes dig scars and memory loss.

Stage Race updates: We've got a small token of appreciation for participants. You'll find out soon enough. We don't have official hotel deals worked out, but they're in the works. Scoring for the race is an interesting logistical exercise- ideas are getting firmer. We've got the prize package for the winners started. Logistics leave the field for all 3 events to be capped at about 30ish riders. We've got around a dozen or so informally registered as there is no formal registration yet.

One quick note (in case things get too hectic over the next week): Next Wednesday there may not be much of a presence at the skatepark as some of us are committed to wrench for some travelling bicyclists.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

A flurry of BCSR info is UP!

Check out the BCSR blog!

We've got logistics settled so that unis go out for the TT one at a time.

Two crits A and B. The A race is for those signed up for all 3 events. Wheel size will be limited to 700c and above. The B race will be for anyone who can ride! The max wheel size is 29in for this event. There will be minimal prizes for the B race (probably just ribbons), but it will be only $5 to enter! We want EVERYONE who can ride a uni in on this for the spectators' sake.

It looks like we can set registration for the 3 race weekend at $30! Since it's the inaugural event we want to keep the price low to encourage people to make the trip. The prize list won't be nearly that of the bikes, but the fun factor will be at least as good.

Once again EVERYONE who rides MUST be a USA member. It's only $20 for the whole year!

Sunday, May 9, 2010

A Few BCSR Updates

The Butler County Stage Race details are coming together one step at a time. Being that this is the first year for the event, there are a lot of logistics to be worked out. Next year will be much easier, but don't wait until then!

A lot of my time so far has been involved in getting the web end of the bicycle race together along with getting the actual time frames for the unis worked out. Our tenative plan is to have the unis go off first both days as we will most likely be the smallest of the categories.

The road race day will have 3 options: 1,2,or 3 laps. I was originally thinking only 1 or 3 to keep things simple, but after holding some discussions we decided there needs to be the 2 lap option. There will most likely be a 2 hour cutoff for 2 laps for those taking the three lap option. After preriding the course last weekend I found a lap to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-50 min for me (ungeared 36 with 110 cranks). The main part of the steep hill took me right around 5 min to climb on the 2nd full trip up.

The Time Trial is pretty straight forward. We're still getting logistics worked out, but we may need to send out riders 2 at a time with 30 second intervals between.

We want everyone who can ride a unicycle involved in the Criterium. 2 heats. One will be for the big wheels and/or geared, one for more of the novice crowd and anyone who can ride. I'm still trying to figure out how many laps or what length of time to make the heats to fit the schedule.

We're in the planning stages for a Saturday night dinner/ party for the unicyclists. We've got a fantastic chef committed to helping us pull it off and now we'll work on a venue.

We don't have a motel list yet, but we do have some who are willing to play host families for the weekend. There are local motels, but it's best for us to wait just a bit to get the bicyclists in on the group rates too.

I know some who have done racing before have expressed concerned about geared/ ungeared. The current plan is to have overall rankings and ungeared recognition as well. How deep things will go depends on how many people show up for the weekend.

We don't have any online registration up. We haven't completely finalized costs so we don't have a definite registration fee schedule either. Being that we'll be under Unicycling Society of America insurance will allow us to keep the registration fees under $50 for the weekend. How much lower we can go I don't know yet.

If you are seriously looking to attend, please shoot me an email at dave(dot)bikes(at)yahoo(dot)com. Replace the () with the symbols. The more data I have now, the more answers I can have soon.

Update: There's a link to the BCSR road race course under links. Here's a copy of the map too:



ride on,
dave krack