The 2013 edition of the North American Unicycling Convention and Championships is over- minus the cleanup. As far as that goes, after we get a few trailer loads out of a school parking lot, we'll be good.
For those who have been part of the shindig: Thanks for staying, thanks for playing. Thanks for making it all happen. Please take some time over the next few weeks to post your pics and videos. Facebook and YouTube are great sources along with unicyclist.com forums. If you have video and pics from The Wheel Mill field trip, please use #thewheelmill. If you don't know what hashtagging is, that's fine, spread the word how you can.
We (as the Butler Wobble) put on the best possible NAUCC we could imagine. The hundreds of hours of work putting into getting the ship out of the harbor were well worth it from our perspective. We're glad it wasn't the Titanic. We hope you agree.
We wanted to make this the best possible convention for the registrants and then invite the public to watch some amazing world class unicycling. We wanted to showcase the resources of our region: both the natural resources and our amazing neighbors. We wanted to attract sponsors to the sport.
In the end, we got much, much more than we bargained for. We expected locals to be amazing hosts- we experience that on a daily basis. We expected the unicyclists to put on world class performances- we've seen those at prior conventions.
What we didn't expect were the bonds that formed between the unicyclists and the non-unicycling local public. Friendships have been made. The world has become a lot smaller.
And "uni" most definitely is found in community.
The journey's not over. It's mUni Monday. We start with indoor time at the YMCA November 2nd.
For the locals we hope to ride with you soon. If you can't yet ride, we'll work with you to make it happen. After all, the more riders, the better the wobble of unicyclists is.
For those of our friends who aren't geographically local, we'll see you soon. A year from tomorrow at the latest- at the start of Unicon 17.
We'll be there.