As planned, I swung by the post office after work yesterday to pick up my unicycle. A few observations:

1. Unicycle boxes are big. They're a lot bigger than I thought they would be. Almost as large as a standard bike box. It was too wide to fit between the rails of my bike trailer (by about six inches!) I managed to precariously balance it on end and rode home carefully. Thankfully it was only about 3.5 miles from the post office to my house. I did have to stop once because the box slid out and started rubbing my rear tire. It was all worth it though for the look on the post office worker's face when she handed me the box and noticed I was carrying a bike helmet.

2. Unicycles are hard to ride. I didn't expect it to be easy, but I didn't expect it to be as difficult as it has been so far. My son and I worked on it together for over an hour and the farthest I've managed to go so far is maybe eight feet. He's gone maybe six feet. Right now we're just mounting and steadying ourselves using a tree, and riding across the grass. We started in the driveway but quickly figured out it hurts a lot less when you crash if you're not on pavement. And you are going to crash; many, many times. I smashed my shin pretty good, jammed a finger, bruised my shoulder and the inside of my legs are covered in scratches and scrapes. All that was on top of crushing my "area" countless times. I'm definitely feeling old today.

On an unrelated note, it's the one year birthday of my road bike. We celebrated together by crossing the 1,900 mile mark on the way to work this morning.