LYS Diaries: 14th - 21st January

Safety Lesson #1

Attention to detail is so important when it comes to staging a year-long event such as this. Especially when it comes to safety matters. Every day I make dozens of decisions through a safety filter.

When I take my step-son to the skate park, for example, I don’t try 180’s off a ramp into fakie. I sit at the side and watch enviously, hankering for the day when I can get back to being my good old reckless self (don’t even get me started on quitting tree-climbing).

So, in hindsight, it was kinda odd that I started training without my knee-pads. It’s hot, I told myself. I’m on the relative safety of suburban bike paths, I told myself. Don’t want to get a rash on the back of my knees, I told myself. It’s funny how you can tell yourself absolute crap to help convince yourself of something. A rash on the back of my knees? I mean, really? So, of course, I had a spill at high speed (high speed, for a unicycle, that is) and came an absolute cropper. My shoelace got caught around the crank and I knew I was coming off so was able to prepare for the fall and barrel roll out of it. But I slammed my knee pretty hard, and felt very lucky to have done no further damage. Pads are on from here on in. 

As a consequence, I’ve been referring to myself as Mr Bozo for the week, just to re-enforce the importance of paying attention to detail, especially with safety matters.