theCollectiveUs

Racing a 20″ against a bunch of 24″s don’t seem very logical does it…

I’m currently doing 1:20 for a est 350m distance taking into account weaving in and out of pedestrians. I’ll probably need to cut it down by 20s to be decent. Hm.

This vid in particular is quite motivational.

Does a handlebar help in sprints? I’ve always considered them nasty for acceleration.

LOOK AT THEIR LEGS.

Me: Hey mom, I need  some cloth. As bright as you can find.

Mom: What for?

Me: Costume. Halloween.

Mom: What’s that?

Me: I’m making a costume.

Mom: What costume?

Me: One that I’ll be making.

Mom: Orh.

For the record, I can cook, sew, wash and my lifelong ambition is to be a housewife. Please join the queue to marry me. Thanks.

Well the Chinese have this saying, failure is the mother of success. It kind of makes you want to look at successful people and smirk widely.

You gotta love the Chinese.

Yes, bad pun.

I did my first unassisted pirouettes today. My tire’s set to 50psi and I’ve my seatpost slightly lower than most people would prefer. The balance is a little weird. I prefer getting into tight circles within a few revolutions of cycling off and I’m surprised at how low my speed was when I went into a spin – I’d always thought that you need to be cycling really fast before it works. Leaning in is a little intimidating though.

Another thing I did realise is that I’m too tall for my unicycle – at my maximum reach, my seat post needs to be extended beyond its length.Hm. Maybe i will have to get a longneck frame the next time after all. Guess I grew up.

I was introduced to this food center at Amoy Street which serves incredibly large portions of food.

We went there after lunch and got…

A $5 bowl of fish soup.

This looks less appetizing than it is. We got a serving each of wanton mee and there was definitely over 10 wantons in that bowl of soup which incidentally is the same size as the plate (perspective fail). All this for… $3.

I think Scribblenauts is overhyped. It’s funny and exciting because you can type all sorts of things and see them onscreen. After the first few levels though, you’ll be hacking your way through the puzzles because there’s so much room for loopholes. Not that it’s the fault of the testers of course because I’d imagine the solutions to be limitless and hence impossible to comprehensively test. The responsibility then lies with the player to play the game ‘correctly’ like you’re supposed to.

I don’t like the inprecise controls either. Some of the items are so small, you can’t point at them correctly onscreen and your character keeps walking into them, blocking them. The “Pick up item X and drop them in Y” tasks are the worst. Half the time, you’ll end up picking them up and throwing them around because you can’t precisely poke at them onscreen.

It’s such an ambitious game I do want to think it is as amazing as we imagined it is. It’s just disappointing when I’m attracting unicorns with hay, my plane doesn’t fly and my gopher doesn’t want to chew down a tree.

OMG OMG OMG Pirouettes are like, so totally fun!

That’s a pirouette in case you didn’t know what it was. I adore my new uni. It’s amazingly pretty and feels so much different from riding my regular trials. Every turn feels light and smooth so I thought I’d spend some time trying to spin today. I’ve a rough feel of how the weight distribution is like and it’s actually a little scary when you lean into the spin and start going faster.

Of course, thereafter, you get giddy so you lose your orientation and stumble around like a drunkard. Fun.

Since I’d been feeling a bit sick the entire week, I woke up early to unicycle the Eastern Park Connector (yet again). Today marks the first time in a FULL YEAR that I’ve done the whole connector without any pain in that knee. Now there’s a reason why I keep riding the same route. Each time I hit around the 30km mark, I’d end up limping to a bus stop.

I lost my bottle somewhere early, possibly at a traffic junction and so was forced to stop at the 30km point for a drink. 2:05. Pretty decent. I continued on after a 10 minute break and the route between Changi Village and Pasir Ris has got to have the most traffic lights on EARTH. Very annoying to have to screech to a halt with short cranks. I stopped again for about 15-20 minutes at Pasir Ris to grab another drink and then headed back which made it about 45km (I did a short detour at East Coast) in 3:46 including breaks.

The last 10km or so was incredibly tiring due to the junctions and uphills. I still don’t understand how having speed bumps on a hill is supposed to benefit the cyclist. My knees feel surprisingly fine and the entire ride felt quite similar to running a half-marathon.

I think I’m going to repeat the routine for a few more weeks and maybe add a 5-10km run at the end of it all. Cutting down the timing to about 2:45 seems very possible if you take away the breaks (and traffic lights).

We were supposed to do these star jumps. Which were fun on most counts. Here’s a behind the scenes look. There’s one more here.

And then we got lazy. So hey, if you squint you’ll just think we’re really tiny people.

Oh yea, we did mention souvenirs. I’ve got a spare pair of pedals. Actually 2 pairs. ANYONE WANTS THEM?

And back to the program.

Here’s a family from China who was walking behind us. Mom tells her kids that she can unicycle so I turned around and said she can have a go.

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