Why couldn’t the unicycle stand upright? Because it was one tired cycle!

   Over 100 years ago the penny-farthing, a bicycle consisting of a gigantic wheel with a smaller wheel attached to the back for balance, was invented. The unicycle is believed to have emerged from this early bicycle. This is because people noticed that the back wheel would lift off the ground and was rendered completely useless. With the wheel being useless, it was removed and the unicycle was contrived.

   A unicycle is a completely human-powered, one-wheeled vehicle that requires determination, practice, and time to master. When riding a unicycle, the rider is in a constant state of falling and in order to prevent himself from falling he must pedal to keep the wheel underneath him. In doing so the rider is maintaining a sort of equilibrium and staying in a constant state of correction. Once the rider learns to subconsciously do this, then he can go wherever he wants on the unicycle.

   Within the last 30 years, unicycling has begun to explode into the lives of people all over the world. The more extreme riders have been using unicycles in unparalleled manners, allowing the sport to be experienced by a broad range of people. MUnicycling, also called Mountain Unicycling is a version of the sport in which the rider rides in extreme landscapes, riding over obstacles and down hills all with a unicycle. There are many riders who prefer not to ride all-terrain; alternatively they ride freestyle, which is where riders perform various tricks and traverse urban landscapes on flat ground.

   There is one student at Etowah who has taken an interest in this unique sport. Alan Mueller, 12, is just an average high school student with one exception; he rides a unicycle almost every day, even riding to school if the weather is nice.

   Mueller has been riding his unicycle since January of this year. This was when he first thought of starting to learn how.

   “I had the idea to start unicycling when I thought of how cool it would be to ride a unicycle while playing my saxophone,” Mueller said.

   As soon as this idea came to him, Mueller set out to find a unicycle. His first stop was in a local bicycle shop located near Woodstock. The clerks inside the bicycle shop told Mueller that the store only carried beginner cycles and that his best bet on finding a quality unicycle was Unicycles.com.

   Mueller went to a distributing headquarters of Unicycles.com to try and purchase his unicycle. As he walked in, Mueller noticed that an entire wall in the store was devoted to displaying unicycles of all sizes and types.

   “I knew I was in the right place from the start,” Mueller said.

   A representative from the store came to the front and after a short discussion, Mueller had chose to get a Kris Holm 20 inch unicycle. The representative allowed Mueller to pick and choose the colors and he decided upon a unicycle in lime green with a white tire.

   “When I got home with my unicycle I immediately began to try and get up on it but it ended up being harder than I thought it would be,” Mueller said.

   In just a week Mueller could mount and ride around on his unicycle with the help of a friendly wall in his garage. Within the next couple of weeks he could free mount his unicycle and ride as far and as long as he wanted. Mueller spent most of his time unicycling at the Towne Lake Hills North Park where he learned how to do most everything he can do on his unicycle. As Mueller practiced he began to get noticed by many curious and amazed onlookers.

   “Unicycling helps me pick up chicks,” Mueller said.

    People react in many ways to Mueller when he is unicycling. Some people tell him whitty jokes while some people just react with extraordinary comments.

   “One man asked me as I rode past if I could do a wheelie for him, and he seemed very serious about it too,” Mueller said.

   Some of the common jokes that people crack to Mueller are, asking whether he could only afford half of a bike or where he left the other half of it, but the most common joke is when people ask him whether he is “practicing for the circus.”

   “I think it is really lame when people crack jokes like that but the most awkward thing that has happened to me was when a guy I didn’t know tried to teach me to juggle for half an hour without any juggling balls,” Mueller said.

   In between all the attention he gets, Mueller practices new tricks on his unicycle in the park. He uses the fences and basketball goals to hold onto as he learns how to perform these many different stunts. His bag of tricks as of now includes: hopping with his unicycle; wheel walking, which is where he uses his feet to kick the wheel forward as he rides it; and his most challenging trick, the unispin, where Mueller hops, then spins the unicycle a full turn underneath him to come back and land on the pedals.

   “I get injured a lot while doing these tricks, and the injuries are mostly on my shins; I have tons of scars all over them,” Mueller said.

   The injuries are worth all the effort to Mueller though, and with over 4 months of effort put forth into unicycling, he says he wouldn’t want to be doing anything else in his spare time.

   “Unicycling is very freeing and when I am having a tough day, it helps me forget about everything and relax,” Mueller said.