My most memorable unicycling experience occured while riding my unicycle on
the Helli deck of the AURORA AUTRALIS, an Australian Antarctic research and
resupply ship. It was somewhere in the middle of the Southern Ocean with a
dreamscape background of huge ice-burgs and sunset colours everywhere. The
ship was experiencing a type off motion commonly known as corkscrewing (I'm
sure you can imagine what that means). This gentle corkscrew action allowed
me to ride round and round in a circle, travelling downhill the whole time!
Quite a unique experience.
On the same trip I had another first for me, though many of you I'm sure
find the situation commonplace (well allmost). I'm talking about riding in
the snow. We were sheltering from the winds in the lee of Heard Island in
the Southern Ocean. It was quite calm and large snowflakes were gently
falling. The ship was covered in about two cm of soft snow. It made the
riding surface (the metal floor of the helli deck) quite slippery so
gliding with the wheel locked was possible. Again the scenery was what made
the experience so special - sitting just a couple hundred meters from the
site where a large glacier meets the sea. A couple of seals lounging on the
ice and penguins darting and Porpoising through the water.
Mark
Mark Sands o o
o
E-mail M.R.Sands@iasos.utas.edu.au o o
IASOS/CRC Ph: +61 20 2941 Fax: +61 20 2973
------------------------------------------------ o
Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies o @_/
CRC for Antarctic and Southern Ocean Environment \/|
#
/ \
** **