Unicycle Jousting

The recent Washington State Lottery ad showing jousting on Segways reminded me of this, which I wrote in the early 90s in response to a picture in a Microsoft recruiting brochure, which was of me unicycle jousting.  The article's original home unicycling.org has gone away, so I thought I should re-post it here:

The two guys in the picture are rick raddatz (in the white helmet) and brian lewis (in the green helmet). it was taken on the Microsoft redmond campus about 1989 or so.

brian invented this lunacy when he was at oregon state univ. in the mid 70s. the lance is an 8 foot wooden dowel...the sort of thing that's normally used to hang clothes on. it has a tennis ball on the end, with silicone caulk on it. we discovered that the lance tends to skitter wildly on the shield, which is both dangerous and makes it difficult to get a good hit. the caulk minimizes this: it makes the lance tip stick to the shield long enough to get a decent hit.

the shield is about 30 inches in diameter, made of 3/4 inch plywood, and has a sturdy horizontal brace (also 3/4 ply) along where your forearm goes. there's a handle on this brace near one edge, and along the center is a leather sleeve for your left forearm.


we've found that it's important to wear a glove that comes well up your right arm: brian got his skin pinched between the lance and the shield, requiring stitches. we also decided that we needed to establish some rules: the blow must come from the tip of the lance, and must be aimed at the center of the shield, favoring "low and inside" so that any deflections will go between the riders and not across them, and will not ride up, where it might hit the rider in the face or throat. the riders must attempt to pass to the right...that is, the way americans and mainland europeans drive, not like brittons, japanese, and australians. the shield must be held perpendicular to the blow.

if you follow reasonable safety precautions, it's really not at all dangerous, and it looks really silly (which is a good thing...). since you pretty much have to knock the other rider off by playing with the timing and force of the blow (as opposed to the aim), and you're on a not especially stable mount in the first place, you really can't hurt the other guy. as a matter of fact, I think more falls come from the rider holding the lance that made the good hit than the shield that was hit.



There's a video clip of Brian and me jousting on national TV in Frank Gibney's "The Pacific Century".   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEl5nhtGRJA&feature.  go to 2:17