Maybe that should be “lower you”, rather than “raise you”? Well, whatever.
While I’ve been spending most of my time over at our sister site AtomicToasters lately, I still try and do a post for Hooniverse from time to time. Every so often, an article falls unbidden into our laps, and presents the dilemma; on which site does it best belong?
Well, in honour of Two-Wheel Tuesday, allow your friends at AtomicToasters to present you with a Buick-V8-powered Monocycle.
There are times in your life when you look at a given situation — say, a Hayabusa or a 1500cc Valkyrie — and think, “that’s just not insane enough”. Now, most of us have that experience after just a couple too many drinks, or far too many hours without sleep. And most of the time, that thought process is as far as we take it. Worst-case scenario, we might take it one step further to a thought of “Two wheels? That’s just extravagant. We can make do with only one!”
There aren’t many, however, who would take that extra leap (or ward off sobriety for long enough) to actually build it. It’s another step altogether to think, after building quite a few of them, that it might be a good idea to install a classic aluminium Buick V8.
The builder, Kerry McLean, has been building monocycles since the 1970’s, but this is the one that nearly killed him. On his first test run, the whole thing developed a shimmy, and the 900-pound beast quickly became violently unstable and crushed him. McLean ended up spending quite some time in the hospital and in recovery, but the moment he was well enough, he set right back to work. He found the cause of the instability (uh… besides having only one wheel…), fixed it, and tried it out again.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4YmVP6i4qw[/youtube]
This monocycle is capable of speeds in excess of 160 km/h (100 mph), and I’ll be honest, I think it scares me. But I mean that in a good way.
[EDIT: Hat-tip to PowerTryp for the reference over on AtomicToasters that triggered this whole thought process. I couldn’t remember where I had seen it when I was writing the article, so I appreciate him reminding me.]