When freshman Cary Lee discovered his ability to ride a bike with no hands, he began to believe the unicycle wouldn’t be much more difficult. At age ten, it was at the top of Lee’s Christmas list.
Sure enough, that year Santa Claus brought him a new, yellow unicycle.
“I found out I was completely wrong, and it’s a lot more difficult than riding a bike with no hands,” Lee says, “so it worked for a little while and then I gave up.”
But as many students who travel up and down Sheridan Road know, Lee didn’t give up for long. The unicycle is now the vehicle of choice for the computer science and vocal performance major.
Lee’s fifth-grade talent show motivated him to practice unicycling for auditions and he mastered the art within a month. His persistence paid off. Lee can now talk on the phone or read The Onion while unicycling to class.
Lee didn’t use his unicycle when he first arrived at Northwestern.
“I didn’t want to be known as the unicycle guy,” he says. But after skidding on a sheet of ice and breaking his bike, he had little choice.
“I started riding so much Winter Quarter because I had to get back and forth between MAB and Tech for my classes, and walking isn’t fast enough,” he says, referring to the Music Administration Building.
His unicycling is not limited to transportation. He unicycled on stage during high school as a part of the three-ring circus in “Razzle Dazzle,” a song from the musical Chicago. Lee also appeared in campus film group Studio 22’s “A Happy Man’s Pants.” Begrudgingly, he says, he unicycled shirtless, awakening a king with a rooster-like call. Yet whether he likes it or not, the unicycle gave him his 15 minutes of fame, except that they were only ten seconds long.
Learning to unicycle is a process of trial and error — or simply falling many, many times, Lee says.
Unlike a bike, Lee says, there are no training wheels for unicycles. The rider has all 360 degrees to fall, as opposed to the bike, where the biker can only fall side to side.
Unfazed by the prospect of physical injury, which at times have resulted in a crash and a torn-up hand, Lee has recently taken up pogo stilts.