The Wheelies Times: Get the Balance Right

A brand new year, a new beginning and of course, new resolutions. I am sure many of my friends had been busy evaluating and updating their resolutions turn of the year. As for myself, with a growing list of resolutions, one ever remaining resolution on my list for the past 20 years is “to exercise more and start to lose more weight.” YES, I WILL DO IT BUT, with Chinese New Year just round the corner, let’s just say I am going to KIV for a while longer. I promise I am going to clear it SOON aka datang!

It was also always in my plan since 2009 to start digitalising all my CDs. Since I bought my Ipod 4 months ago, the need to do this increases evermore. One fine day, I decided to start digitalising my music. As I was combing through my mountains of CDs, I managed to stumble upon a single by Depeche Mode called “Get the balance Right”.

Sounds familiar and a sense of deja vu!!! Since I started teaching people to use the wheelie, I realised I have been repeating myself with these exact four words. I probably come across few hundred people expressing interest in wheeling during the past 3 months and I am also proud to say that we have successfully imparted the skill of wheeling to these group of people after hours of hard work and “Getting the Balance right”. While wheeling may look difficult and overwhelming with its single wheel, seriously, it is not so difficult. While I have learnt wheeling through the hard way with no guidance, we have developed an effective technique of wheeling by observing new Wheelians as well as testing various wheeling method. With this technique, the fastest student picked up wheeling within 30 mins while the slowest took only 7 hours.

Before you begin, always remember to protect yourself by wearing helmets, protective hand, knee and elbow guards as well as proper Shoes, preferably high cut shoes or shoes where you have option to wear ankle guards. Once you are prepared, you are ready to start.

The Wheelie come with a self-stabilized gyroscope. Your calves should keep as close as possible to the red pads to help in manoeuvring. In theory, all you need is to balance left and right so as to maintain the stability. To move, you lean forward to move ahead and you lean backwards to slow down or stop going. Always remember to slow down if you find yourself going too fast and losing balance. Sounds easy, isn’t it?

Do come join us to wheel even if you do not own a wheelie or you are using other brands of unicycle. We are happy to provide free lessons and share our experience with you. Do subscribe to our Facebook column at www.facebook.com/thewheelies as well as updates on the weekly wheeling session. Come join us and we will help you to “Get the balance Right”