Tagged with 'Mike Taylor'

Our sponsorship programme for 2020 will be organised slightly differently from previous years. Our riders will be representing Unicycle.com and our brands Nimbus and Impact Unicycles. We will be focusing on UNICON 2020 in Grenoble, France.

Last time on the blog, we’d just broken our own world record, and Mike and myself had left Team Voodoo to concentrate on new projects. We pick up just a couple of days after that!

Qatar, The Magical Festival Village

Just two days after performing at Sport Relief, Sam Goodburn, who i’m sure you know, came to stay with me in London after having flown back from 5 weeks performing in Asia. He was just to stay for a night or two as he had commitments at home, and I had multiple university deadlines. But no good story starts with two young people being responsible, does it?

After Sam’s first night at my place, he woke up to a call from a stressed-out Romanian Magician, who had added him on Facebook the previous evening. He was searching for performers for a month of parades and shows, starting TOMORROW.

We said maybe, noncommittally, assuming that arrangements would fall through, as so often happens with last minute booking.

This time, however, that was not the case, and just a few hours later we were on the next available flight to Qatar. We had so little time to prepare that I ended up hopping on the tube to the nearest shopping centre to buy new clothes and underwear, as I wouldn’t have had time to wash my clothes…

What event were we performing at? We didn’t know.

Why hadn’t the organisers found talent sooner? We didn’t know.

What would our mothers think to such reckless decision making? We didn’t know.

Was this strange magician really some sort of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-esque child catcher? We just didn’t know.

After arriving at Hamad international airport, relaxed from the plane’s free beer, we were met by Cezar, the Magician. (Disclaimer: Cezar is not in fact a child catcher. He’s a cool person and a great performer!) We were taken straight to the hotel, but didn’t have time to rest, as the first day of performances was due to start in just a couple of hours!

We met our fellow performers; an international group from Romania, Italy, Germany, the USA, and UK. From then on, the format was less spontaneous, but still great fun. We did a parade 2-3 times a day, as well as 1 or 2 shows. The event itself was a new venue that had just been launched, and targeted local families. This was a contrast to my last trip to Qatar where I had been performing at the very westernized Qatar Open Tennis Tournament. The attendees had certainly never seen unicycles before, let alone a parade full of unicyclists, stilt walkers, jugglers and dancers!



We were performing 6 days per week, which was intense, but managed to have some great experiences on our days off! The highlight for me was riding quad bikes in the Qatari desert, before relaxing on a beach overlooking the Persian Gulf, just a few miles from the Saudi border.



I had to fly back after 2 weeks as I had an essay deadline and a French oral exam. (Thankfully i did well in both, despite the trip getting in the way!) Sam stayed for the rest of the month and I was replaced by Esther, Sam’s performance partner who specialises in Cyr Wheel!

 

New Impact Unicycle!

After just over 2 weeks of riding all day, every day, my unicycle was looking and feeling a bit worse for wear. Usually, I end up replacing individual parts as I break them, so never get the Boy-who-got-a-nintendo-64-on-Christmas-day levels of excitement.



This time though, as so much of my unicycle was dying, I phoned unicycle.com and they helped hook me up with a brand new Impact Gravity Unicycle! Thanks guys!

At first, I customised it with my Carbon Fibre seat and Kris Holm Cranks, but have since changed the cranks for brand new Impact Groovys which feel AMAZING.

 

Officially ‘Officially Amazing’, again!

Last Summer, Mike Taylor and myself were invited back to CBBC’s Officially Amazing to attempt to break another world record on TV!  This time, were were battling head to head to beat the record for then 100m unicycle hurdles!

Lutz Eicholz, a well known KH Sponsored rider from Germany held the record at 1:46.44, so Mike and I were trying to beat that time, as well as going head to head to be THE fastest. Click on Simon Below to see what happened.



It was a great day of filming, and as you can see it was so close! Some of our new projects involve myself and Mike working as a duo a lot, so we hope you enjoyed the formula!

 

The Westminster Mile

At the end of May, Flatland BMXer Keelan Phillips called me in for another show as he wasn’t able to, having injured himself beforehand. I spent the day riding flatland and giving riding workshops with two flatland BMXers at the Westminster Mile Vitality run! As it was a sports event, everyone was very keen to watch, and even more excited to have a go!



That’s all for now! Stay tuned for Part 4 where Mike Taylor and myself have a very special announcement!

Team Voodoo Unicycles managed to set a new Guinness World Record for 4x50m hurdles on Unicycles for CBBC show "Officially Amazing".
Shot in the prestigious English Institute of Sport, the home training ground of Olympic Gold Medalist Jessica Ennis, the team hopped over hurdles at an impressive time of 1 minute 44 seconds.

For those of you unfamiliar with Team Voodoo Unicycles, we are the UK's only Extreme Unicycling display team and our mission statement has always been to promote alternative, urban styles of Unicycling to mainstream audiences, globally. So it was a pleasure and a huge step for the team, the sport and each of us on a personal level, to be invited to provide entertainment for the World Endurance Championships in Bahrain.

What can you say about Bahrain off the top?

"Lads, we've been invited to demo in Bahrain"
"Is it safe?"
"Will we be rich?"
"Do I need to cover up? "
"Will they be offended by our name's suggestion of Christian theology shaped by African tribal traditions?"
"Should I pack shorts?"

Unfortunately, Simon never asked the final question and where all of us assumed the desert heat would be suffocating, he elected to pack exclusively black jeans.
The questions raised a good point though. Even to those who claim to be well read and up to date with current affairs, Bahrain is a mysterious floating palace in the Persian Gulf. It has a yearly Formula One Grand Prix so we expected the glamour associated with Lewis Hamilton, recklessly brandishing champagne and soaking his Pussy Cat Doll mistress but we'd also heard about attempted revolution, the lack of a free press and an unelected, hereditary ruler. Don't worry, this isn't going to get too heavy or controversial, how much political enlightenment can an Extreme Unicycling team bestow upon you? I merely mention it for one reason. Unicycling has helped us all grow as people, overcome challenges and spread joy. Despite a conflicting set of cliches, we were ultimately excited about the opportunity to take our sport, and our volatile, quirky yet lovable personalities, to a nation who may have never experienced anything like it.

After covering up my tattoos in order to avoid any awkward, Pious questions at Immigration. We jumped on the bus to Hotel Diva, the place we were staying for 4 days, where else?
"You're staying in Hotel Diva?!"
Locals would snigger with a worrying grin, like they knew something we didn't. It turned out, they did. The hotel had 4 bars/clubs spread across it's 20 floors which left Rob wondering, in the early hours of the morning, whether he was having a bizarre, retro, urban dream or whether he really could hear Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio on repeat.

There were other entertainers there and it was a pleasure to work with them. All incredibly talented performers but above all, interesting, dynamic and kind natured people. Along with stilt walkers and bike riders, we shared a dressing room with some lovely theatre types, performing a Disney Show for the kids in attendance. Let me tell you, when you've seen the Genie from Aladdin, battle roaring engines in an attempt to sing "Let it Go" from Frozen in a Blackpool accent, you've seen it all.

In our down time, we managed to take a trip to the market, every bit as mystical and magical as the pages of Arabian Nights; Pop Up stalls with Arabic scribings dancing across fine materials, dusty alley ways littered with moustaches and mangy cats. Dream shatteringly, turns out it's more like Wembley Market, with a host of Arab Del Boys flirtatiously trying to flock their "genuine fakes" to any mug who'll buy them. One boy must have put his kids through college when he hustled Simon Berry for some sunglasses.

"6 quid!" spat the Blackpool Genie, like we'd bullied him into giving us a fourth wish and asked for something childish and dirty.

"I paid 1, must have seen you coming son".

That's the problem when you're white, blonde and 7ft tall in Bahrain. They always see you coming.

We embraced the "Selfie Culture" while we were there. Golf club like aids, swung around in an effort to tee up a face in the foreground of a hilarious, unusual or breath taking background. I like to think we obliged and many Bahraini teens will have been baffled to find 4 white guys with only 4 wheels between them, in a picture with their friend, with a mere 4 seconds to appreciate the spectacle. It was mad. We've signed autographs, taken pictures, left hilarious answer phone messages featuring our popular catchphrases and kissed babies before (the latter two have never happened) but I've always hated it. I've never understood why anyone coveted a signature, if not to use it for the practical yet highly illegal practice of fraudulently signing over money to yourself. We all have signatures and most of us can't even read our signatures cause they're big squiggles. That being said, we lapped it up. It's nice to be appreciated, made to feel special for what you do, even if it is in a totally vapid and impersonal manner from strangers who'll no doubt forget who that picture is of in a year's time, at best, possibly mistake us for One Direction before make up and airbrushing.

We headed home after 4 days with a clear aim, to drink the plane dry, having made the nieve yet respectful mistake that the Islamic airline might be a dry airline.

It was an amazing experience and a real honour for of us to take this sport, that we all love and cherish, to a place it had never been before, to people who maybe couldn't even conceptualise the common stereotypes that we have in the UK of Unicyclists. The Middle East, since the damn of humanity, has been a cradle for wisdom, creativity and cultural development. Perhaps it can do it again and be the part of the world to embrace and promote our esoteric sport. If not, it'll be back to Sunday mornings in a car par in Coventry for Team Voodoo. Here's to many more visits!

All in Bahrain Streets - Voodoo Vlog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP22fqlEixI

 

Mike Taylor is one of our sponsored riders and is also co-sponsored by Impact Unicycles. Mike is a professional when it comes to riding skinnies. Check out this latest video of him balancing on some amazingly high objects, and pulling off some impressive jumps.