It was a really nice day – high of 74 degrees and sunny so it seemed like everyone was outside. I started in downtown Columbus, Ohio at lunchtime so there were many people walking around. It’s great to see the reactions the first time someone notices me. Some are hesitant to wave back. Some wave before I do. Some give you the head nod. Some give the thumbs up. Many people cruise along think of other things until I jolt them into a smile. I just love that feeling when people smile. I feel like it gives them that one fraction of time to forget about all their worries.

So, I’m unicycling along High Street and all of a sudden I hear, “Clown! Clown!” and this woman comes running up to me. She asks if I would go visit someone. As we’re walking back down the street, I realized she had run after me for a block and half – wow! She slipped and told me the person she wanted me to visit is afraid of clowns so I didn’t want to go. She tried to cover it up and said the person likes clown. I went along with the gag. We went to see Pia the owner of Europia on High street in Columbus. She was flabbergasted and asked, “Where did you find this clown.” Pia ended up being a good sport about it and took some pictures (see below). Pia even got my name right! Carli was the name of the joker from Chase across High Street who put me up to it. It was all in good fun. Pia even acted like she was chasing me out of her store and down the street to the laughter of the folks at Europia and Chase. All in all we had a good time.

Mophe and Pia in Europia. I forgot how windy it was that day, riding up and down High Street. Just look at my hair all over the place. Looks like I need a cut.

It’s me Mophe.

Wow – what a great day! I’ve clowned around before — dressed up and road my unicycle — but I’ve never been a mime. It adds a whole new dimension to clowning.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. On the way to the parade a car zooming passed me on the highway. All of a sudden it slowed down right next to me. The two ladies in the car laughed hysterically at the clown driving a car.

Before the parade started I had a great time with the people waiting to be in the parade. Several asked if they could ride my unicycle but I declined. Some had pictures taken with me. I gave a real show to a group of majorettes — the old “acting like I can’t ride a unicycle”. It was a blast. They were encouraging me to keep trying until I succeeded. There was also a group of leprechauns trying to pelt me with bouncy balls. Be nice guys!

The best time was with a couple of girls who around 10 and 12 years old. The older one did all the talking and she was amazed that I did not speak a word. She said she could never do it. Later they came back with their Mom and other young ladies. They were all trying to get me to talk. It was a riot. They thought they had me when they asked my name, but I didn’t speak. I spelled out “MOPHE” on my shirt but that didn’t completely work. They called me “mop”, “mop head”, “Moephee”, Maaph”, and many other things until their Mom got it right — Mophe (it rhymes with loaf).

Pretty soon the parade started and I followed a row of Cooper cars. I was going from one side of the street to the other giving “high fives”. One guy said he wanted me to teach him how to ride. I took a spill on purpose and looked back at him. He said, “maybe not!” Further down the street I walked a little way and then acted like I didn’t know how to ride the unicycle. I got to the point where I was riding erratically and all of a sudden a guy ran on to the street saying, “I’ll save him”. I cut to the right and left again and just missed him. Whew! With all the playing around, I fell behind the Coopers by at least a half block, so I sprinted to catch up. To those of you watching the parade during the sprint, I’m sorry you didn’t get to see much of the performance. Next time I’ll keep my own pace. Everyone really enjoyed the clown with the blue hair and striped socks on the unicycle and got many pictures. If you find your way to my website, please send me a couple of your pix.

I really had a great time in Memphis and hope to return there someday.

Okay, welcome to the 20th century. Yeah, this is my first post. I just copied my journal pages when I moved everything over from GiftCardDonor.com and stuck with the same format of adding to those pages. In hindsight, it’s a lot harder to search for stuff, so I’m finally creating a real blog.

I plan to re-post ALL my journal entries, so I think this is going to take a long time, but I’m sure it will be worth it. The other thing is that I have TONS of pix to add too that I never had time to do while riding. The 1,000 miles of unicycling in 9-months (923.5 of it in 6-months!) around the whole country (except Alaska and Hawaii) didn’t leave time to manage/crop the thousands of pictures I took. In hindsight, I wish I would have taken a lot more video, but I quickly burned through data cards and kept running out the battery so I decided to stick with pictures. The other thing is, since I was the camera man and I didn’t have a filming crew following me, many of the pictures are without me.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Thanks for following my journey.

Mophe