Entry the Eleventh , 24th of May, 1873
The day began with high promise. Exeter receded behind me beneath a sky of generous blue, and the roads toward Tiverton lay broad, sunlit, and forgiving. The Steam Unicycle, polished and eager, responded with unusual docility, and for an hour I entertained the notion that my journey might proceed henceforth without catastrophe.
But Fate, who despises complacency, had other designs. Midway up an incline near Stoke Canon, a sharp crack reverberated through the machine,a noise like a pistol discharged at close quarters. The unicycle shuddered, staggered, and pitched me unceremoniously onto the verge. There I lay among nettles, listening to the hiss of escaping steam, a man temporarily dethroned by his own creation.
The cause, upon inspection, proved grave: the main drive-chain, linking piston to wheel, had snapped clean through, its links strewn like a string of broken beads. Without it, motion was impossible; my machine had become a stationary kettle, admirable in appearance, useless in function.
Several passers-by stopped to observe. A farmer, leaning upon his stick, declared unhelpfully, “She’s had her say, and she won’t say more.” A young woman, carrying a basket of eggs, asked if I might simply “whistle her back to life.” I explained that steam yields to coal and water, not whistling. She smiled as though humouring a madman and walked on.
How I wished I had fitted the Unicycle with a Self-Mending Chain. For reasons of cost I forewent that luxury, yet how now I rue that decision. Such a chain is expensive, for it is forged of interlocking links that realign and reforge themselves under the heat of the journey. Nettle-stung and humbled, my refusal to fit such a device seemed the silliest decision in all of world history.
Lacking such marvels, I set to work with my file and the spare rivets that I carried in my repair kit. By mid-afternoon I had contrived a temporary repair,ungainly, precarious, but sufficient to limp forward. The machine lurched rather than rolled, shuddering like a consumptive patient, yet we crept onward together. Each yard was hard-won, and each hiss of the boiler seemed to echo my own exasperated sighs.
By evening I had reached Tiverton, exhausted, my garments blackened with soot from the hours of improvised repair. I found lodging at a modest inn, though the landlady demanded twice the usual price for stabling “that infernal object.” I paid without argument; the day had stripped me of resistance.
Thus ends the eleventh day: chastened, bruised, but stubbornly unvanquished. The mishap has reminded me that unicycling is a dialogue between man and machine. One must listen to brass as one listens to canvas, to coax rather than coerce. When I reach John O’Groats it will be not by conquest but by teamwork with my single wheel.
