Wednesday, Jun. 16, 2010
No-Hand King turns 1-Wheel Wonder
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closeIf you're the No-Hand King, it's not enough to ride a 10-mile wheelie every day on a kid's Huffy, shirtless, arms in the air, trailing a pair of American flags that you bolted to the banana seat.
After a few years, that trick needs some tweaking - even if you learn it on a mountain bike, even if you do it on the roughest streets of Southeast Raleigh, even if you're so good at it that strangers applaud while driving past.
So that's why the Rodney Hines, who spent most of a decade obsessed with becoming the world's greatest hands-free wheelie rider, perfected a new act: Unicycle Riding.
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'I am the best in the world and will take on all challengers. My goal is to become the Guinness world record holder for the longest No Hand Wheelie and to cross the U.S. while riding a wheelie. I dedicate everything I accomplish to the troops in the war, the troops who have fallen and to inspire children to follow their dreams. I am looking for help to achieve my goals.'
It's hard to think of a more joyous and incongruous sight: You're idling your car at the corner of South Person Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, next to the graffiti-painted house that's selling for next to nothing, cash only, and around the corner comes a guy on a unicycle, often wearing only a pair of shorts and sneakers.
The only thing more eye-popping would be a leprechaun.
"You only see these in the circus," Hines explains. "You never see a black man on a unicycle."
Now in his 40s, the No-Hand King has developed a hipster-brand of Raleigh cult following. Shots of his wheelies appear on Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. Portraits of him posing with his fleet of Huffys, muscles rippling, appear in a local photographer's studio. Wake County schoolchildren included him in a demographics project, knowing that he'd been in prison for larceny and a long string of other offenses.
People know that he decided to drop his life of crime and focus on his bike, making the most of his time behind bars by balancing on two legs of a folding chair. They know about his promise to ride across the country (if expenses are donated) on one wheel in support of U.S. troops. And if they don't, they see him on his corner every day, or pedaling through Cameron Village, or along the shoulder of the Beltline.
That, he presumes, is why his neighbor dropped by with a unicycle in his hand.
Hines couldn't remember the dude's name. He gestured vaguely to the north, saying the donor had gotten frustrated with the one-wheeled contraption and decided to chuck it. What better hands to place it in than the hands of the No-Hand King? For free.
It took about 24 hours to learn, he reports. It was hard at first. Hines attacked the new bike with too much intensity. He had to come out at 3 in the morning to practice, in the dark and quiet, when he could relax.
A day into his new schtick, sightings of the No-Hand King were already getting posts on Raleigh Facebook accounts. Now, perched on one wheel, he gets more oh-wow looks than ever.
"You can see what it's done to my thigh muscles," he boasts.
A line of No-Hand KingT-shirts hangs on a clothesline in his front yard. The No-Hand King predicts they will become huge sellers.
"When people see me carrying the POW flag in one hand and the American flag in the other," he promises, "and they see my definition, they'll be buying these all day."
At least until he takes up one of those huge-wheeled 19th-century bikes, complete with an ooga horn.
