5:30 AM: Life sucks. It's completely dark out, my alarm is going off, and I know I have to get out of bed and ride 55 miles on my unicycle through some of the most depressing terrain imaginable: a Florida suburb. Also, when I get out of bed, I discover I have a large splinter in the bottom of my foot.

6:18 AM: I hit the road. It's still dark out, and a little cold.

6:25 AM: Incredibly, there are already old people out wandering in the streets with their dogs, giving me weird looks.

6:35 AM: It's actually kind of beautiful out. The sky is starting to glow a deep blue in the east, and the stars are still out. I go over several bridges with rippling blue water reflecting the lightening sky. This is probably the only aesthetically pleasing portion of the ride.

6:45 AM: I'm getting bored. This is a bad sign. I decide to imagine for a while that the earth is rolling away beneath me, and I'm just pedaling to stay still.

6:55 AM: I attempt to stop thinking of things to put in the ride report, and try to attain a more zen state of mind.

7:23 AM: The sun rises, and I reach my first destination: Rotonda West. This town has to been seen to be believed. You can look it up on Google maps. The street plan basically looks like a giant wheel with a radius of about 2 miles. Between each of the 8 main spokes is a golf course. It is the epitome of Florida-style subdivision hell. However, the idea of riding a unicycle around a giant wheel amuses me, so my plan is to ride laps around the town. Unfortunately for my sense of completeness (but probably fortunately in the broader scheme of things), it seems that demand for circular living ran out before the town was completed, so there is a one eighth slice missing from the outer perimeter road, forcing me to ride most of the way around the outside, and then in to the center and back out. I've calculated that three laps, plus the ride to and from the house I'm staying at is 55 miles.

7:25 AM: After a quick stretch, I turn left on to Boundary Boulevard. I see the road stretched out a few hundred feet ahead of me before it disappears in a slow bend to the right.

7:35 AM: I see the road stretched out a few hundred feet ahead of me before it disappears in a slow bend to the right.

7:45 AM: I see the road stretched out a few hundred feet ahead of me before it disappears in a slow bend to the right.

7:50 AM: In order to stay sane, I start to compose an epic song in my head called "The explorer of Rotonda-ville".

7:55 AM: I see the road stretched out a few hundred feet ahead of me before it disappears in a slow bend to the right.

8:05 AM: I see the road stretched out a few hundred feet ahead of me before it disappears in a slow bend to the right.

8:10 AM: I decide to change the name for the song to "escape from Rotonda-ville", as that better expresses my current attitude about the place. The song tells the story of a young man who grows up in a circular town, until he decides he hates the place and resolves to travel out in to the world to find his fortune. He isn't very bright, but he paid attention in school when they told me that the quickest way between two points was a straight line. He knows that the quickest way between two points in Rotonda-ville is along one of the roads, so one day he packs his things and starts to walk straight out of town, making a beeline down the middle of the curving road. Eventually he arrives in a strange parallel universe with another version of his house and all the people he knows. He tells the people there that he is a traveler from another dimension, and they tell him that that is very strange, because someone very much like himself left town just a few days ago. Our hero decides he wants to meet this fellow traveler, so he continues on down the road. He spends the rest of his life looking for this mysterious character. Everywhere he goes the traveler was there just a few days before, but our hero never catches up with him.

8:30 AM: I get back to the starting point of my Rotonda loop. The next two laps are very similar to the previous one.

11:00 AM: I get back to starting point of the Rotonda loop for the third and final time. An old guy is standing in his yard looking at me. I think he was there at 7:30 when I rode in. He says "I admire your athleticism". After a string of "where's your other wheel" comments on the last lap, this makes my day.

11:45 AM: On the way back over one of the bridges, I see something moving in the water below me. I stop and look for a while, and see that there are about 8 dolphins frolicking (yup, definitely frolicking) below the bridge. I watch them for a little while.

12:24 AM: I arrive back at my starting location. Elapsed time 6 hours 6 minutes, including two ten minute breaks and 20 minutes of dolphin watching.