Year in review 2020: pandemic, electric unicycles, fractured leg and websites

Pandemic, electric unicycles, fractured leg and websites; that sums up my 2020.

The pandemic is what every single human on Earth has had to deal with this year, so I won't dwell on this. I will just say that it exists and we have to deal with it and we will still have to deal with it in 2021.

Although I didn't put them in the title or the URL, there are other things that were significant to me this year:

• Black Lives Matter
• #metoo resurgence in Quebec in the form of online denunciations.
• US Elections
• Dealing with stupid people and conspiracy theorists, online and offline.

In an effort to keep this post short, I won't discuss these topics in this post. I list them as an acknowledgeent that they had some sort of influence on me.

Electric unicycles #

This is the best thing I got into in 2020 and it is one of the best things in my life. Before the the pandemic hit, I was going to travel to News Orleans. I was looking for ways to explore the city without having to deal with trafic, paying a cab or dealing with the possiblity of bicycle theft.

In my research, I found all sorts of electric vehicles, but unfortunately, I found that anything with such big lithium batteries are forbidden on planes, even as checked-in baggage.

However, discovering the range and speed of electric unicycles made me realize that it was a type of vehicle that could allow to go places without all inconveniences of cars. Namely, trafic, parking, licence, gas; those are things that end up taking a big part of your life when you use a car.

Why an electric unicycle over other electric vehicles? Range, speed, no trafic, no looking for parking, no gas and free hands. There are many more reasons, but those are my main ones.

Electric unicycles are great vehicles for going around in a city such as Montreal.

Fractured leg #

On December 5, 2020, I was riding with groceries. I looked behind briefly to check for incoming cars and as I turned back, I hit a pothole. I fell in front of my wheel and it hit my leg which caused three bones to break; the tibia, the fibula and another bone in my foot.

As I write this, it is 25 days later and I have to stay home and let the bone healing process do its thing. The first time I ever broke a bone was my ankle in 2013 and this feels similar.

Despite the severity of this event, I remain pretty upbeat. Maybe it's because I know that it's only temporary physical pain.

New website #

For months and maybe subconsciously, for years, I have been thinking of turning longzero.com into a place where I publish things, but instead, it's been merely my portfolio showcasing a few websites I have worked on in my career.

I have decided to put less emphasis on that and more on publishing. This means I will have to publish more.

I can recycle a lot of things I have posted all over the place, especially on Facebook, and put it here, in a centralized place.