Impossible to Learn to Ride my 16" Uni?

[foolontehplanet]

Hi all,

I'm as new as can be to unicycling at all. I've always wanted to learn to do it, and I finally decided to get one. I know it's against all advice there is, but I wanted to get a cheap one to learn on to see if I could do it and if I liked it before I shelled out a lot of money. So, I went on craigslist, found one for 20 bucks and got it. I'm having a horribly hard time trying to learn it. Here it is:

(well I guess that will show up somewhere else. never used this site before)

Anyway, I've put about 5 hours of practice into it, but it's still very hard to even get some rocking the pedals out of it. I'm practicing on my porch because it's cold and snowy here and I use a half-column type thing to get my balance and then take off from there to try to get some pedaling distance. At most I'm getting about 10 feet before I fall off. 10 feet might even be wishfull thinking. I think I'm getting an average of about 5-7 and then I'm off it.

I was reading that after about 5 hours of practice most people should be able to cross the length of a gym, and I'd be nowhere near that. Is it because of the severely small wheel size? 16"? Is that implausible to learn on? Or am I just extremely slow at this? Thanks for any help anyone can give me!