I went out for a short ride in the dark last night. For some reason I was feeling a bit twitchy even before I went out. Also I took my mobile phone with me - which I never have done before on a short ride as I have never anticipated the need to phone for help on a short ride.
Anyway, i was riding along (after doing some hard core pratting about deciding where to get on and not wanting to do it where groups - or at least one or two - of noisy youths were coming down the street). I was approaching a T junction and couldn’t decide whether there was a car coming or not and couldn’t decide whether to stop or not. So - my bottom half stopped and my top half didn’t and I went (as you would expect) flying off the unicycle. Fortunately I landed on my feet and managed to run it out. I retrieved the uni and continued.
Eventually having settled down to a good pace riding along I felt this tug on my foot. Next thing I know, I had crashed to the ground and my foot was fastened securely to the crank via my lace. Ouch!!! I had to wriggle to the side of the road to avoid getting run over before I could undo myself.
Luckily I’m well padded so am just a bit scraped and bruised. Not hurt enough to stop me plotting to leave work early (now actually) cos it’s such a nice day so that I can get a quick ride in before I have to pick up my son from school.
Sorry to hear that Cathwood. But glad to hear that the uni survived.
You’re not the first to be caught out by shoelaces, but I think that Rocket (Or was it Jonny? It was a while ago I heard it now) from the Lunis has managed to beat you. He was riding along approaching a junction, and slowed down to stop. However, BOTH shoe laces had got wrapped around the pedals, so just as he got stationary he just paused then fell forward with the uni still attached. I can picture it now as he tried to hop/shuffle out of the way of the cars behind him!
Glad you’re O.K., but sorry that you’re rider got a little banged up.
Sometimes we just don’t listen to the voices around us.
First the forum voices that tell us to watch our laces because they can get tangled up on our cranks and pedals. We’ve read it dozens of times and most of the time we remember to fasten our laces.
Then there are our internal voices.
First it starts as a whisper,
We ignore that, then there is shouting, Hey, I’m talking to you,
Of course we ignore that final warning. So the voice says to herself, not going to listen to me, fine have it your way.
Ouch! Cathwood, falling due to laces is one of my worst fears. Glad you were able to walk way from the fall, I hope your bruises heal quickly.
I thought of going to lace-less shoes while riding but I like that the laces keep the shoe tight and in place. So instead, I’ve been skipping lacing one eye, on each shoe, (the top right on my left, and the top left on the right) which puts the laces on the outside. This results in needing shorter laces. I feel much safer so far. There is a whole thread on special lacing somewhere around here.
Ouch! Cathwood, falling due to laces is one of my worst fears. Glad you were able to walk way from the fall, I hope your bruises heal quickly.
I thought of going to lace-less shoes while riding but I like that the laces keep the shoe tight and in place. So instead, I’ve been skipping lacing one eye, on each shoe, (the top right on my left, and the top left on the right) which puts the laces on the outside. This results in needing shorter laces. I feel much safer so far. There is a whole thread on special lacing somewhere around here.
I tuck my laces back underneath themselves; after tying a standard bow, I tuck the ends inbetween the tongue of the shoe and the laces (where they criss-cross). This keeps 'em out of harm’s way.
You only make the “laces” mistake once… it’s all too painful and embarrasing to do again :o
Wow, Cath. I’m really glad that you’re OK. I’ve never even considered the possibility of a lace getting tangled. I’m going to start tucking mine out of the way. I have pretty week ankles and have injured one of them badly in a unicycling ‘incident.’ So, I like to wear running shoes with a nice wide, stable platform, plus ankle braces to reduce the possibility of a reinjury occuring. The problem is, all of the good, stable running shoes have laces. Are you running the plastic pedals that it came with (at least that’s what mine came with) or pinned, platform pedals?
On another note, I bought my Nimbus 36 just before Christmas and the weather turned lousy shortly thereafter. It’s recently gotten much better so I’ve been out on mine every day now for a couple of weeks. I’m learning to mount the beast much more consistently now. I’ve found that a rolling mount works best for me.
You are lucky: since breaking a toe while rolling mounting I am not able any more to free-mount my Coker. (I should meet a head-shrinker: after 2 accidents my head does not want me to freemount any more my Coker! terrible:( )
Ouch, Cathy. It hurts - I did that at reasonable speed on my 29er once, not pleasant at all and was really difficult to untangle - had to try and spin the wheel backwards whilst lying on the ground to reverse the process!!!
Nowadays I double bow my laces and then tuck the bows / ends under the crossed over laces down the front of my boots. I’ve never had them come loose from this arrangement.
I did try velcro shoes for a while and they worked OK. Boots give me some ankle support, which is helpful if I do come off and there are lots of crossed laces to tuck the excess into…
Another thing I discovered recently is triathlon laces - haven’t tried them myself but they look just the thing. They’re elastic laces that go into trainers and tighten up using a little plastic adjuster. They’re intended to make it easy to get shoes on and off during triathlon and are suitable for cycling without excess catching on the pedals. I may invest in some of these at some point.
I had a similar problem with my laces on a bike long ago. I have been careful with them ever since.
I use these shoes now when I am unicycling. They were designed with cycling in mind, and as such, have excellent grip on pedals and have a pocket at the top of the tongue to put my laces in after I tie them.
Glad you’re OK, Cathy. I’m a tucker. I tuck my laces into my shoes, down the sides. I still don’t understand why people fall off Cokers, though. Why would you do that?
This very thing happened to me on the SINZ tour. I make sure my laces are tucked in before every ride, but they came untucked and I took a nice highspeed tumble while going downhill. Little did I know that my shoes have a self tucking system in the top…that ken showed me, but they still seem to sneak their way out every now and then. I actually own shoes without laces, but they just dont cut it in the rain or in the cold, so for now I am just tucking and then using some tape over the self tucking system in the tongue.
I had to wriggle to the side of the road to avoid getting run over before I could undo myself.
