I’m Frank, I learnt to Unicycle during the UK covid-19 lockdown.
I think I must be the only person who rides a Unicyclist in Manchester as of yet I am not seen anyone else on one.
Having had a 20" unicycle in my garage for the last 10 years I decided this was ideal opportunity to master it.
I’ve since upgraded to a Nimbus 26" Muni with a retrofitted hydraulic disk brake. I also have a Qu-Ax 20" trails unicycle I use for practicing techniques etc.
Nice! And welcome here.
Maybe the forum should offer a special badge for “Covid Lockdown” users as it seems quite a few of you guys started during that weird new human collective experience…
Yeah I’m so pleased I’ve cracked it (albeit still lots to learn!).
The lockdown certainly gave me an ideal opportunity to focus on it and it was such a buzz when it clicked.
It looks like there’s a few people around Manchester, and the people who put their addresses in are probably happy enough to meet up, if you wanted to. You can send them a forum PM (assuming you’re in Trust Level 1 or higher) and hopefully they’re still active around here. Some may also have other contact info on their profiles.
Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on “learning” to ride.
Do you know there are 900 “other’s” with the same goal, but failed and gave up.
Yes, we are a rare breed. Either, gifted from the start, or incredibly stubborn.
Which one are you?
My unofficial criteria:
a.) Gifted from the start: took less than 5 days to learn.
b.) Incredibly stubborn: took months to learn.
Your story is freaky, that is exactly the same as me, unicycle hanging in the garage since 2010, lockdown gave me the chance to actually try and learn to ride, and now I can. Just debating on going the trials/flatland route or muni route, or both!
It’s good fun, and still never seen anyone else just riding around randomly, but then I do live in a village in Scotland, pretty quiet.
Once I mastered the basics on my original 20” uni, I wasn’t sure what to go for next. I realised the 20” was holding me back and needed to upgrade fast… but being the middle of Covid everyone was selling out/sold out of Unicycles.
I do lots of mountain/road cycling, knew I needed to go bigger and to be honest didn’t really thing about what to get next. A 26” Muni came up for sale on eBay, seemed like a good deal and had a disk brake so it was a bit of an impulse buy.
I’m glad I got it as it’s helped me progress dramatically and I realise I actually like riding it off-road. I’m focusing on bridle paths and forestry paths for now to get my core skills up.
I’ve since also bought another 20” QU-AX trails uni as i find it’s fun to ride and helps hone skills and it’s much easier to use in smaller spaces (like my back yard).
My ultimate game is to be able to ride proper mtb trails but not anything crazy like the black graded stuff.
The only drawbacks I’m finding on my Uni is the limited selection of fat tyres you can get. 26 is clearly a size being faded out in the mtb industry so the options available are constantly diminishing.
That said the tyres seem to last for ages so I doubt I’ll be needing tyres too often.
Same here, there doesn’t seem to be many folk around up here – to be fair I keep ‘out of view’ and keep myself to myself most of the time. There are, and have been, a few Scottish folk on here but not a lot that I know of at the moment. I’m in the North-East between Aberdeen and Inverness – where are you based?
I saw you mentioned a Facebook Scottish Muni group on another thread, I don’t '‘do’ Facebook so I suppose things like that pass me by, so there are maybe more folk around that I think.
I live just outside Perth. Luckily my street is pretty quiet so I can ride up and down all day long without getting run over. Need to get a muni and go off road next.
Good stuff, I’m not so fussed about getting run down, it is more that, as you know, in a small place there is no anonymity and folk probably just think, “what’s this idiot up to now?” Getting off road lets you hide a bit at least
I think you’re maybe right about that, certainly on here. I haven’t seen anything from him on here for a while though. Jason Auld (of Voodoo Unicycles fame) was pretty well known too I guess.
Where abouts in Manchester are you? I’m on the north end towards Bury and there are a couple of us in this direction, and I know of a few around the southern end!
