When I was around 12 years old, my parents bought me a Sears unicycle. I diligently worked on learning to ride it. After 2 or 3 weeks, I was able to ride somewhat confidently. I ended up riding that around a lot, even on 2 or 3 mile trips. That wore out when I was around 20, and I got rid of it.
Now, 30 years later, my wife bought me a Unicycle, an Avenir Deluxe 20".
I was able to pick up almost where I left off, free mounting within a few days, and riding a few miles at a time. This has been a nice winter activity, since I am a lot slower than when biking (less wind chill) and I can ride with my hands in my pockets. The limiting factor is the seat. 30-40 minutes is the longest I can ride.
Your story is very similar to mine. When I got back on a unicycle, about 35 years later, I picked up where I left off. My biggest frustration was how horrible the seat was. I was on a Torker. Once I invested in a better unicycle with a better seat (KH), I could ride for several hours with less trouble. No seat is perfect though. I have to use anti-friction cream.
Welcome to unicyclist.com. Be careful. After investing in one new unicycle, I ended up with 8. It’s pretty addicting.
I bought a cheap 20" unicycle to learn on, which had a small saddle. I upgraded it to a Nimbus Gel saddle and was able to ride it for 90 minutes at a time without discomfort.
I swapped that Nimbus Gel saddle onto my new 29" road Uni when it arrived
HER real name. Yep. It’s my legal last name. How cool is that for a sixth grade teacher? When kids find out what an embalmer is, they kind of freak out.
Welcome! Same here. I didn’t ride for 25 or so years, and they equipment (esp the seats, hubs and cranks) have changed a lot. The Kris Holm seats are fantastic and allow me to ride 14 miles + without an issue on a 29".
It’s a great hobby. I bought my first unicycle of my own last year and now have 5, soon to be 6 when I get a 36.
I had a 10 year lapse in riding myself. I only dusted mine off when I saw a local rider coming off of a mountain bike trail. I dusted off the uni the next day, rode a few miles, and fell in love with it again.
The seat pain was just as bad as it was 10 years prior. It was just something that I conditioned myself to grow numb to all over again. I eventually bought a used nimbus muni that had a Kris Holm Freeride saddle and a 3" tire. I was absolutely blown away by:
How comfortable the seat was. It seriously didn’t even feel like I was sitting on a uni at all. Now keep in mind that I was coming off a torture device, so the feeling of improvement was definitely relative. Even to this day it’s several hours before I start experiencing saddle discomfort and even then it’s nowhere close to the pain I’d experience from before.
The larger volume tire riding at lower pressure (I was from the school of 60-70psi) made the ride incredibly smooth.
It was a pretty cool time making the transition from terrible seat discomfort and because of the high tire pressure being able to feel every nuance of the road (so much so that I felt like my uni was a tool that allowed my hiney to read road braille - I could seriously feel the difference from one surface to another, brick was my favorite because it was smooth) to a new uni that I didn’t even notice I was sitting on and rode smooth as silk, even over gravel - which was something I never experienced before.
I was really surprised at just how much unicycles changed for the better in those 10 years where I wasn’t riding.
Not Morticia (though that would be cool). Several years ago, I had a student with the last name of Coffin and another student with the last name of Graves. Their parents and I used to make lots of jokes about ourselves:D.
