I haven’t actually seen many unicycles at all, but the brochure I got from
Unicycling Society of America shows “Sem Abrahams on 72’ Unicycle”. It looks
like one of those triangular cross-section television antenna masts, with a
wheel on one end and a rider on the other. Both rider and unicycle have a safety
line attached in case of a fall. I think I read somewhere that the world’s
record is now around 100 feet.
Re: big unis-reply & question
Dennis Katherns (d.kathrens@genie.geis.com) wrote:
>I haven’t actually seen many unicycles at all, but the brochure I got from
>Unicycling Society of America shows “Sem Abrahams on 72’ Unicycle”. It looks
>like one of those triangular cross-section television antenna masts, with a
>wheel on one end and a rider on the other. Both rider and unicycle have a
>safety line attached in case of a fall. I think I read somewhere that the
>world’s record is now around 100 feet.
Steve McPeak rode a 101 foot unicycle around in a circle. I believe that is an
official Guiness world record.
However, many people claim that some of the safety cables weren’t safety cables
at all. Some of these cables were thought to be quite taught forcing the
unicycle to move in an oddly perfect circle. I saw it live on TV many years ago.
It dragged on for hours as I recall, and my attention was divided between it and
assembling a big wheel, but something about it didn’t seem quite right. Now I
wish I had a video tape of it just to see; did he really do it all by himself or
did enlist the help of taught cables.
As I recall, the unicycle wheel followed a perfectly round circular white line
on the ground. The play in what appeared to be the chain drive was huge, maybe
180 degrees. I don’t think he could have such an acute sense of balance. I
suspect he really couldn’t do it, but had to cheat for the cameras and his
sponsors. The more I think about it, the less I think he actually did it.
The above concerns the record with safety equipment.
The Guiness record without safety equipment is 31 ft. by Steve McPeak. This
record will never be broken, simply because Guiness decided that further record
attempts would be too dangerous without safety equipment.
About 10 years later, I saw a guy ride a 36 ft. without safety equipment on some
variety TV program. He didn’t think it was so dangerous. Not long afterward, I
heard rumors that he had fallen from his 36 ft., and depending on who repeated
the news, he broke either his back, arm or leg.
So I’d recommend not riding anything taller than 12 ft. without safety
equipment. You could still get hurt, even severely from a 12 ft. fall, but You’d
probably survive the experience to ride again.
How about talking about biggest diameter big wheel (standard; not chain driven),
rather than tallest unicycle next time?
Thank you,
Ken Fuchs (kfuchs@winternet.com)
Re: big unis-reply & question
Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@icicle.winternet.com> writes:
> How about talking about biggest diameter big wheel (standard; not chain
> driven), rather than tallest unicycle next time?
I saw a bunch of people riding along on Penny Farthings the other day, but
they went too fast for me to catch up…
]ain