Bought a Nimbus Drak 29". Learning to Ride...

Unicycles and Equipment
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I’ve been reading here for a few months and finally was able to order my Nimbus Drak 29" recently. Please forgive this bragging thread but I’m just really excited! I’ve never ridden a unicycle before this week. My goal was to ride around my gravel circular drive (350’),without dismounting, before the new year.

12-17-12 - UPS brought the uni. Assembled, shortened seatpost. Pushed the furniture out of the way and rode for 1.5 hours in the carpeted basement. Most rides were half to 1 full crank revolution. A couple of “rides” were 1.5 to 2 crank revolutions.

12-18-12 - Rode in the basement for 15 min in the morning, 20-30% were 1.5-2 revolutions.

12-19-12 - Rode in the basement for 1.5 hours. 1.5-2 crank revolutions about 70% of the time. Running out of space in the basement but learning to balance, correct direction, slow down, and dismount .

12-20-12 - Rode 1.25 hours in the basement, 75% of rides were full length (20-25’), practiced free mounting, rode away approx 5 out of 50 tries.

12-22-12 - First ride outside. Almost all of the riding area at my house is gravel/dirt. Rode many 30-50 foot rides, some 80-90 foot and longest was 130’. Freemounted and rode about 40 feet once.

12-23-12 - Quite a few 200-300 foot rides. Completed circular drive ride (my goal before the new year)! Longest ride was about 405’.

I really appreciate all of the threads and information on this forum. Hopefully I can start contributing in some way.

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Wow. You’re making good, and extremely quick progress. You’re a natural.

Getting 1.5 to 2 revolutions within the first few hours. Unreal.

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This ^

Learning on a bigger wheel and hitting freemounting straight away is very impressive :astonished:

I was riding in 4 hours and offroad in 8 but freemounting took me months to get down!

Time to get muddy man, nothing improves your riding than riding on the rough stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks guys! I appreciate your support. I don’t want you to think that I’m hitting every freemount every time. That’s far from the truth… I’d say I can ride away from one out of every 5-7 freemount attempts. It’s also amazing how I will complete a personal longest ride and then on the next mount and ride I’ll lose balance after about 20 feet!

One thing that I hadn’t anticipated was how sore I am. I normally ride my mountain bike 2-3 times a week in pretty technical, hilly terrain but the uni still has me sore. Mostly in the hips. Did that happen to you guys when you were learning?

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Yep the getting sore and mussels hating you for the first while is part of the sport. The learning to relax down on to the seat and just relax takes a while.

Don’t worry you will get used to it eventually. Just carry on riding. (Cycle shorts are a good idea to help reduce the chafing. I wear mine under normal shorts as i am not one of the 1% that should be allowed to wear Lycra)

Davey

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Merry Christmas!

I was able to cover about 900’ on my longest ride yesterday. I’ve been trying to freemount every ride now and am riding away from about 1 in 3-5 tries. I’m still really wobbly and unstable.

I’m liking the Drak. It has a quality feel to it, although I have no experience with any other brands. It’s holding up to lots of falls! I ordered it with the KH Freeride saddle and the 165mm KH Moments. My Drak came with the WTB Dissent 2.5 tire. I gather that right now some Draks will come with a Maxxis Ardent and some with the Dissent until it runs out. If you want one tire or the other you should probably call and talk to UDC. With the Dissent 2.5, my Drak weighed 6673g/14.71lbs. My Dissent 2.5 tire weighed 1373g and the Maxxis Ardent is supposed to weigh 805g. So the Ardent should take around 568g/1.25lbs off of the unicycle. For right now I’m riding on a used Specialized S-Works Eskar. I think I’m to new of a rider to really recognize the handling qualities of any of these tires.

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I haven’t been able to ride for the last few days but I have started to collect brake parts. I plan to wait a little while to install them but I had the cash to buy the parts now. Seems like it would be better to wait to install till I’m falling less.

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My riding has been sporadic over the last few weeks because of the holidays, being sick, vacation, etc etc. but I’ve been getting out whenever I get the chance. Within the last few rides I’ve started to become more comfortable balancing at slow speed and just riding in general. I can now freemount about two out of every three tries. Learning to ride a unicycle is really a challenge and there have been discouraging days where I’ve felt that I made backward progress. It certainly is a blast though and I think I’m hooked.

Here’s a video I put together today. I’m just learning to edit my GoPro footage so part of this video was just to see what different mounting points looked like. I hope you don’t get dizzy…

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Your riding is remarkably smooth and regular given your short amount of time since learning. You’re a machine! :slight_smile:

I like making up names for camera angles. Here are some names for your clip:

[LIST=1]

  • Rearview Shadow Cam
  • Bird's Eye Axle Cam
  • Knee Cam
  • Big Arms with Tiny Hands Cam
  • Look Ahead; Not Down Cam [/LIST] That Bird's Eye Axle Cam would be pretty interesting to use on a super-rough trail. It would make any surface look pretty easy! Also that Knee Cam angle was fascinating. It looks like you have massively long legs, or that you're riding with stilts. :)
    • 13

    That Drak is a cool-looking uni! Nice job starting out on the 29er! I started last summer on the 24, then moved up to the 29. Today I picked up my new 36 and immediately started trembling…this thing is HUGE! I have no idea how I’m ever gonna ride it, but that’s exactly how I felt about my 24 when it was new.
    You’re learning fast, and as you get better, it just gets funner and funner…keep going! :o

    15

    Thanks for the comments guys! I’m having a good time out there. As far as the camera angles go, I feel like some of them were terrible, some were ok and the helmet mount was the smoothest. Hopefully I can try some others out later.

    Today I went for my first “ride” instead of just the front yard. The ride was 1.5 miles of dirt/gravel road; mostly level with some inclines and one fairly small hill. I came off/got off the uni 7 times total.

    The 165mm cranks are starting to feel really long and slow. Yesterday I ordered some inexpensive ($25) Nimbus Venture 150s to try. The mountain bike trails that I normally ride (and plan to ride the muni on), have some fairly big climbs and that is why I went with the 165s in the beginning. I’m excited to see how the 150mm cranks feel.

    18

    My first uni is 26" and I was completly amazed how easy it feels to climb steep hills w/145 cranks. On my MTB it is much harder… When I tryed to climb for the first time - wow! just did not belive that was so cool!
    I think 150s will be fine for you!

    20

    I have been thinking about buying the GoPro. I actually just purchased a computer. Been recording and uploading everything from my phone.

    Any tips are welcome. I don’t get many you tube views but the filming of my progress has sort of turned into a hobby.

    21

    How was the MUni ride?

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    The Nimbus Venture 150mm cranks came in today so I put them on after work and rode for about 15 minutes before dark. I bought the Ventures because they are only $25 on unicycle.com and I wanted to try 150s without spending much. They are definitely faster but I’m going to have to ride them more to figure out if I like the length. I forgot to raise my seat height so that made things feel a little strange. After a freemount, my foot positioning on the pedals was off more than usual. I imagine I’ll gradually adjust to them though. Here’s a weight pic just for fun.

    23

    The Nimbus Venture 150mm cranks came in today so I put them on after work and rode for about 15 minutes before dark. I bought the Ventures because they are only $25 on unicycle.com and I wanted to try 150s without spending much. They are definitely faster but I’m going to have to ride them more to figure out if I like the length. I forgot to raise my seat height so that made things feel a little strange. After a freemount, my foot positioning on the pedals was off more than usual. I imagine I’ll gradually adjust to that though. Here’s a weight pic just for fun.

    24

    The Nimbus Venture 150mm cranks came in today so I put them on after work and rode for about 15 minutes before dark. I bought the Ventures because they are only $25 on unicycle.com and I wanted to try 150s without spending much. They are definitely faster but I’m going to have to ride them more to figure out if I like the length. I forgot to raise my seat height so that made things feel a little strange. After a freemount, my foot positioning on the pedals was off more than usual. I imagine I’ll gradually adjust to that though. Here’s a weight pic just for fun.

    25

    The Nimbus Venture 150mm cranks came in yesterday so I put them on after work and rode for about 15 minutes before dark. I bought the Ventures because they are only $25 on unicycle.com and I wanted to try 150s without spending much. They are definitely faster but I’m going to have to ride them more to figure out if I like the length. I forgot to raise my seat height so that made things feel a little strange. After a freemount, my foot positioning on the pedals was off more than usual. I imagine I’ll gradually adjust to that though. Here’s a weight pic just for fun.

    26

    The Nimbus Venture 150mm cranks came in friday so I put them on after work and rode for about 15 minutes before dark. I bought the Ventures because they are only $25 on unicycle.com and I wanted to try 150s without spending much. They are definitely faster but I’m going to have to ride them more to figure out if I like the length. I forgot to raise my seat height so that made things feel a little strange. After a freemount, my foot positioning on the pedals was off more than usual. I imagine I’ll gradually adjust to that though. Here’s a weight pic just for fun.

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    I finally switched out the crappy Wellgo pedals that I was running for the Wellgo/Nimbus DX pedals that came with the Drak. I was using the cheap plastic Wellgos because I was concerned about the metal pins on the DX pedals since I’m learning and falling alot. I finally got fed up with the small platform and broken plastic. Then I figured out that the DX pedal pins are removable…

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