on unicycle.com there are 5 and 6 foot savage giraffes for $99.00. This is a close out sale special. Is this a good uni, what was the orignal price, how much more difficlut is a 6ft than a 5ft. Thanks for all your answers
6 footers arent much hareder than 5, they’re just scarier, and scarier to jump/step off of, but it doesnt all hurt that much more to jump off a 6foot. Unless your going fast or land hard or crash or something.
get the 6 ft, they are way cooler. 5ft is just too short.
get the 6foot. On the 6 foot your feet are only three feet off the ground.
and on the five foot are they 2 feet or 3 feet away from the ground
Yes.
are these savages a good quality unicyle
i had a 20" savage that i tore to hell as a begginer, the bearings were cheap (lollypop)
Here is a picture of the Savage giraffe from UDC.
This is the first time I’ve ever ridden a giraffe, though I think I sat on on one when I was about 16 (nearly 30 years ago). I can’t vouch for the quality, but it seems like a good learners giraffe in any case. It took a little more gall than I expected to get launched, but after that it was pretty much like any other unicycle, except that it’s perched atop a pogo stick.
The axel bolts weren’t tight enough, and that caused me to fall a couple times when the wheel slipped. It was very disconcerting, but not fatal. I did have one nearly nasty fall on my hip on the road because of the slippage. Naja, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. (I still don’t understand exactly what slipped. I’d appreciate any insight.)
There are a few more pictures in the Munipsycho photo gallery. My seven year old daughter snapped a particularly flattering photo of the bottom of my foot. <grin> Dad’s keep such things.
Too rainy to ride huh. Wimp.
Hey, it was slippery riding that thing on the steep hill in front of my house. Very dangerous. Once I spun out riding over a wet stick on the uphill.
Just the same, I’ll have to check my email to see who really bailed. 
I finally scrambled onto mine yesterday. Everybody’s told me it’s just as easy as regualr unicycling, but I did not find it so. It was like learning to ride all over again. I still can’t ride it.
I’ve had mine for over a week and I just got up on it today. I find that once I’m riding it, it is about the same as a regular unicycle, but getting started was quite daunting. (Although I went out at dusk today and it felt like I was on acid or something – very surreal.)
The hardest part was successfully moving away from my launch pad - the bumper of my Expedition.
Someone in another thread said he learned to free mount on the second day. I hate that guy.
Try again – but not at dusk – and you’ll nail it for sure. Just choose to ride!
Good luck!
That was me! ducks
Although I only have a five-footer, and I put the seat down really low to do it, AND I’d already watched the video on unicycle.2ya.com that shows a guy freemounting a giraffe. I watched it a lot. 
After probably 10 or 20 tries I finally managed to get the seat under me and my foot on the pedal. Replicating it has since been a bit of a challenge, and I’ve been finding it easier on a downhill.
I also rode it around for about an hour and did some idling, and experimented with how tightly I could turn, and some backwards riding before I tried freemounting, and I think that gave me a sense of what to expect when I tried it without a curb or a stepladder.
And one last thing - I rested the wheel up against a curb (although I guess a block of wood, stairs, or anything else that will keep the wheel still while you hop up will do), and put the pedals horizontal, then stepped onto the back one, up, and away!
I guess the real trick is to just ignore the fact that you’re trying to climb up a moving object, and just pretend you’re balanced. You’ve got probably a whole second before the beast comes tumbling down to get yourself on top, so doing it quickly, and believing you can do it helps quite a bit! Kinda like normal freemounting I guess.
-dave
Dave, it’ll be hard to duck from up on that giraffe. 
Thanks for the encouragement. I watched that video as well. I’m unable get my foot up on the pedal for the climbing mount. Maybe if I keep stretching. I like the curb idea though. I keep toying with the rolling mount, but I’m not quite ready. I’ll keep trying. I can’t take my Expedition everywhere I ride, so something’s gotta give. I think you are probably right: There’s a pretty large psychological component to the various aspects of this giraffe thing that I’ll have to overcome. We just need to ignore the extra 5 or 6 feet between the seat and the concrete. And choose to ride.
be careful if you’re doing a rolling mount! Those can bend the giraffe pretty easily, and that’s never fun.
Also posting to say two things I learned today - one is that if I get up, put the seat under me, and then put my foot on the pedal, I usually ride away from the mount.
And two is that spins are really really easy to do once you get up the nerve to do them 
Someday I’m going to put a 2:1 gearing on the beast and see where that takes me. Giraffes are amazing.
Also me. And the two days were two weeks apart. I think the giraffe I freemounted was only a five-footer though, which is obviously a lot easier than a six-footer. The method I used was to put my left foot on the wheel, then my right foot on the pedal, then stand up and swing my left leg around in front of the seat. Before working on this mount on a giraffe, you should probably be comfortable doing the side mount on a regular unicycle. Another thing to try before actually working on free-mounting is to do the climb-up mount as quickly as possible, but while holding onto a support with one hand.
Yea, giraffes seem pretty flimsy to me. I think I’ve seen a movie of Evan Byrne doing a 180 hop-twist on his, and I was amazed that it didn’t bust in half! There was even a slomo version of it, and I could have sworn I saw it bent a little bit. He did it on a Torker TX.
I’ve never really tried many tricks nor freemounting on my giraffe. I think the only things I can do on it are idling, backwards, and a rather short spin. Speaking of giraffe spins, watch out because when I tried it the first time, I fell off to the side because of all the gravitational pull. That combined with the spinning motion was not pretty; I came VERY close to giving my ankle a nice twist fracture.
So is the Torker TX stronger than those others? When I got my giraffe I went for the cheapest one that wasn’t a Savage. I didn’t want to spend hundreds on a Miyata when all I was going to use it for was to ride around in performances and possibly learn a few simple tricks. It’s definitely fitted my simple needs so far! What is really nice (and comforting) is that I’ve never had any technical problems at all like slipping or the chain breaking.
Whew, I can’t believe I sat here and typed this when I should be typing my summary for reading class. OOPS!!! Well, bye for now.
Re: cheap giraffe
1ft more difficult
this is relevant when u’re freemounting
the upside is that u get a machine that’s just that crucial bit taller than the average crowd-height and as a result, more eye-catching and more affective when working in crowds or parades
i have a 5 and i wish i had a 6
edit: i also have a single-chain and wish i had a double-chain, but that’s a different discussion