Yesterday I took up Keith/Keg’s offer of trying his Coker. Of course it was raining the sort of light drizzle that permeates everything- the slipperiest conditions, ideal for trying something new. I’d bottled out of riding a Giraffe after several attempts mainly due to the height, so this was going to be interesting. The largest I’d ridden to date was my Onza Muni.
After removing the brake & adjusting the seatpost to 2mm from the tyre (much easier than putting the short seatpost on) I mounted (with a lamp post) successfully. Getting started is much harder than I thought and after a few rotations & UPDs I got going and disappeared round the corner, hoping Keith would follow on his 29er. Luckily he did & we continued around the block. It felt too fast & tall for the pavement so I rode on the road, which I generally avoid. I did feel safer than on my other unis, due to the speed & particularly the excellent visiblity from the height. it gives a great new perspective. I did feel very wary of passing vehicles and worried about them. Flailing my arms a bit (which I was doing anyway) made me think they may be a bit more careful. I’m glad my wrist guards have reinforced backs though - I can just see a white-van-man driving close & breaking several small bones). Once I get a Coker, a helmet and helmet mirrors will be the first purchases.
Both pavement & roads were reasonably empty though. The Coker was wonderfully smooth over speedbumps & ripples & drains. bumps were barely noticeable. Up a gentle hill it felt wonderfully smooth & it was good to be doing gentle bike-type speeds. family rides would definitely be much easier. There were a couple of hairy moments, one where I tried a tight turn in a side road & sent the Coker spinning off into the middle of the road. Luckily the only thing coming up behind was Keith, trying to keep up! (very embarrassing!). One thought came to mind is the problems of having to wait at junctions. dismounting & remounting can be a hassle, (especially freemounting which would be essential sometimes) so idling seems a pretty vital skill to make rides easier. but those will come with time. Hopping on the Coker seemed quite easy.
It was only a short ride, but definitely well worth the trip. One last test was to see if it could fit in the car. It wouldn’t go in as I hoped, but it would fit. It looks like I would have to leave behind the daughter or the girlfriend in future…
as for the Coker v Geared Hub thread, especially after John Child’s comments on Blue Shift, I think I wont be waiting for a geared hub. No doubt once I get a Coker I will do as others seem to and get a 29er at some point. By then geared technology would have advanced further. Keith did offer me the 29er to try but I was totally dis-interested. I know what I want.
I’ll be getting one soon, but I’m a Cokerless Cokerhead for now.
Thanks Keith!
Hardly anyone idles on the Coker. It can be done, but it’s difficult and not something that you can maintain for very long. I have never idled my Coker.
You can do small hops in place. Do very small hops that barely get the tire off the ground. But it’s not a real good idea to do with a stock Coker wheel. The stock wheel is too flexy and may just go wonky from that type of abuse. If you have an Airfoil rim then the little hops are no problem.
If you are riding by yourself you just learn to look for posts or walls or anything suitable to hold on to while waiting at an intersection. Or you adjust your speed and try to ride very slowly to time the light at the intersection.
If you are riding with another person you can hold hands and do a paired still stand. It’s not hard to do a group still stand where everyone is holding hands. Try it with two people on smaller unicycles and you’ll be surprised how easy it is. Then you can do the same on Cokers.
Otherwise you dismount at intersections and get to practice your freemounting.
I was wondering what you were thinking, I found it amusing watching my Coker skating across the road. I am sure I would have felt different if there were more cars around. Don’t worry it has seen worse wipeouts with me.
As you noticed around here there no fences / post / barriers that can be grabbed at the junctions (intersections). My technique is to listen and then watch for approaching traffic at junctions and try to regulate my speed in advance. Riding very slowly on the Coker is the easiest way (for me) to time the gap in the traffic. The final resort is to dismount and then rolling free mount, which is easier than you’d expect on the Coker.
Once you become used to riding it, junctions would be relatively easy. Slow riding fits in with what I’ve experiences with the smaller wheels. overall observation levels would improve greatly once you get used to it.
While the Coker was bouncing around I was worried that an escorted visit to the ATM would be required!
Idling a coker is easy with the standard 150mm cranks and a little bit harder with short cranks. Hardly anyone does it because hardly anyone has practiced it. Once you get it down, it’s low effort, although a bit more than normal idling, I used to have a couple of major intersections on my London commute where I had to be in a lane away from the side of the road, so had to idle the coker most days. I’d definately ride slowly towards a light or grab something rather than idling though if I could manage it, whatever unicycle I’m on, it’s just that in London, major junctions tend to have a 2 minute or more cycle time, which you just can’t ride slowly for and often have multiple lanes, if you need to be in the middle lane, you need to idle.
The reason people think idling a coker is difficult is because it’s a different skill to idling a normal unicycle. You have to use your top leg as well as the bottom leg to slow the wheel at the direction changes, or else have very very strong legs. Having decent metal pedals with pins helps too.
If you want to learn to idle a coker, it might help learning the rollback mount first, to get used to changing the direction the wheel is going in. Demonstration videos here, sorry if they’re on their side, I did them before I’d learnt much about video manipulation.
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Don’t worry it has seen worse wipeouts with me.