I recently got my 36er and I must say, its a blast riding it. I watched Terry’s vid on his three mount of the Coker. The rolling one, imo, is the best way to mount it. I tried a static mount, but almost everytime, i have to turn 90 degrees to get stable. The rolling mount, i get on it and go in the direction i’m facing.
Thanks Terry for posting that. It helped me alot and I plan on perfecting the second mount you featured for my coker rides.
Might I add, that thing is a beast to get started and stopped. Turning on a dime is out of the picture too. I tried to do a quick 180 turn, but I ended up UPD. Any hints on making tight turns on the beast?
Turn your torso in the direction of the intended turn, look where you want to go, then time your turn with the downstroke of the pedal on the side that you want to turn towards.
Bigger cranks increase your maneuverability A LOT. I started RAGBRAI this year on 102mm cranks and had them switched out for 140mm cranks after the first day. After that, I could do 180s no problem and also found that I could idle the “beast” almost effortlessly.
Did I read that right? Time it with the downstroke of the left pedal if I’m turning left, etc?
That’s a revelation to me because I’ve always thought it made sense to bring the outside leg/pedal around on its downstroke. I am continually unstable in turns; this is likely a major factor, (and probably explains why my legs sometimes touch the wheel!). I will experiment with using the inside stroke to drive the turn and see how it goes. Thanks!
btw thanks also to Rubix for bringing this up, and to Terry for posting the mounting vids which have helped me.
I always do a static mount on my coker because I find it the easiest way to get on. I think rolling mounts are probably more energy efficient, but I’m hopeless at those and the static mount works nearly every time as long as I’m not too tired. It’s probably helped by me being quite tall (6’2"ish), but I don’t find it that much harder to mount than a 29er - you do need to give it a good shove to get it going though - helps if you mount with a hand on the saddle to give yourself some leverage for that first pedal stroke. I use 150mm cranks - the shorter you go the less practical I would imagine a static mount being, just because of the effort involved to get the wheel rolling.
