this gallery thread was inspired by KrashnKenny’s Re-Inspired Thread and my reaction to him mentioning that he’s not trying to brag by mentioning his (then) recent achievements
this reminded me of how i enjoy sharing the fact that i’ve just managed a ‘new’ trick with people who understands
so, when u finally manage ‘that’ trick
the one that’s been so elusive for so long, or the one u just saw and tried on a whim and managed, or the one that u wanted to master within a week and did
and when u got it, all u wanted to do was tell someone who ‘cares’, u can now come here
This is old, but it took me ages to master the pedal grab. Once gerblefranklin (I think) told me about the crankflip, I got it very quickly. Now I have a whole new world two feet above the ground that I can ride up to and on!!
Ok this is one of the few tricks that’s only a drag AFTER you’ve mastered it, seat dragging! Took me a few months of very sporadic practicing to get it right.
just today i had a condensed version of this. i was hopping onto a park bench, then perpendicular onto the back of it, and it took me almost twenty tries to get it without any corrective hops on the bech part. i kept reducing the number of hops slowly, and finally i got it. it was nice to see the end result on tape.
Backwards wheel walks coming along real nice at the moment. As is handwheel walk. I can now do the 10m with transitions required for the skills levels. Yay.
I did my first level nine skill yesterday. I rode backwards with the seat out in back in a circle, and returned to the seat. I also rode backwards with the seat out in front for the first time. I did backwards one footed for over ten meters a few days ago. Coasting is still a problem; my best distance is little over three meters.
My hand wheel walk stomach on seat is coming along but my transitions are still iffy. I hope to be able to do it backwards in a week or two. Just wondering Nick; do you hand wheel walk stomach on seat or sitting on the seat?
I know how you feel. It took me forever to learn pedalgrabs. I then had “a whole new world” of precise, but big objects that I can ride on!
One of my favorite accomplishments was learning the swing-up mount. It took about 3 minutes, but since it felt so daunting, and I learned it so fast, I was super happy.
Last, but not least, I landed a 1.2m gap on my gapping bars about 4 days ago. It rocked.
Tonight on a ride with Mike Scalisi I consistently got about 10 meters with seat dragging in back! It rocked. Now to get good enough to go back to a normal ride.
I do it stomach on seat. This way seemed the easiest to learn so i learnt it this way and now i’m sticking with it. Also its a lot less painfull. If you’ve ever tried sitting hand wheel walk u will know what i mean.
The transitions out of seat drag are actually harder than the seat drag itself. So far i can only pick up seat in front. I will work on picking up seat in back soon. Being able to seat drag a while and then falling off isn’t really that cool. Once you can get the transitions down really smooth that’s when the trick just looks so much more impressive. To be able to do the transitions you have to have a really steady seat drag, which makes you look like you have mastered it. Work on seat drag…it’s a very cool trick when done well.
I haven’t tried this yet but I’m reasonably sure I could pull off a sketchy (but complete) transition from riding normally to seat drag in front, to hopping seat drag (ya know, when u just hop while clinging onto the tyre? - I’m good at that), and then pick the seat up and ride off.
Would this count? I’m sure that I could then work on doing less and less hops during/before the final transition.
I’ve tried hand wheel walk, sitting on the seat more than once. I find it far more uncomfortable even than the handride position. (I can’t actually handride yet; I’m just starting to learn it.)
Seat dragging always looks really cool to me. When I tried to learn it, about two months ago, I achieved two or three cycles of the wheel. After ten minutes of pratice, I fell on top of the wheel and bent it so much I couldn’t ride. Although my unicycle is now repaired, I am hesitant to learn the seat drag until I get a 20" freestyle instead of my 24" Torker.
I agree that seat drags don’t look cool unless you can do the transitions, but the feeling of seat dragging and then almost losing it but keeping it was great. I’m wondering if I should try Daike Izumeda’s way, where you kinda do a backwards swing-up mount. I can already do backwards swingups, so I figure this’ll be easier. Also, the huge Onza crown is kinda condusive to swing-ups. I can’t do seat in front seat drag yet. Are transitions from it easier?
I just learned to glide. the part that’s impressive (for me) is, just today i learned to go into it from riding briskly, and return to the pedals when i’m done. it’s a great feeling, and worth the months of my life i’ve put into learning it. i expect to continue practicing it until i can effectively incorporate it into everyday riding. and HSG, that’ll be awesome.
Well i havent replied in awhile so i guess i post here. Hmm i think the only recent thing i have done is a footplant to 360 crankflip off a knee high bench which i landed a few weeks ago. I also landed some no footed tire grabs but just off flat ground so its not that cool yet but its in the making. Ahh yes and im a nembie to muni and im getting better i dont think ive landed any “tricks”
but i feel more comfortable on it.
In the spirit of constant shameless bragging that I constantly seem to have in my posts, I just landed a 1.55m gap between my gapping bars. I got a 1.5m gap on video, which I’ll post later. Just something that I felt really good about landing, as 1.55m is near the biggest gap I’ve ever landed, period. At about 1.6 meters I began to have problems with mt gapping bars sliding too far on takeoff and landing. Also, I was barely making the distance, which made things harder.
Down on the Venice boardwalk, just across from Muscle Beach gym, there’s a set of 18 inch stadium stairs that go up for quite a ways. I first saw Tommy Thompson doing these when I was just getting started about 6 moinths ago. Later I went there with KH and he not only side hopped all the way up the big stairs, but at the thop, he faced out and forward dropped the whole batch, one at a time but in one fluid sequence impossible to stop once initiated. I got the stairs (up) some time ago (pumps the crap out of your legs) but didn’t have the guts to try forward dropping the whole set (one at a time, in sequence). I finally went for it yesterday – not all that hard but scary because, like all steep stairs, there’s no way of stopping once you lean into launch off that first drop.
