Giraffe Discussion Thread

Discuss giraffe unicycles and the animal if you want.

Talk about tricks
High hops on giraffes
Distance riding on girrafe
Your giraffes
Etc

ENJOY!

I’ve got a Torker TX 5 footer. They’re cheap.

It’s fun except for the uncomfortable saddle. (LX saddle)

I haven’t committed to learning a free mount. It drops hard when I fail. I think I’d break it before I learned.

The Nimbus dual chain 5 footer seems like a good giraffe.

I have a torker 5 footer, its fun and gets some funny looks.
I can free mount it,idle it alittle and im working on going in reverse.

sick, anyone else got some they’d liker to discuss?

Great thread, I was thinking about making one and if there was one. ANyway I got a standard giraffe 5ft and i busk on it. Im getting a multiwheeled unciycle soon (a few weeks)…ill talk some more later im busy…

Haven’t been on the TX for over a year now, I used to love rolling it round town late at night. Should realy sell it but I doubt I’ll get much for it and it’s a nice thing to have around.

Great idea for a thread. I’ve got a 5 foot Nimbus giraffe that I bought 3 years or so ago. The trouble is that it doesn’t really fit in to any of the riding categories I usually do (commuting, distance, muni or hockey), so I’ve not touched it since I learned to freemount it. Hopefully someone will post some cool giraffe stuff that will encourage me to dust mine off and get out and ride it again :slight_smile:

STM

u can do tricks and jump on girrafes1??? :astonished:

Obviously. :stuck_out_tongue:

I heart my Giraffe

My 6’ Schwinn giraffe has been with me all over the world.

I have ridden it in every contiguous American state plus Hawaii and 11 other countries.

It’s like an old friend.

I learned most all my tricks on a giraffe.
Idling, juggling and passing while idling. One foot idling and riding,
backward riding, slamming hecklers…

It has been on TV commercials and bunches of newspaper pictures and now a sock catalog (see avatar).

My Giraffe has opened for Bill Hicks, Drew Carey, Roseanne, Paula Poundstone, Bobby Slayton, Pat Paulson, Tommy Chong, Kevin Nealon, and many others. It is a very talented Giraffe.

I have the serial # memorized.
I need to fix it up again…It’s been refurbished over and over again. I have worn through probably 6 tires, three chains and 2 seats. It has a bit of a curve to it now.

I just estimated that since 1983 I have spent probably close to 20000+ hours in the saddle, Thats just in shows and not counting time for the practice curve.

Makes my butt sore just thinking about it…

Someday I will write a sonnet for my Giraffe

I heart my giraffe.

:slight_smile:

That was beautiful. My eyes are watering.

I’m a Schwinn fan myself. I have Schwinn 20” and 24” freestyle Unis. I heart three piece cantilever frames!

The Schwinn Giraffes are really Semcycle now, I think. I don’t think Schwinn has rolled out a giraffe since they got back into unicycles.

Sorry about that…I just took off my shoes…

You’re right about the Schwinn Giraffe’s, they haven’t been made in a long while. I just fixed up my little Schwinn 20" frame I had lying around with as close to as original type parts.

I tell you …compared to the nimbus and other current unicycles, the little Schwinns are funky, heavy and kinda cheap. The giraffe has turned out to be bomber, though! Although I have seen a couple tubes break at the crank welds, but not mine thankfully… I think that would make me cry. I baby the giraffe as it is these days…it has lived way past it’s designed life, I’m sure.

I like the little Schwinns too…maybe just for the nostalgia…

If you ever decide to sell it I’d be interested.
I have only ridden a giraffe for about 5 minutes, but it was a fun 5 minutes! I just can’t afford a new one :frowning:

Well I have had a nimbus three wheeler for 7 months now, and I have still yet to find time to ride it! (I also need to find some guts… cos when I get up there I just lose faith and climb back down the ladder!).

That costs alot of money, you should put aside some time to ride if you can. Im getting one next week hopefully. And cant you just get up onto the 3 wheeler like you would get up onto a normal girrafe (assisted) where you put the seat between your legs and climb up a pole ontill your on it?

I rode a giraffe for the first time about a month ago and have a question: should it feel like the tire is right under you like a freestyle uni?

The reason I ask is that the giraffe I rode kept feeling like the tire wanted to roll too far forward, so I had to practically sit on the front of the seat to keep it under me. Also, I noticed on several of our club giraffes that the frame is bent somewhat toward the sprocket side (usually the right side). This all seemed strange to me but, as I say, I’m new to riding giraffes. The club giraffes take quite a lot of abuse so maybe that’s all it is?

BTW: In a gym with 50-70 riders one must have rules or a lot of people get hurt. I know a lot of people don’t like rules but our club director (http://pput.org/) insists for safety sake that before any rider can take on the giraffe they must be able to:

[LIST=1]

  • Idle 25 times with their right foot
  • Idle 25 times with their left foot
  • Ride backwards 30 meters, stop, and come forward 30 meters
  • Hop in place 10 times [/LIST]

    At that point he has a series of skills he walks the rider through on the giraffe (turning, dissmounting, figure 8, etc). If the rider completes these skills successfully they are then considered a giraffe rider and can ride the giraffe in parades and other club events.

    We also have a 3-stack and a 5-stack, plus a 10’ giraffe! :astonished:

  • I’m not sure that I’d ride much taller than a 10’ giraffe.

    I have a nimbus performer (dual chan, modular) with extensions to run it up to a nine footer when I feel like it, which is not too often. Normally it’s in 7-7.5’ mode for now since that’s the range I can freemount after a few tries.

    Three wheelers are incredible as well. They’re awesome props and wheel walking one is just something else. So fun. People really get a kick out of them as well.

    also blueharmony, I’d definitely agree with that club rule about giraffes. It’s possible to ride without knowing that stuff but makes it far more dangerous/annoying when you can’t idle or control yourself.

    Ok, I have the 5ft Nimbus Giraffe, I’m very happy with it, very comfortable riding it, I can running mount it. I worked the Isle of Wight festival on it, so I now know it handles on grass quite well. I’m in this highlights clip, before the sugarbabes.

    http://www.itvlocal.com/meridian/locallife/?&void=202312

    I also have a pair of 2 wheel extensions, so I can have a 2 or 3 wheeled unicycle. The 3 wheeler is cool, but I have not been on it since april though. It’s cool to be sat on a unicycle and to be eye level with the passengers on top deck of a double decker bus.

    The 2 wheeler, I have been spending some time on recently, I can ride forward a decent distance now, I have turning nailed, and I can running mount it. I am learning to idle on it, then backwards will follow.

    F.

    So I’m not the only one!

    Mine has been to Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore.

    Mine has also been pictured in newspapers and been in at least one TV commercial.

    I do not have the serial # memorized, but I know Schwinn’s model number for their Giraffes, U-72.

    If you take it to a bike frame expert, he can probably do something about the curve without putting your frame at risk. If you have access to a custom chrome plating company, I recommend getting chrome on the following parts:

    • Seat post
    • Seat clamp
    • Cranks
    • Bottom bracket parts (the ones you can see)
    • Sprockets
    • Chain tighteners
    • Axle nuts & washers

    Then add a chrome chain if you can find one (you might need two). I had that done to mine many years ago, and it has always stood out from the crowd since.

    I heart my giraffe too. It was the first unicycle I ever owned (I learned on borrowed ones). I’ll never part with it. I even have a “spare,” another Schwinn Giraffe my wife bought me, to use if any parts of my original break or die.

    I still have one remaining, unused Schwinn whitewall tire. But the one I have wears very slowly, for two reasons. First because it doesn’t get used much any more, and second because I have a one-tooth difference between the top and bottom sprockets. If you don’t have that setup, contact Tommy Miller (The Unicycle Factory) and see if he has any more of those. It makes your tire wear evenly all around! (765) 452-2692.

    Schwinn halted unicycle production from 1983 to 1986. They came back with many redesigns on their regular unicycles (including what we now call the Viscount seat), but the Giraffe never came back. Liability, probably. But they were the most solid giraffes you could buy back then without having to go custom, and professional performers are still using them all over the world.

    Semcycle bought the tooling for the old Schwinn seats (the pre-Viscount ones), so those are now Semcycle (with improvements). But the Semcycle giraffes are totally separate from the Schwinns. I know less about them, but they seem very sturdy and are much better than cheaper ones for professional use.

    Eww. Why? For nostalgia and tire-changing I can understand. Schwinn’s chrome plating, on those frames, was nearly indestructable. But for function, riding, strength and seat-height adjustability they really kinda suck. :slight_smile: