Nicholas Seow Chiang Price <unicycle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>
>Somebody wrote asking if it was possible to wheel walk an ultimate wheel. While
>it’s a bit hard to tell from the picture, A picture I have from the Trick
>Cycling Championship of Europe (1894) shows a man standing on a wheel, but the
>wheel is about 4 foot in diameter (penny farthing without the back wheel.) The
>illustration is in Sebastian Hoher’s Unicycling book by Butterfingers
Though none of the illustrations show someone wheel walking an ultimate, the
gentlemen in the pictures are indeed riding large ultimate wheels, hopping them,
and riding large wheels with handlebars down stairs and elsewhere. One of the
men depicted (on page 169) is Nick Kaufman, who is generally considered to be
the “father” of the German sport of Artistic Bicycling. It’s interesting to note
that Kaufman, from Rochester, NY was an American. I have no doubt that all the
skills demonstrated in those two illustrations were actually performed in those
years. It’s sobering to be reminded that most of what we do today has been done
before . . .
>Beirne wrote about learning to ride by clapping your hands after letting go of
>the fence. Surely this will just cause more problems frothe beginner because
>they can’t use their arms to balance.
Several people made similar comments about this hand clapping thing. I think
they are not getting the idea. The hand clapping is intended as the very first
“freehand” riding that a learner does. While riding along with the spotter, the
object is to let go, clap, and grab the spotter’s hand again. This takes about
1 second, but is a big step for the beginning rider. Most riders, when they’re
at this point in their learning, are afraid to let go of the spotter, even
though they are actually already riding. They need to be convinced that they
can go on alone.
Hand clapping was part of the method USA founder Bill Jenack used, and he taught
several thousand people to ride over the years. I find it works well, in the
right situations, also.
Stay on Top, John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone dirt-encrusted MUni rider
http://www.calweb.com/~unifoss/index.htm