The problem I always had with doing that kind of thing was worrying about bike theft. It’s bad enough worrying about auto break ins, (which are quite common at some of the trail sites I go to), but bicycle theft is something on another order of magnitude.
I really think that if municipalities were to crack down hard on bike thieves that it would do more than anything else to encourage bicycles as actual modes of transportation.
Oh I’d definitely haul the uni on the car side. Like @1RadAb said, drivers care more about their car paint than cyclists (or at least it seems that way). Cars pass me much further than if I were riding without one. If not for the weight, I’d carry it all day.
I have a trailer, and that’s how I did it before. But this setup is waaay lighter. Imagine how larger a trailer you need to actually fit a 29er securely!
edit: As I’ve said in the top post, it was surprisingly stable on a touring bike (like a single sided panier), which is why I wanted to share the setup with the forum. Use whatever setup you want–I’m just sharing my experience for the benefit of the community. Feel free to share your actual experience with a trailer.
No actual experience, I do not own or use a trailer. I just thought it looked more practical.
Hang 10
Hah! @ccola, this is great!
When you were explaining this to me, I was picturing the unicycle hanging off of the rear of the bike. I’m sure that you must have mentioned that it hung off to the side, but I totally missed that point. This is definitely not what I was picturing. But, it looks great.
Haha yeah that’s more like the trailgator in one of the links @UniMyra shared above.
I like that it takes the weight off the bike, but besides the price point & additional hardware, I’m not a fan of big moving parts on a bike in general.
For those who hasn’t allready seen it. A very good (but slightly more expensive) solution is this half bike/uni made by @jaco_flans for @makym. I can imagine this being less attractive to thieves than a normal bike, when the unicycle is detached.
what a magnificent machine. The question is… can you unicycle with the bike attached!?
Wow that is a great why of taking my kids with the mountainbike where they can’t sit on the back. If only the uni was a bit more straight up.
then it becomes kind of a Hoppley bike. The uni rides backwards. Would be fun to carry someone on the front then as well.
This is the most awesome touring bike ever. I’ve considered building a touring trailer from a unicycle to be able to have a uni with me on a bicycle tour. But this setup is even better!
And +1 for the Gates belt and the Rohloff…
To be honest, I don’t ever see myself ride somewhere by bike to then start unicycling. Especially when you have a bike with so much luggage. You don’t want to park it somewhere and expect your stuff to still be there when you return. I would either go on a mountain biking holiday or a holiday where I’d use my unicycle. I’m not much of a bicyclist myself and only use a bike to pick up my kid from school. Ever since I started unicycling, my mountain bike has just collected dust and occasionally I let my dad ride it, while I unicycle.
I can understand if people want to go on a camping trip by bike and at a camping leave the bike with the tent and go unicycling, but it seems like a lot of hassle.
So I’d say great solutions, but I won’t use them myself.
Most of my holidays are cycle touring holidays and I never had a problem with leaving the packed bike somewhere. Of course I mostly avoid cities. The downside of cycle tours is that I cannot unicycle for several weeks. So I can totally see me using something like this, parking the bike on the camp site and then unicycle to town for a beer or so.
Don’t you live in Switzerland though? Here in the US you can see piles of bikes surrounding homeless encampments and I doubt many were purchased legally. Bike theft is a real problem in urban areas here.
I live in rural Switzerland and mostly travel rural Europe by bike (Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, Scotland…) So bike theft isn’t a concern in most of those places, I avoid urban areas anyway.
The solution is of course area dependent. I ride in a relatively bike-friendly city in US (read: not really that good). But what you say is true of just locking a bike up, regardless of a uni.
I beg to differ on mixing 1 wheel and 2 wheels. I mean, to point out the obvious, regular triathlon mixes running, swimming, and biking. Biking and unicycling target different sets of muscles, and as a regular cyclist, I enjoy the 2-wheel/1-wheel biathlon. On my favorite route I average 20mph/30kmph on the bike+uni, then do a 10mi/16km gravel ride on uni.
In short, I bike the fast bits, and muni the fun bits. I’ve been mixing some running into it lately, making it a “2/1/0-wheel triathlon.” Strangely the ankles always give out first, rather than endurance, so I have to be careful there.
Your ankles? Not your knees? Even with my last ride on the 24, my knees felt sore at the end. I did 10-11 km.
Yes, I have a little wagon that I can use for that. I do grocery shopping with it as I much prefer to get places on my own steam. My set up is really easy. I should try to take a picture of it when I get home (or maybe tomorrow as I have to go out tonight)
Dawson
Today I went for a ride with my unicycle in tow, and then when I arrived I locked up my bike and trailer to the bridge and unicycled.
O.M.G. I have a cannondale kids trailer from years ago that I have used for my uni since I no longer have children. But I still have my surfboard rack from my youth and never thought of this use, It Is Genius. Thank you, I have learned a new use for it, (and they don’t off balance you noticeably)
