I remember watching Ripley’s with Kris Holm on it and just being interested. Got one before my birthday, and it has evolved from there. Started march 5th 2001, lol.
Having retired…
Having retired I felt I needed to do something challanging( for me).
It was October 2000.
Boys Life article entitled, “YOU can ride a Unicycle”. You know, it was right. That was around '76. I have more fun with it now.
Well, one day, I read on the internet that some kid had solved a Rubiks Cube while idling on a unicycle. I know how to solve a Rubiks Cube, so I thought that was pretty awesome, so I got a unicycle and learned.
I had my daughter at soccer practice about a month ago and was bored. Everyone was walking around the track for exercise and that looked equally boring.
For some reason I thought about an unicycle. I came home and found the book “A crash course- Ride the unicycle” on the internet. I bought it and a 24" torker the same night. The book came first so I read it. I was so happy when the unicyle came that I started in the grass in the rain.
My first day was 9/16/2004 (3.5 weeks ago). I can now ride wherever I want to and even rode off a 6 inch curb several times today. I practice 30-60 mins per day. I have to strongly recomend this book to those starting from scratch. Forget holding on to anything.
I am 45 years old and my goal is the get a 28" and do the 17 mile Creeper trial by this spring.
uncle ric
'was in a bike shop when it got a bunch of Schwinn unicycles delivered for the first time. After the first one came out of the box for display, it was love at first sight. Got one and slept w/ it.
And don’t forget about this thread: What inspired you to learn
Welcome Back Kotter 
when i used to rock climb in my hometown, we had one lying around that we used to try and ride, then my friend had a giraffe and a 20" that i borrowed and learnt on. Then i saw the Uni Team boys at an offroad race, the day-night thriller, and got hooked…
Gave up smoking and needed something to do with the time and the money I saved.
FatDave
Very good move. Congrats on the change.
Talent day at work over the summer, one of my co workers brought in his uni.
me staring, gaping mouthed
cut to thursday last week… falling all over myself trying to sit on my very own torker.
So you got the Torker…how do you like it?
yeah, I like it fine =) One of my friends drove by and saw me practicing today. I believe what she said was something along the lines of, “Wow, that doesn’t look nearly as stupid as I thought it would.”
I guess that’s good.
I made 27’ across my driveway today, but only three times in 45 minutes. I feel like I’m learning so much more slowly than everyone else (I’m working on my 7th total hour of practice and I’m still not fluid or performing regularly at all. Sometimes I can barely go 2 rotations and some times I’ll get past the 20’ line several times in a row. I have to think that it might be because I have even less of the side-to-side balance than everyone else did to start off with, seeing as I can barely ride a bike.)
Anyway, the Torker is holding up fine. The only visible damage I’ve seen is the little line of paint that got scraped off after I tried to change the seat post height. Other than that, the only problems I’ve had are with the seat twisting for the first few days. I haven’t really dropped it lately, though, so that hasn’t been a problem.
I’m naming it Regis Philbin.
My grandma bought an old piece o shet one at a garage sale and whenever we visited her, my brother and I would see who could ride it the farthest. Well, he always beat me. So then in middle school the Twin City Unicycle Club was teaching classes there so I signed up, tried riding a Myata and to my suprise I could ride across the gym with a good uni on my first try! After seeing all the awesome riders of TCUC, I joined and have been riding/competing ever since. And that was in 1991! BTW- I can kick my bro’s ass unicycling now!
I’ve been to so many different countries and met so many nice people because of unicycling, it’s sweet. I’m so glad I got hooked! I also got into it while my parents were going thru a divorce and I think unicycling helped me cope with it better, because I had something to focus my thoughts and time into, instead of dwelling on the divorce. It took my mind off of it.
Back in '98, my dad and I were dropping trash off at the local recycling center, must have been Canadian Thanksgiving weekend (wow, almost exactedly 6 years ago…) 'cause I was home from College that weekend, and in with the junk bikes was this old POS 20" uni. Blue frame. Crap tire. My dad half-jokingly said “Hey, there’s a unicycle, why don’t you get it and learn to ride it?” I still don’t know why, but I ran out into the drizzling rain, picked it up and dashed back to the car with it.
The seat was all shredded up (and a couple earwigs fell out), but some duck-tape fixed that. The assumption that the bolt for the seat height would be on the back of the frame determined which way was front. A $6 tire from Wal-Mart turned it into my first “muni”. I learnt to ride first by holding onto a step-ladder and pushing off. Didn’t get far, a f ew feet but I don’t think I ever left the garage. Back at the dorms, I kept myself upright by riding through the hallway of the aprtment, and though I did this for weeks never did better than crossing the hallway to the next apartment (and pissing off the downstairs neighbors with resounding thwacks of my falling seat.) Outside, I would hold onto the bike rack outside the building and push off. Eventually, I made it 5 feet. Then 10. 50, and so one, till I reached the street (where the sidewalk went up 2 inches, at which point I fell.)
Winter set in, and I let it be. Everyonce and a while, I’d dig it out, but aside from learning to freemount, never really rode it. It was too small. The spring of 2002 I dug it out again. I ordered a new seat and seat post from unicycle.com. The seatpost was too thick for the frame, so I hammered it in. Still wasn’t high enough, but it was better. Learned to free mount again, rode down my parents gravel driveway, and occasionaly on the lawn (not intentionally.) My first muni experiences! That summer I planned on buying a “real” uni, but I never got the money after computer upgrades. Summer 2003 I was going to get one, but ended up getting a paintball gun instead. Fate however, had different plans.
I remarked to a friend one day that I still wanted to get a new unicyle. It so happened that this friend, Jason, was a dispatcher for a local police department, and they had a storage area full of abandoned bikes. And one sweet looking 24" CyclePro. It was in beautiful condition, and Jason got it for me for free. Sweet. I learnt to freemount it, I learnt to go up and down hills, ride off curbs, ride on snow, hop, mtn bike trails. It was a beautiful uni… not anymore. Less than a year after getting it, it had been to the bike shop 5 times for crank repairs (the previous owner who’d lost/abandoned it had apparently run it with loose cranks.) It had been muddied, the axle had been bent, as well as the cranks. It had taken 12" drops. The tire had a bald spot from mounting it. I ordered a muni, and donated the CyclePro to my friend Mike, who’s uni was in even worse shape than the CyclePro. As an aside, the original 20" uni had been donated to Mike some months previous and is currently merrily filling the post of ultimate wheel.
My muni, a 24" Nimbus arrived, and has been merrily abused since. I’ve learnt to ride competently over roots, rocks, small children and the elderly, not to mention seat out hopping, almost seat out riding, 180 unispins (ok, well, I can spin the uni, and I can land on the cranks… just don’t ask me to do both A & B on the same jump), up stairs, down stairs, almost idle, and almost backwards. I commute to school everyday on it, and can’t get enough 
Tomorrow, I’ll ride to school, and get to try out Mike’s new girraffe! The obsession continues!!!
in 4th grade, i was having a parent-teacher conferrence because i was a bad boy. he asked me what personnal goal i had for the year, and i said,“i want to learn how to unicycle.” i was just joking around at the time but he said, “ok, ill let you borrow mine. you can take it home and take as much time as you need to learn how.” so i was like “SCORE!!!” so he brought it the next day to school, and i brought it to my grandmas house to practice. by the end of the day, i could ride across her back yard. the next day i was going to my friends house. they were all riding scooters so they were faster than me. so that day i learned to freemount and ride long distances. after about a month, my teacher took the unicycle back and i didnt ride after that until 7th grade. i asked for one for my birthday and i got a united 24" uni with lollipop bearings. what a piece that thing was. but ive been infatuated with the sport ever since.
and thats my story
fin.
Thanks ObieOne. I’ve been a non-smoker for 105 days now and been learning unicycling for 100 of them. No regrets on either decision.
FD