But you do not really want to ride with 165 cranks, do you? Most people work to shorter cranks as they get more experience because it is much easier to spin. I started with 150s and have tried everything from 150 to 110 mm on my 36. These days I prefer 135 because it gives me reasonable leverage for hill climbing and still spins OK. I would not want to ride a 36 with 165 cranks on the road.
Scott
Cheers Lance B
Darth I’m back in Scotland again next week and I’m only going to take the 36” this time. I’m going to practice and practice on those freemounts. I know where there are some neat slopes
scott ttocs
I thought I might stand a better chance if I started practicing freemounts on 165’s instead of my 140’’. But my seat is as low as it will go. I don’t really want to chop the top of my frame :o 
I don’t think I’ll ever, ever get to be good enough to ride on the road. 
edit that bit… that was a bit pessimistic of me wasn’t it? Won’t get anywhere thinking like that 
Chins up and keep on trying
Cool! I’ll bet the scenery will be spectacular. Don’t be surprised if the freemounting clicks into place on the trip and you come back an expert.
Aw, cheers Darth
That would be ACE if it did click, just like I did with my 29” beginning of June.
Gee I hope it doesn’t rain
No doubt!
You’ll DO it ALUCARD!
Way to GO you!
A while back, I mentioned finding a used 24" Sun unicycle that needed a good home with some TLC. Earlier tonight I posted some pictures of that fixup project in the Post Your Current Projects Here topic. I’ll attach another view of it here.
After finishing it up and posting about it, I went to the park where I usually do my skating and brought along both my 20" and 24" unicycles. I rode for 45 minutes or so there, switching back and forth between them, and it felt like a world of difference to me. That was a little bit surprising since I’d seen suggestions for learners to start on either a 20 or a 24, maybe choosing the bigger wheel if you’re taller. I don’t know if one or the other would actually be harder to start on since I can’t go back and start over from scratch on the 24, but I didn’t expect them to be such different creatures to ride.
I noticed how much easier it was to pedal smoothly on the 24 right away, whereas my feet do more of a stop-and-go thing every half cycle on the 20. But where the 20 is responsive and I can easily maneuver it with small body movements, it takes much more physical commitment to affect the course of the 24. That will take some getting used to.
So it was a good education for me, but also a nice night just to do some riding at the park. And I was pleased to finally get to ride my happy little (or mid-sized maybe:)) retro uni.
Road riding and river running
Eddie that was a good write up you did. (see the link) And yes it does look nice too.
I did 2 hours 20mins yesterday morning riding around the river on my 29, a lot with a friend running alongside. I had to work hard a keeping the pace slow enough for her which was good practice as I’m not good at riding at anything other than ‘my’ pace. The interesting thing I noticed was that although the seat got a bit ‘hard’ on my way down to our meeting point (I was late…) after awhile riding slowly it wasn’t a problem.
So I remain of the opinion that it’s not a case of breaking in the seat, but breaking in the other side of the equation! which means I have to get out for a longish ride at least once a week…
Ran a 10K race in a river (Hwanggang river) today just for fun up at Hapcheon. I’ve done this race about 5 times now, just a fun weekend away in a country town. Running in water is hard work though…glad I was riding yesterday and not running like me friend. She came in 5th in the Women’s race though. A good weekend.
Cheers
Thanks, krjames! I’m a sucker for that last puppy in the shop or Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and I couldn’t bear to leave it there in the store.
When I had the hub turning in the lathe I could see how bent out of square every bit of it was, and the spoke holes in the rim have all been stretched out too. Whoever had it before me must have given it quite a thrashing. They got their money’s worth for sure. It’ll just be a boulevard cruiser for me, but that’s mostly what I do anyway.
That’s a good solid piece of riding there, and it does sound like good practice having to match someone else’s speed.
That’s definitely been my attitude in bicycling, that a hard butt does a whole lot more for you than a soft saddle. Some day I might be able to ride far enough on a unicycle that I need to worry about it.
??? 
Better you than me, my friend.
I might be old but I’m still 670 years younger than Switzerland, so there’s that.
Hoping to ride later on if the rain holds off.
Last night: Two 25 minute rides in the neighborhood on the 24" Sun, dodging the rain storms. It was my first time riding any real length of time on that one, so I was mainly just getting used to it. It still feels different in every way from the 20". Most of all I noticed the length of the crank arms and the weight of the tire.
It’s still early days but I gotta say that I’m not head over heels in love with the bigger wheel yet. It’s faster than the 20" for sure, but they’re both slow compared to a car or a bike so that doesn’t do a lot for me. I feel like I’m more engaged riding the smaller wheel because it needs more corrections, but they’re smaller corrections.
Tonight: About an hour, again in the neighborhood, not raining but warmer and with crazy 90%+ humidity. I switched back and forth between the two unis, which might not be the best idea. I’d probably do better sticking with one or the other per session since I’m not very good on either of them. Still, I rode the 20" better than ever and got to visit some streets that I hadn’t seen on a uni before, and that hadn’t seen me on a uni before either.
Before riding, I had played a hunch and adjusted the saddle on the 20" a little bit, sliding it backward to lower the nose. When I first put it together, I put the nose about as high as it would go, and that was probably as good a starting guess as any. But I kept thinking about it, the same train of thought from a week or so ago when I realized that having my weight on the seat didn’t mean sitting back like it does on a bicycle. I actually need to be on top of the axle, and I figured that having a level place to sit that was farther forward on the saddle might be what I needed.
Reducing the amount of nose-up seemed to help a lot there. Of course, some of it is just the result of hours and hours of practice, but tonight I found that I was finally able to relax while riding on level ground and let my quads recover a little from having climbed a hill. That hadn’t happened before.
Another thing that clicked for me was the result of finding and reading through this topic and that one about “flatland” unicycling. I didn’t know what that was before, but the 20" tire I swapped onto my Avenir a few weeks after I got it is called an “IRC Flatlander” and now I think I know what that’s supposed to be telling me. If I’ve got it right, flatland tires are made for lighter use than BMX or freestyle tires and therefore weigh a lot less. And that would explain what I’ve noticed, especially when riding up hills. Light weight ought to be a good thing, but when the wheel has so little rotating momentum that it literally stops dead every time the pedals get to 6 and 12, that might be near the lower limit.
Anyway, I’m another year older, but there were a few more good days of riding in there.
Awesome LargeEddie! I am waiting for that feeling of relaxing and giving my quads a slight break when I’m riding.
Keep up the food work! Every time I ride it is beginning to feel more comfortable 
I hit the freemounting groove again today on the 36. The last few days it seems like I fell back out of the groove and was down to one successful attempt in maybe 25 tries. Today, though, I was back in the zone with about a 40 percent success rate. I was having so much fun that after resting I went back out and tried again. The success rate in the second session was about 60 percent. Can’t wait to try it again tonight when it cools down again.
Friday: Just rode the 24" Sun around the neighborhood for a while. I improved quite a bit on that uni, hitting a few free mounts (although still mostly backing up to the curb to mount) and also climbing the hill from the bottom of the street up to home for the first time on that one. I still wasn’t feeling a lot of love for those 6" cranks on pavement though. That got me thinking about taking off the beach cruiser tire and putting on one with enough bite for some light trail riding.
Saturday: Didn’t ride, legs and back needed a day off.
Sunday: Drove out to The riding game! of my unicycle at a working waterwheel. That challenge had been unmet since Sanne.Kj posted it in April of 2012. That’s my first time in that game, which seems a little less exciting, or whatever you might call it, than it was for the motorcycle groups where it started, since I didn’t ride the unicycle to or at the place where I took the picture. It’s on a busy highway so I really couldn’t have. But whatever, it added its little share to the fun.
I also stopped by a couple of bike shops to see what kind of knobby 24" tires I could score locally. The reputation for poor tire choice in ISO507-land seems well earned, but I did come home with a couple of kid’s bike replacement tires, a Cheng Shin C-174 and a Kenda K831. Both are on the narrow side but they certainly weren’t pricey. I swapped the Kenda onto the Sun, the more aggressive of the two, and took it over to the Arboretum to ride the pine bark mulch walking paths for a while before it got dark. And considering it was the first time on that tire, the first time off-road on that uni, and the first time on a trail on a 24", it went OK. Not great but I had a few rides that might have been in the hundreds of feet. The paths aren’t especially wide and have sharp-cornered curbstones along either side, and that keeps me fairly cautious.
The new tire seemed to work well too, traction never a problem. I did sometimes start twisting from side to side with each pedal stroke, and I wondered if a wider tire might help to resist that. And I don’t know how that would play out, whether I’m learning more by having to resist that on my own, or if a more stable tire that let me ride a longer distance each time before I had to dismount would allow more experience and practice.
It’s all really just a premise for getting off the sofa and away from the computer anyway. I’m still getting better and my legs are getting fitter, that’s the main thing.
I rode almost a mile off road yesterday. I had such a great time that I returned today to do the same coarse in return. What I did not realize was that my legs where thrashed. I fell over and over and had a miserable time today. Then I got stung in the calf by a bee. I guess that’s nature’s way of keeping my ego in check. Lol.
On a positive note Mrs GlennG has been practicing uni. I think we will be a uni/Muni couple soon. I just hope she doesn’t get all bruised up like I am at the moment. She is smarter than I am so I’m sure she will go at smarter pace
Glenn
Sounds like a great ride Sunday, GlennG. But that’s pretty typical how we get brought back down to earth the next time out.
And being able to share the riding fun with the Missus would be excellent. Good luck to her in her learning adventure!
After having a good time riding Sunday too, I went back to the same place this evening and had a bit of a similar letdown. The worst part of it was that the path I had ridden got a fresh 2" thick layer of mulch in the meantime, and I was bogging right down in that.
See if this works: Google Street View of that woodland trail section. It looks a lot different with just the first hint of leaves on the trees.
I found my mojo eventually by practicing down the hill, other side of the trees, at a flatter spot with a firmer surface, and had some nice reasonably long rides after that. One lesson of the evening was that speeding up is usually a good idea. If things start feeling sketchy, getting my weight forward and cranking hard saved me more often than not.
Toward the end, I was riding from left to right in the picture and dismounted when I saw a young couple coming up the trail toward me. The girl said, “Awesome unicycle,” and the guy said, “Yeah, that’s cool.” This was my fixer-upper 24" Sun with the sex-change crankbolts, the spray-painted rim, and the kids mountain bike tire. I was proud.
It got me reflecting on the fact that I have yet to get a snide or sarcastic comment from a stranger about my unicycles or my riding, not even a joking, “Where’s your other wheel?” I guess I must live among polite people.
Just started
Hello!
I just got started unicycling on Wednesday (I’m an avid bicyclist as well ).
I’ve been practicing against a fence, I’m up to about to 6 -7 revs.
I actually find I’m better at riding when I’m not focusing in on riding the unicycle So far I’m having a blast learning!
I look forward to learning and eventually upgrading to a 29" (I’m current on a "24 Club)! See you guys around !!
Welcome, Batou. It’s fun to hear about someone just starting out on this wonderful one-wheeled journey.
We look forward to hearing your experiences and sharing in some of the highs and lows
What part of the world are you in?
UL
Welcome Batou. I just started earlier this Summer. It’s a lot of fun… It’s a lot of work too. Do not quit. Be persistent and enjoy. Read this thread from the beginning and success will come quickly. Welcome to the uni forum.
Glenn
Sounds like you’re already well on your way to a lot of fun! Good luck!
