I think I agree with Large Eddie, that those are some pretty hefty-looking bars on a comparitavely light unicycle. It will feel like you’re swinging a pretty big weight around when you turn corners. This feeling is noticeable on a 36’r, and it will be more so on a lighter, and usually nimbler, 29’r. The closer the bar are to the saddle/centerline, the better the handling will be.
Interesting design, I’ll say that. Is the loop at the bottom for running a cable lock through? That’s a plus. I also like the seatpost mount.
These handle bars were made by a unite-1 member who was so kind to send them to me when I commented after a long ride that I should try handle bars.
I think it’s for a light.
I weighed the bars. Without the seat post they’re 2.14 pounds. Shadow handle set is 2.85 lbs, KH T-bar is 1.37l bs and Qu-ax is 1.3 lbs.
I noticed that Unigeezer modified his T-bar so that it connects to his seat post to make it more stable.
Thanks LE for the thread, I’ll read through it.
Today I rode without the bars but tried to keep my hands on the seat handle as much as possible. I’ll do that for a while before putting them back on.
I’ve been taking it easy the past few days. Riding my bike to work everyday is catching up with me. I rode 65 miles last week. Only four more days of Bike month left! Wish I could ride my unicycle instead but I’m not quite that good yet. I tried it last weekend and it was quite an adventure. Riding downtown wasn’t fun.
mUni and retrospection
In the hopes that mental reflection will improve my riding, I have adopted the practice of reflecting on my entire mUni rides, after the rides are finished. I have determined that thinking backwards, chronologically, through a ride is far superior, in terms of remembering detail, to thinking forward. Running the “playback” in my mind in a forward direction–caused me to miss a lot of details–which I was only able to access by thinking backwards. This form of retrospection makes sense to me, because it starts with events which happened most recently.
This retrospection is more easily done after a mUni ride–than it is after a session practicing freestyle on the street in front of my house. This is because, in mUni, the landscape kept changing, providing convenient absolute and relative points of association for memories. In contrast, during the freestyle practice, the landscape did not change much. Maybe this is just the way ‘my’ mind works; I can remember where I was in the car when I particular song played on the radio.
To the extent that other people’s brains work (or don’t work?) like mine, the above thought experiment suggests that, to remember details of a ride, it may be important to change the landscape, or to avoid riding in recursive routes. A few weeks ago, there was some activity on the forum related to learning in one’s sleep, then returning and improving the next day. I think that, for this type of learning to take place, there has to be some kind of memory “handle”. For me, that handle is my sense of relative location. To use a computer-science analogy, a particular riding-memory is like information stored in computer memory, and the physical location of the initial stimulus–is the “pointer” to that information.
I started this mental practice after my brother introduced me to it. He said to limit yourself to a certain number of minutes to mentally step backwards through a particular event, to take note of the places where the mind wants stop and obsess over particular details, with the goal of not actually obsessing at these points, but of moving on, while gaining some insight about what makes us obsess. Regarding unicycling, these stumbling points, for me, are mostly ego related.
A bit similar to this?:
“In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject ‘walks’ through these loci in their imagination and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by ‘walking’ through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items.”
LargeEddie,
Thank you! I read the article on “Method of Loci”. The article stated that this method employs parts of the brain associated with spatial learning. Just like unicycling!
Speaking of pulling information out of our brains (in contrast to much of the blog-o-sphere, where information is pulled out of another part of the anatomy): LargeEddie, you are the master!
Yes, it can be extremely beneficial to one’s hopping skills to ride around a bit and hop up steps of different widths, heights and angles! I used to just do all my step workouts on one or two staircases, thinking to track my progress more effectively, but after getting bored one day, going for a ride and just trying to climb every stairway I encountered, I noticed immediate improvement. My mind also opened up to stairways I had never thought of hopping on before, mostly because they had been there since long before I learned to hop.
I do think it’s good to return to your “home” stairway every so often, though, -one where you don’t have too many people videotaping you or yelling and pointing fingers- and try out the new tricks you have been forced to learn on that weird twisted staircase below the train tracks… Your “home” staircase is also a good place to learn new stuff that isn’t yet ready for public consumption, like hopping to your weak side, reversing your grip and/or stance, SIF, skipping steps, etc. Another good thing about having some stairs that are especially familiar is that you know exactly what you should be able to do on them, and that, for example, you can get up them with just one hop per step. Normally I have to know a staircase pretty well before I can do that.
Staircases
Funny you mentioned staircases, Song. While going on a mUni ride the other day, I decided to take a detour into a small municipal park. I ended up hopping up a nice staircase on my 26". I am not very good at hopping up stairs, but I felt better ‘after’ succeeding in this particular set (I think there were 15 stairs). I really suck at hopping SI, probably because I have the seat high, but I discovered I can jump pretty well SIF on the 26" with one hand on the back of the seat and the other on the front of the bar ends. Something about this more-widely-spaced dual-handhold helped me make it up the steps on my heavier mUni. I was breathing pretty heavily at the end of it, though.
Song, if you’re in NYC, I suppose there are a lot of staircases for practice. It is a little bit harder to find staircases in my neighborhood, particularly the institutional type with the smaller “rise over run”. Those are nice to ride down. I am still intimidated by “normal” steps, which are too steep for me, and I am careful about which type of stairs I’m willing to ride down.
It’s cool that you mention riding down the stairs! I’m still too cautious for that, even for the ones with a small rise-over-run, but I have been scoping out good spots around Alto Manhattan and will start doing it soon. College campuses tend to be great that way, if security isn’t too tight. I met a guy with a Nimbus Oregon once- it had a tire that must have been 4" thick, and he said riding down the stairs on it felt just like riding down a hill.
Anyway, it’s great that you managed to hop up 15 steps with a 26" mUni. That means you could do some really nice hopping on a 20." I’ve never tried to hop up anything higher than a curb on my 29," but have been thinking about it. Probably a good way to make the 20" feel lighter. Hopping up the stairs is always a hardcore workout, though if you manage to do just one hop per step, it goes a lot faster and you will hop many more steps before you collapse! I do keep my seat very low, and do my more ambitious hopping SI, but it’s good to do some SIF and other things to add variety.
Idling
Pedals can make a big difference when idling. I changed the stock pedals on my LX Torker to PC Twisted Odyssey Pedals and feel like I have much more control. I feet don’t slip off so easily. 
No, seriously I’ve only ridden down a few stairs at a time. I found a cool set of stairs in a local park made from railroad ties. I tried to imagine that I was riding down rough terrain. If I thought of them as “stairs”, that caused me to lose my cool. I am going to bring my hand pump and lower the tire pressure…next time I practice stairs.
More Idling
Wooo Hooo! 27 strokes in one go.
I am trying to speculate why different pedals improved your idling.
To succeed in idling as a beginner, I think, you have to let the unicycle twist uncontrollably, clockwise and counterclockwise. This twisting action can slide the feet off smooth pedals. If the unicycle is twisting side to side, a counter-force of twisting may need to be made by the feet. Pinned pedals would certainly give the feet more control when they were applying a twisting force.
Earlier this winter I tried diligently practicing idling for a couple of weeks and was only able do 4-5 strokes at a time. Then the weather got better so I stopped the idling practice and started riding longer distances and hills. Maybe that also helped.
Monday was the first time in a couple of months that I tried idling. During the first hour I was mounting and doing four strokes almost every time like before. It was starting to get boring so I pulled out my 24" uni with the Odyssey Twisted pedals and tried idling on it. The pedals felt great and I was immediately able to add a few strokes. That’s what gave me the idea to switch out the pedals on the 20" and keep practicing.
Perhaps the pedals give me more confidence and also help me make very subtle adjustments without my feet slipping off. It’s similar to what happens when you close your eyes and try to balance on one foot. The foot on the ground starts moving around as you try to keep your balance. I find I’m doing something similar with my feet on the pedals. I don’t lift my feet off but do shift my foot muscles as my weight shifts too much to one side or the other. This is when my idling is spot on. I’m rocking back and forth with very little twisting out of control.
Before changing my pedals I wasn’t twisting much. I’m sure that’s why I wasn’t making progress beyond a handful of strokes. What I was able to learn during winter was how to do a roll back mount into a few pedal strokes. That was the stage I started from on Monday.
Hi all
The never ending learning process! I take forever to get a new skill right (maybe is my age) so I try as many tricks as I can so I don’t get frustated with one particular skill. On the subject of iddling: I found best to try to iddle a bit everyday on my freestyle unicycle (few tries on both feet) and then later on get on with riding my other unicycles…Now I can iddle and juggle for a bit on the 20’, iddle on my 26 and even few goes on the 36’. I think it just takes a long time to develop that skill.
Also, obviously, learning one trick helps to achieve other ones. Right now still learning wheel walk after many months: can’t even remember when I first started trying. Now iddling sounds easy compare to this one! That is always the case :). Slowly improving but still a long way off untill I can do it properly!
I often think of the times when i saw a new trick, tried it and after a few minutes or a few hours or even a few days, i was able to do the trick. But now, all the tricks that can be learned fast are out. Only hard tricks left …
Sadly all the ‘tricks’ are hard for me. Took about 3 months of almost daily practise last winter to finally get idling under control. Funny thing is that years ago I seemed to be better with my left foot down, but now my right foot is much better.
Got out this morning for a two and a half hour ride down to Suncheon Bay and back with JongSeul, me on a 29" and JongSeul on his 36". My first long ride (over an hour) for quite a few months. Legs like rubber now… Certainly had control problems coming back and did upd, fortunately off the path into long grass, no damage. Riding along five minutes later and realise I’m chewing on something, what is it? grass seed…
Don’t think I mentioned it, but I broke the hub on my 29 a few weeks ago. Can’t have done more than 160 hours on it too. Got a new hub too late to get the wheel to a bike shop before a long weekend so all my basic training plans for the Incheon marathon were blown out window… Last week I ran a marathon in Ban KiMun’s (UN Sec.Gen.) hometown so no riding then. So yet again, it’s going to be another instant marathon for me. I think Hank in Daejeon is planning to do the same with the Half course. 
Had hopes of doing a sub 3,if I can’t do it on two feet I’ll do it on one wheel!
Uphill SIB
I remember how happy I was the first time I made it up a long, winding, paved path in a local park. The other day I was able to ride up that same path, without dismounting, with the seat in the back. I handed the seat from my right to left hand and back several times during the ~ 1/4 mile ride (I probably would have dropped it from the strain, otherwise). At the end of the ride I was able to, with great effort, pull the seat back under me and ride away SI. I was breathing pretty hard.
Several months ago I climbed that hill successfully SIF. That was another milestone. Then later, two-handed SIF without removing either hand for the duration of the ride.
One thing I like about unicycling: there are so many variations of riding. I never have to feel like I’m performing the “same old same old”.
One day I’d like to succeed in riding up the same hill backwards. My pedaling motion, however, is weaker while riding backwards, particularly at the 12:00 and 6:00 positions. But, with practice, I think it is possible.
This summer I will have a lot of free time to practice some difficult techniques I have not yet learned: one-footed riding (I want to puke when I read how quickly some people on the forum have learned it) and wheel walking. These techniques are going to take a lot of patience, and I’m most likely going to feel like I’m starting over.
Congrats on the progress, epU! Great stuff!
(For me any new technique is like starting over!)
+1
Conversely, if it doesn’t feel like starting over, it probably isn’t a new technique. For example, I was suddenly, one day, able to execute a static mount, without ever spending any real time practicing it. The static mount was not a new technique, but rather the product of some other techniques. In my case, practicing SIF mounts and the gradual raising of my seat-post meant that, during a static mount I could use both hands and my butt to create the right amount of counter-force to the weight of my mounting foot. So, one day, I decided to attempt a static mount, and found that it was easy. But learning the techniques that went into it…was not easy.
The lesson is, for me, that if I am failing at a particular technique, I may need to break it down into component techniques, which will then need to be practiced. In the case of the static mount, I did not understand the component techniques until after the fact. Moral: practice the basics.
One footed riding is going to be hard. Partly because my own riding style involves more SIF technique and weight on the handle-bars, techniques which diminish the weight in the saddle. For another rider, one who has taken more seriously the “weight in the saddle” principle, one-footed riding would probably come more easily. Also, I have to be willing to flail madly, throwing one arm around for balance, in order to learn one-footed riding. I remember, as a beginner, feeling like I was constantly pulling muscles in my rib-cage from this flailing. I have to be willing to re-live this twitchiness to learn one-footed riding.