About 6 weeks ago, I bought a unicycle from a garage sale for my two older sons to share, one is 8 and the other is 10. They didn’t show much interest in it initially, but a few weeks after that I bought my own. It’s an older 24" Schwinn, And I’ve been working on it when I get a chance, in the morning and afternoons. I have a gravel driveway that I was trying on and wasn’t making a whole lot of progress, but have been getting a nice collection of scrapes and bruises. :o I’ve since moved to my neighbors paved driveway, which the kids have permission to ride on. I’m still mostly hit and miss for whether I get anywhere or not, but yesterday I rode about 120 feet, which was pretty awesome.
My two boys have shown much more interest in the unicycle since I bought my own, so I found another one on offer up for $10 that I’ll probably pick up. That way they don’t have to keep adjusting the seat height. Trying to keep costs down, but I’m thinking I’ll have to get them some wrist guards, knee pads, etc as well.
Anyway, I’ve been lurking for a little while, and though I’d introduce myself. Nice to meet you all.
I started out with a $10 uni from a garage sale in December 2013 and learnt to ride it in the following January. My uni collection has now cost a few thousand dollars.
Learning on gravel sounds like a serious challenge.
It was challenging enough that I got over my fear of being seen on a unicycle in public.
I’ve made it a couple hundred feet a few times each day now for a few days, and have had one or two successful free mounts. For my boys, learning to ride has been slower. At least at first. I took them down to the lake today, which has a nice, large and empty parking lot. Out of nowhere they went from going a couple feet, to going 30-50 yards. I was very impressed.
Good idea on the safety gear. On my first day learning, I had the uni falling under me mostly and I landed on my feet. Somehow several days later, I had a bad fall. It was so sudden. Perhaps to the left slightly backwards. My t-shirt has dirt on the left back side. Luckily I had wrist protectors on. Even with wrist protectors, my left hand was swollen for two days (soft tissue injury) and till today my fingers are stiff. Without the wrist protectors, I probably would have broken my wrist.
So far, my max is about 5-6 ft :D. So you are way ahead of me in terms of progress. Total hours put in about 6 hours. :o Oh yeah I procrastinate.