Hi YooNeeNoob
I’ve been following your posts. I’m glad you got it sorted. 
can’t jump
I’ve been riding for months and I still can’t hop. Maybe I just never tried?:o
BRAT UPDATE: He’s doing 180 hop-turns now…I could just kill him.
ME UPDATE:
So happy that I found out how to take care of my shiny new KH 29! I’ve been riding all week with no problems whatever…YAY! In fact, I just got back from a 16.7-mile ride along one of our local bike paths (Marymoor Climbing Rock to Woodinville park and back). It was VERY fun and it taught me alot about path quality vs. road quality, road angle and its impact on riding comfort, etc. I UPDd prolly half a dozen times, but had no trouble freemouting back on in one or two tries. Actually, they weren’t really unplanned (except for two), since I was just getting off for water.
Anyone have a sec to answer couple of questions?
When I bought the KH, I also got the little touring handle. It’s been siting in my closet waiting for me to get accustomed to the new wheel. How soon should I think about mounting it on my KH? What do you gain by having it?
Thanks UNI-sters! 
BTW: Other peoples’ comments are one of the best parts of riding. here’s a sampling:
- “It’s easier with two wheels, ya know…”
- “That’s takes LOTS of skill!”
- “That’s REALLY impressive!”
…while getting water at the park:
- “That’s a HUGE wheel! Can you ride that thing?”
hahahahahha…fun.
You gain
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extra controlability and, in some strange way, a ‘feel’ of the road: when I used my 29-er handle i found it much easier and secure to ride over rough stuff on the road that, minus the handle, I’d have had to slow down on.
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a learning curve- it will take some weeks before you can keep your hand on the handle (which is necessary for the above ‘feeling the road’)
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when you can keep a grip on the handle, you’ll be able to go faster
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extra torque for uphills and control on the downhills
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a place to stick your speedometer/music machine etc
You lose
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the beautiful simplicity of the pure, unadorned, unicycle- and it’ll be a bit more hassle to carry
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a bit of freedom- once you get accustomed to the handle, you could well end up feeling the need for it: going back to handle-less will leave you, at least for a time, feeling a bit vulnerable and less in control of the unicycle
I used a handle for quite a while, and it’s very useful. I found it nice especially on the roads if a car passes a bit close- grabbing the handle gave me that bit more security and control, especially if the road was less than smooth- no-one wants to UPD when a car is passing.
Now I ride handle free- it’s a different riding experience for sure, and, you can’t go as fast, but I prefer it 
Thanks OWD, for the great information! You’ve given me a lot of new stuff to think about. Much appreciated. 
I run custom “one handed” handles on my most of my unis in place of the grab handle, you can find pics on the forum in the review section. I prefer a single handed grip, but grab handles are not ergonomically correct, so my single bar end allows a “natural” grip like you’d have on the KH touring bar, but the placement is centered in the seat. You could set one up using the KH Tbar, I posted pics of mine in a thread somewhere… Custom Grab Handles, post what you got!
I now have a KH Tbar with two handles and I’m “getting used to it”, though I can use it two handed, often I ride one handed, switching hands ever so often, on occassion I use two hands as practice or for taking some pressure off my bum.
I’d go ahead and mount it, then try getting used to it over time. Some folks have found that setting up the bar with it extended ~ 5" and installing a mtb grip is useful for one handing, then you still have the two handed position extended further out. See Turtle’s pictures under the KH T Bar thread: T-bar discussion thread
Wow. Very cool. More stuff to ponder. This handle thing is more complicated than I thought. I think I’ll go ahead, though, since the benefits seem to be related to my goal of using the uni as transportation.
Thanks VERY much, NB!
I have had this problem with new KH unicycles. I find that I need to over tighten the bearing holders ( a lot!) to get them to seat properly. Before riding it, I will loosen them and more deliberately tighten them to get a reasonable pressure.
It seems like the machined bearing caps on a KH have very little clearance and it takes some work to get them to seat well.
Scott
Had we started out at the same time I’d be giving brat updates on YOU.
Seriously though, you haven’t been riding all that long and you’re already up to almost 17 miles. That is quick progress indeed. After some excessive time away from the uni it took me several months to condition myself for distances like that… and I already knew how to ride!
I sometimes miss the old days, when the bearing nuts were just plain nuts, without the plastic ‘locking’ bit inside.
Of course there’s a reason for the locking nuts, they don’t come loose like the old nuts frequently did
However, when tightening the old nuts it was much easier to feel how tight they actually were, in fact the old mantra to get them right was ‘finger tight, then half an turn extra with the spanner’.
And that’s how it worked, you could actually get them almost to where they needed to go, using just the fingers.
To take them off, just a quick twist with the spanner, then you literally just span them off with the fingers- a far cry from the ordeal of removing the current variety, half turn by tedious half turn with a spanner 
Last time I had a puncture I just couldn’t face tackling the bearing holders to get the inner tube out, and took the chance I could locate the puncture without taking the wheel out.
In fact i think I’m going to source the size of standard non-locking nut and swap them in, see if the negatives of bolts that come loose sometimes, really are worse than the pain of messing with the locking ones.
Anyone else prefer the old non-locking ones?
Thx…fortunately, the aerobics aren’t my problem, since I’ve sort of kept up my regular biking since my early racing days, and at the speed I currently ride my uni, I’m not really working much. My lack of skill seems to limit me to sub-aerobic speeds. I’m pretty sure that if I had the time and inclination, I would be able to crank out 50 slow miles in relative comfort. Actually, there were a couple of mile-long stretches on yesterday’s ride when I made an effort to “sprint,” and those intervals felt pretty aerobic. Also, when I finished the ride, I did feel like I’d just completed a decent regular bike workout, which made me very happy since my original uni goal was to see if I can make this into an alternate form of aerobic exercise. Seems like you can!
I look forward to getting faster and more comfortable on the one-wheel. I’ve seen some VERY scary videos of guys doing fast street runs on geared unis, and it seems like a LOT of fun. 
…like these guys. Sheesh!
For me the initial limiting factor was quad endurance owed to 10 years of complete physical inactivity. Nowadays it’s saddle endurance. 17 miles can easily translate to a little over 2 hours in the saddle. Currently 2.5 - 3 hours is all I want to spend in the saddle. I’m guessing that it took you… 2.25 - 2.5 hours to do the 17 miles on a 29er? Leg endurance aside, that’s quite a feat of saddle endurance for a n00b. I guess you had some of that from your biking days as well.
I’ve got a goal to someday do 50 miles, but a 27.5 miler I did some time ago (my current max) showed me that the limiting factor will definitely be saddle comfort. Of course a larger wheel will help increase the speed which will reduce the overall time it takes. Hopefully that will help when I finally get a 36er.
If you’re looking for an aerobic workout you may want to start thinking about muni. I find that road riding doesn’t really get my heart rate up; and again I’ll usually only dismount to deal with saddle discomfort. Muni on the other hand… I stop to let my heart rate come back down from the stratosphere all the time, though admittedly I’m still in relatively poor shape.
Don’t discount muni and don’t let it intimidate you like it did me. I find the muni rides help with the distance rides and vice versa. Never a wasted moment when unicycling.
Your time estimate sounds about right. I’ll have to watch the clock more closely next in the future to get an accurate speed reading.
As far as the seat thing goes, I took my first break after three miles. After that, I felt fine “down there” and only needed to stop for water. Yes, I think my regular biking (200 miles or so per week) definitely helps in the maintenance of what I sometimes refer to as “bike legs”–stregthening and conditioning the lower body and getting it used to long saddle intervals. And I’m sure this helps with the transition to the uni seat. Of course, the two are still very different: A good, fast cyclist is almost never really “sitting” on the seat, since his/her weight is distributed over the handlebars / pedals / seat and, depending on riding position and speed (sprinting with hands on drops, climbing, etc.), the weight is frequently shifted completely away from the seat. All of which brings up a question I’ve had for awhile:
Ok, obviously a regular cyclist can get out of the saddle when riding, and this helps restore circulation to the saddle area and give you a nice rest, but do good uni riders do something similar, like when hopping? I’m getting pretty good at shifting my foot position on the pedals after a free mount, so I’m pretty sure I’m holding to the “bum on seat” rule of weight distribution, but what do good uni riders do when they feel a need to get “bum off seat?”
–Thanks for the great info about muni. I tried racing cyclocross a few years back, but off-road riding never appealed to me–too jarring. I have to say, though, that riding over gravel on my uni is very fun, so maybe logging roads and similar, unimproved paths are in my future.
Thanks again for the help! 
BTW: another thing I’ve noticed is that after I free mount the 29er, I seem to be sitting further back on the KH Freeride seat than on the stock Nimbus II which adds to the general comfort level. This could just be my imagination, but that’s how it feels…
+1
Cyclocross is much more jarring than muni with a decent tire, and muni is really a totally different experience. Just work your way from gravel to 2-track to xc single track, and I bet you’ll love it.
I just stand on the pedals with 100% of my weight on my legs, bum is an inch or so above the seat. Just make decent circles, pressing down on the seat handle can add to stability and take some pressure off your legs. That’s usually good if I need a quick rest. Anything longer and I don’t punish myself (as riding completely out of the seat for extended periods will wear my legs down prematurely), I just dismount and take the opportunity to stretch a bit.
Sounds like a promising progression, UniShark…still trying to get my head around the kind of off-road stuff I see guys doing on YouTube. Must feel amazng, tho.
JBT: THANK YOU! I am definitely going to start working this into my practice sessions, and not just because it seems like a good way to take a break–it looks like exactly the sort of thing I’ve seen good riders do on steep climbs–the uni equivalent of the out-of-the-saddle climbing technique every regular cyclist does on steep hills! Sweet. 
FYI: On those real steep climbs I stand on the pedals and pull UP on the saddle handle. Pulling up helps to give me that extra pressure against the pedals.
For climbs that aren’t as steep but seem to go on forever I’ll sometimes lock an elbow and press down on the saddle handle to help take weight off the seat and to make it easier to lean forward… though now that I think about it I’m not doing that as much these days.
In the beginning when trying to do steep climbs I often found it useful to get in a rhythm where I was blasting 1/2 a crank at a time (from pedals horizontal to pedals horizontal) and “picking” my way up the hill. I still do that, but I try to smooth out the mini-halts with each 1/2 crank so I don’t really “stop” at all. I’ve got quite a ways to go on that front to where I just seamlessly pedal up steeps, still it’s something that helped me to get started.
I hope I don’t steer you wrong with that one. I’m no expert climber or anything. Hopefully others will chime in on climbing technique and we can both learn something.
Even learning tricks helps a lot with muni - though I’m happy to see them as an end in themselves (aren’t we all aiming to show off just a bit?) so tend to split my time fairly evenly between my trials uni and my muni. I’m afraid my road 29er spends most of its time gathering dust, hence why I find freemounting that tricky for the first few times every time I ride it - though I do find I get better at riding that every time I do just due to the amount of muni riding I’m doing making my general riding and balance better.
As mentioned above, when climbing steep hills the standard technique is to pull up on the handle (as you stand on the pedals) which is in contrast to taking a bum break on the flat, where personally I’ll push down on the handle which takes the load off the saddle without putting it all on my legs and fatiguing them. Personally I’m still working towards the balance and confidence to be able to do 1/2 a rev and rest - as it would make it easier to do long steep climbs without blowing out my legs - though I do find my climbing is improving all the time, and climbs I used to be unable to get up at all I can now cruise with little effort.
Excellent info regarding hill climbing, guys. Thanks very much for taking time to reply. I’m making mental notes for tonight’s garage practice…heh. Hope other N00b’s check this thread, 'cause it’s VERY helpful so far.