Hi folks.
Just a quick hello from a newbie.
My girlfriend bought me a unicycle for my birthday last week (I was dropping hints for tickets to go and see the Mighty Boosh at Cardiff but noooo), and to say I was surprised was an understatement!
She had a 20" Nimbus for Christmas, and we’ve spent the last few months practicing in the tennis courts of the local park.
I say we, I mean her riding, and me being the mobile crutch thing.
So on the morning of my birthday, she whips out 24" uni and says “Surprise!”
Riiiight.
Well, I’m determined to learn, just out of sheer bloody-mindedness and a determination to be better than her (she’s good enough to go hundreds of yards on her own now. Cow.).
I’ve just come in from the tennis courts myself. I’m still at the clinging-onto the-fence stage, but occasionally I find myself wobbling out into open space, which quite frankly is both terrifying and exciting in a giggly kind of way.
Anyway, the girlfriend won’t let me use her Nimbus. She’s afraid I’ll break it or something. So I was wondering if it’s easier to learn on a smaller wheel?
Looking forward to learning.
Into the blue
Welcome to the forums. We are getting soooo many new riders. Most people learn on either 20" or 24" unicycles. Any thing smaller or bigger than that would be hard but possible. Uh, can’t help much haha. Keep up the work, because it will pay off in the end. Kelly.
I think a smaller wheel is easier to learn to freemount on, but since you’re learning to ride before mounting (using the tennis court method - which a lot of people have used successfully), I don’t think there’ll be a big difference as long as you’re not swapping unis every time you ride.
Once you get decent at riding, mounting won’t be as difficult to pick up since you already know what to do once you’re on the uni. I learned the other way - learned to mount before focussing on riding. It offers different challenges and a lot of people will say one method is better than the other - but I say stay on course and keep at it!
err ello all.
Im new to this an fairly new to ridin too. Just thought i’d say hi, i can ride a bit, my legs normally hurt before a fall off now so im gettin better. I first learnt on 20" an thought it was all cool, then me mate took me out an introduced me to riding off or down stuff on a 24" an im hooked now. just ordered me own beast you gotta love student loans!
Right sorry lots of rubbish there that no one needed buts it gonna take less effort to explain than delete, but all i wanted to say is even if she can go further now stick on it an yr be able to just a far an faster.
i learned on a 24" and i didnt start holding on to any thing, i just learned to free mount and ride (i think it is better to learn this way). then after i was a good a riding i started to ride a 20"er so i could to trials. now i am thinking of getting a 24" for Muni.
I started on a 20" After I started going outdoors, getting help from my mum, it just took me about 2 hours to learn… not bad
I had the unicycle for about 2 weeks prior to that though :o
Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone.
Major breakthough today when I left the fence and went off on a strange wobbly curve. Before I knew it I had travelled the width of two tennis courts and almost made it to the fence on the other side.
And do you think there was anyone there to see this monumental achievement?
Was there, my *rse.
The funny thing was, I could not for the life of me do another run anywhere near this length for ages!
I think I was trying to hard.
Must relax.
Clear mind.
Focus.
Ohm…
Rainy (but sometimes sunny) Swansea.
I’m really looking forward to the time where I’m good enough to cycle the beach front unaided. At the moment I take the bike in to work, and on my lunch hour, pop round to the local skate park. I don’t actually go IN the skate park, but there is a great hand rail that runs around it which is the perfect height for me to run my hand on top of as I’m learning.
I find this much better than the tennis court chain link fence or a wall, as I can merrily go along with my hand out, making slight adjustments to my balance whilst ‘hovering’ my hand over this rail.
And the skaters think the uni is cool too.
Welcome “Into the blue”. Keep working at it and you will be riding soon. The older we are, the more training our brains need in order to learn what NOT to do. Just remember, once you learn on your 24" you will be faster than your girlfriend on her 20".
UDC (Unicycle Dot Com) has a variety of sadles you can compare to the one on ebay. I’m not trying to push UDC, but if you get one from them, enter the web site via the link under “donate” on this web page and it will help Gilby pay for hosting unicyclist.com.
On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 10:04:51 -0500, Into the blue wrote:
>So I was wondering if it’s easier to learn on a
>smaller wheel?
It is indeed, on average, easier to learn riding on a 20" than on a
24". See http://www.xs4all.nl/~klaasbil/agelearn_short.htm . However,
usually my recommendation is to base the choice on what you want to do
with the unicycle once you can basically ride. But in this case, yeah
work on your gf to borrow her 20". Mixing 20" and 24" for learning
would also be OK, I think. (I did it myself.)
There’s also tips for beginners on that same site:
Getting the hang of things now.
Managed a few time to launch myself from a standing start (albeit holding onto a lamp post - but better than the ‘take a run up alongside the railing’ technique).
One new problem which has cropped up is the dismount.
I actually made it the full length of the tennis court the other day and had a mild panic attack when I realised that I had to stop without falling off!
I was so surprised that i actually did fall off.
Phooey.
One thing that’s struck me is the importance of placement of feet on the pedals. As I’ve been practicing I’ve noticed that I have to point my toes inwards quite a bit to stop my heels clipping the cranks.
I’ve never had to do this whilst on my mountain bike (sorry, bke) and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why this adjustment was necessary.
T’was then I looked down and noticed for the first time that my uni cranks are straight, whereas the mountain bke ones are bent to allow for big-footed gallumphs like myself to pedal easier!
I’m finding the toes-pointed-inwards method a bit awkard, as I feel as if my feet are only just on the pedals.
Are there bendy cranks on the market, or should I just knuckle down and learn with the straight ones?
(getting there slowly)
Blue.
Now then, I’m going to try to show off some of the knowledge that I have gained on this forum. Please (anyone) correct me if I’m wrong but I think there is a thing called a Q factor which is related to the distance of your foot (?) from the wheel (?) and some cranks are further away than others. Because the bit of the cranks that go on to the crank shaft is longer on some cranks than others (?) or maybe some slope. Certainly some pedals seem to have longer bits between the pedals and the cranks than others.
