No unicycles allowed!!

General
1

Greetings

Yesterday, I rode the local park (Sharon Woods) here in Columbus. The bike path
was a nice 3.8 miles through woods loaded with deer and nice scenery. Now, I
noticed the signs on the bike path which told bikes to travel counterclockwise
and pedestrians to go clockwise. It also said no skateboards or rolerbladers
allowed. Struck me as odd but having neither skateboard or rollerblades at the
time I started off on the ride.

Great ride, nice people on the path yet nearing the end I was stopped by one of
the park rangers who told me I was not supposed to ride on the bike path! I of
course was shocked and managed to stumble out “But I was riding in a
counterclockwise direction.” His reply “Sir I am not going to argue with you,
you cannot ride on the bike path”. Having gained some composer I said You mean
to tell me I cannot ride on the bike path? Again after brief moment he once
again repeated his “Sir I am not going to argue with you, you cannot ride on the
bike path”

Ahemm, now having recovered all of my wits and starting to get a little annoyed,
I said, Sir, you said I cannot pedal on the bike path is this correct?

For some reason this, made him think, I regret that I was getting sarcastic and
frustrated. In my defense, I had just pedaled nearly 4 miles over hills and down
hills. I was tired!

He softened up and asked how long I have been riding and said I was okay, to go
ahead and keep riding! He further stated that he had never seen any of “those”
on the trail and asked me how long it took to learn. After a brief conversation
on unicycles I was on my way.

Now the meat of the matter, why no skateboards or rollerblades? Yet joggers and
bikes are allowed (and unis for now). Are skateboards and rollerbladers unsafe
for pedestrians? I know when I was learning to uni the last place you would want
to walk was behind me or in front of me. Heck pick an axis, any axis was not a
safe place to be. That is why I practiced in an enclosed tennis court. I did not
let myself out of the “cage” until I was safe. As we grow in numbers could we be
in danger of getting ourselves banned from places? Even now after a year worth
of riding, I sometimes drop the uni. Miss the saddle on a hasty dismount and
shazamm unicycles are banned.

Joe

2

RE: No unicycles allowed!!

> Now the meat of the matter, why no skateboards or rollerblades? Yet joggers
> and bikes are allowed (and unis for now). Are skateboards and rollerbladers
> unsafe for pedestrians?

The drawback of inline skates on a bike path is that even a single skater takes
up a fairly wide amount of space, due to the side to side foot motion. And when
you put recreational skaters together, they seldom want to go single file. Of
course the same is true with bicyclists, who often have a problem with the
concept of traffic going in both directions on the average bike path…

Another danger with skates is hills. I remember going on a group ride once on a
Long Island bike path. We had one bicyclist, three unicyclists, and someone with
a brand new pair of inline skates. We all rode from the parking lot to the first
major street crossing. What happened to Denise? Uh oh, she crashed on the first
big downhill (“big” meaning descending about 20’). As a beginner, she didn’t
know how to control her speed on the narrow bike path, went off the side, and
rolled and ground to a stop. Fortunately she was wearing hard kneepads, as there
were scratches on the metal rivets on them. But she also had a bunch of scrapes,
and an unwanted inspection door in her lycra shorts. So we always remembered the
ride where the person with the most wheels got hurt…

Inexperienced skaters are a danger to the general populace. This is also true
for every other mode of transport, but I think the skates are a much bigger
problem with hills. The parks choose not to open themselves to the liability of
letting people get hurt on their trails.

As for skateboards, I don’t see them being used as modes of transportation much.
Unfortunately, boarders have a reputation for chewing up local landmarks, curbs,
benches, etc. As one stand-up comedian remarked, “Don’t those guys ever land
any of their tricks?” Most of what I see on the streets is kids trying moves
they can’t do. Obviously this leaves them open to injury, especially since these
same kids are seldom wearing any safety equipment.

So instead of trying to enforce a long string of safety rules and user
guidelines, they choose to keep it simple and not allow those modes of
transport. I’m not saying it’s right, but that may be the reasoning.

> safe. As we grow in numbers could we be in danger of getting ourselves banned
> from places? Even now after a year worth of riding, I sometimes drop the uni.
> Miss the saddle on a hasty dismount and shazamm unicycles are banned.

If you’ve seen the new video Universe, the thought of unicycles being banned
from public places has probably already occurred to you (especially if you were
in the video, in which some mild banning actually takes place).

It’s up to us to be responsible. That’s why groups like IMBA (mountain biking)
are always posting their “rules of the trail”. These are simple guidelines for
safe sharing of trails, one of which is simply “plan ahead”. But there will
always be irresponsible people out there who don’t think about others when they
do what they do.

I’m sure unicycling will mostly continue to legally “fall in the cracks” for
many more years to come. In other words, it will be very unlikely to be
included in lists of banned vehicles, leaving it floating somewhere outside the
definition of what a bicycle is. Security guards, rangers, police, and others
will have to interpret on their own, and they will usually have the safety of
the public in mind. Ride intelligently, and they will probably let you
continue. Practice hard tricks on a crowded marble patio, and they should
probably kick you off.

Stay on top, John Foss President, International Unicycling Federation President,
Unicycling Society of America (reply to jfoss@unicycling.com)
http://www.unicycling.com

3

RE: No unicycles allowed!!

> In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if MUni winds up getting into conflict with
> traditional mountain biking organizations; the victims of discrimination often
> practice it themselves.

Oh no, not the mountain bikers! If they do, we’ll have to accuse them of being
wussies for coasting down all those hills and over all those bumps.
:slight_smile:

John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone http://www.unicycling.com

> Uni progress:

Useful skills (*) Hand wheel walk ( )

4

Re: No unicycles allowed!!

In article <39c783cf$1@rclnews.eng.ohio-state.edu>, Joe West <west.12@osu.edu>
wrote: ) )Now the meat of the matter, why no skateboards or )rollerblades? Yet
joggers and bikes are allowed (and )unis for now). Are skateboards and
rollerbladers unsafe )for pedestrians? I know when I was learning to uni )the
last place you would want to walk was behind me or )in front of me. Heck pick an
axis, any axis was not a safe )place to be. That is why I practiced in an
enclosed tennis )court. I did not let myself out of the “cage” until I was
)safe. As we grow in numbers could we be in danger of )getting ourselves banned
from places?

As a long-time bicyclist and new unicyclist, I think it’s a real concern, but
for depressing reasons. People insist on ownership of their mode of
transportation; most people want the roads/paths they use to be exclusively for
the mode of transportation they personally prefer. Bikes get squeezed off roads
by cars (“BIKES MUST USE SIDEWALK”) and off trails by the Sierra Club and other
hiking/equestrian organizations. The sad truth is that politics, rather than
sense, is what determines trail regulations, and it is not unlikely that if
uni’s get a high enough profile to irk the Sierra Club and other lobbying
organizations that we could see bans in place. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised
if MUni winds up getting into conflict with traditional mountain biking
organizations; the victims of discrimination often practice it themselves.

The latter case, at least, can probably be dealt with; one of the top mountain
biking advocacy organizations is “Responsible Organized Mountain Pedalers
(ROMP)”, which could easily describe MUni. -Tom

Uni progress:

Straight () Uphill () Downhill ( ) Left turn (*) Right turn ( ) Freemount (
) Idle ( )