Young girl “you must be well trained” made my day
After parking up the other day and walking briefly along the road with my unicycle to get to my riding spot an elderly man asked me if I was measuring!
guess he must of thought I was a road worker with a measuring wheel, il let him off as it was a black frame with a yellow rim!
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You still have to write numbers on it, then it’s true. 4 years ago I was at a hotel in the evening with my unicycle, left it outside. The nice gentleman at the counter said: “You are welcome to take your musical instrument to your room”. I then said that it was a unicycle and it was allowed in the luggage storage. Which was good, because I picked it up 4 hours later and went to the train at 04:22 a.m. that drove me home.
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Not exactly a verbal quote but…
I recently got my hands on a Nimbus Hatchet and I decided to go for a ride out in the snow around our neighborhood. Almost as soon as I got on the road, a car that was passing by on the other side gave a series of light honks. I saw the driver’s face and it was priceless! 
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Had my first „lost a wheel“, though not directed towards me, but towards the guy‘s wife. I‘m now officially a member of the club 
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“Now, juggle!”
“I can, but not when riding on snow”
“Look, a guy who lost half of his bike”
“Or found half a bike.”
“… yeah … you could see it that way.”
Despite that not particularly smooth start we had a quite pleasant chat and the guy’s son was obviously keen on the mud guard that I made out of old PET bottles.
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“Today, I saw your killer machine”, referring to the Oregon with 26x4.6" studded Dillinger 5 tire.
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No joke. 95% of the time, I get "IS THAT A F**KING UNICYCLE!? " But if I get lucky, I’ll get “Is that a unicycle?” or “How do you ride that?!”
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Yesterday I got “You’re rather unlike to have that b!ke stolen!” as a customer entered the shop.
“The chance of it being stolen for personal use is pretty low, but they still might steal it just to dump it into the next river; so I’m still a bit anxious sometimes.” was my reply.
The customer then explained to the cashier that I had a unicycle parked in front of the shop, which the cashier replied to with a “but isn’t this dangerous, today?” (The streets were icy, and the sidewalks even moreso).
“Nope, I got a studded tire!” 
“Aaaah, he’s got a studded tire…” 
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I think the kid was seeing the “i” as a “1” 
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Really, as someone who’s been doing this for a very long time, we can’t know if the quoters are non-riders. We know 99+ percent of them are, and the actual unicyclists usually let us know, often intrinsically.
All of this was cemented into my brain in my early days of riding. Attending my first USA National Unicycle Meet in Kokomo, Indiana (1980) I was practicing my routine for the “Chain Drive” trick riding competition in the motel parking lot. One of the other unicyclists came walking by and rattled off a list of “the classics”, something like:
“Is that hard to ride? Where’s your other wheel? What happens when you fall? How’s the weather up there? How do you get down?” It was a 6’ Schwinn Giraffe. That was Ted Wade, of the Kokomo Roadrunners Unicycle Club. He was a great rider and a funny guy, who passed away only a couple of years later from cancer. His listing off of common comments made it clear that this phenomenon happens to all/most unicyclists, and later lead to us making lists of such comments/questions, with suggested responses. Such as “On my other unicycle”. 
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“Shift gear”, with a big grin on his face, as I was climbing an ascent on my 36er.
Prior to that a cat saw me approaching and looked at me like only cats can. It shifted more and more to the side with that WTF-expression on its face. Didn’t even notice a dog that was approaching from the other side and was already pulling hard on its leash (but not barking).
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Today on a muni ride:
Mtb rider: “that wasn’t on my bingo list”
Another mtb rider: “I haven’t seen one of those out here yet. My son does that in Montana”
I asked a someone finishing his hike if “this trail would be good for biking… or rather unicycling” he looked bewildered and laughed a bit. He said “if you can ride one I guess. I could hike another five years and probably never hear that question”.
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It was also not just a quote, but rather a funny situation.
I first in my life met a random unicyclist in Istanbul on the bridge over the Golden Horn Bay. We were riding towards each other, I was riding on a 20" unicycle on the sidewalk, and he was riding on a 29" unicycle on the roadway. We waved our hands to each other and rode each in his own direction. He shouted: “Did everyone see this? It’s my old age that has gone!” (I was 70 that moment).
I was in Istanbul for a tour and have never been there neither before nor after. And never again did I meet a random unicyclist, when riding on a unicycle. Neither before nor after.
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I don’t know if he’s here on this forum but there is one guy from Istanbul who posts his rides on Strava. There are probably not many others out there!
I think he’s not from Istanbul, at least originally, because his shouting was in Russian.
I conclude from this situation that probably there are more both Russian-speaking and other-language-speaking unicyclists in Istanbul than in the city I live in.
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That’s a bummer. In my many years of unicycling this has happened many times, but is still a very rare occurrence. The most recent one was in Paris, of all places, during the Olympics. A guy with a 32" unicycle with short cranks happened to be there, on holiday with his parents. And he knew who I was! Freaky.
Latest good quote: “I guess he’s attracted to unicyclists?” Hiker and family; the dad was referring to their dog, who rushed up the singletrack and stopped in front of me, probably trying to figure out what I was. Dogs are common on that trail (with people) and they generally tend to block the trail while trying to figure out “what that is”.
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And I know who he is!
I don’t know if it was on the same day, but I remember seeing a story from @toutestbon during the olympics, when he met Gert-Jan in Paris. So he might have randomly met two unicyclists during the same day.
And yes, he uses really short cranks, and goes really fast. On a 29er, he uses 75 mm cranks and took only 1h32min on the marathon at the last french championship (beating his own WR by 2 minutes). I believe he was using 100 mm cranks on his 32 (it is what he used for the cross during the french championship.
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It must have been the same day, he had the same outfit!
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If I meet someone hiking in the wild in flip flops I tend to think ‘that’s clearly inadequate footwear for this environment’. If in future I meet someone unicycling in flip flops I’d better reserve judgement - clearly they may be the marathon world record holder!
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