Hello everyone! It’s nice to see some old hands reintroducing themselves on the new forum, especially since quite a few people hung in there during the great outage and joined when the new forum was up and running.
I’m Richard Close, in a small village on the edge of Bredon Hill between Evesham and Cheltenham. I had a rush of blood to the head in Feb 2019 at the age of 58, and ordered an orange 20" Club from UDC. I’m fit but not very physically talented, so learning to ride and acquiring skills has been a slow process. (Learning to ride probably took me 4-6 weeks, but getting comfortable much longer). I’ve put a few unicycle rides on Strava, but I practise much more frequently than that. I do a lot of riding on 2 wheels, as I love exploring this part of the world and the distances (and the hills, at my skill level) are just too much for uni.
My current fleet consists of:
- 20" Nimbus II (trade up from the Club, as an excuse to donate the Club to my local gym). I’m pretty comfortable on this, but it’s also the only one I ever have painful falls from, usually when I’m trying to learn a new skill.
- 26" Nimbus Muni (Schwalbe Crazy Bob tire, 138 mm cranks). I’m quite comfortable on this, and do most of my riding on it now. It was very daunting when I first got it. I should really put 125 mm cranks on it, but I still find hills a bit hard even on the 138s.
- 36" Nimbus Oracle (150 mm cranks). I’m stilll getting used to this, and mounting is still very hit and miss. Some days I hit most attempts and some days hardly any. (I’ll be asking about this in riding advice shortly). Actually riding it is wonderful. I fitted the stock 150 mm cranks from the 26", and I’ll probably stick with them for a while.
If I was to get another uni? (I don’t have enough garage space or domestic political capital at the moment). It would be a 29" Nimbus road, though I can see that a 24" would be fun. Or maybe a trials.
I can: ride, hop, static mount, roll back mount, do a sharp “jerk turn”.
I can’t (but would like to): idle, ride backwards, hop up curbs, cope with sharp changes in gradient, do anything on the opposite foot.
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