… let’s resurrect this thread shall we? 
Ride/Practice #1
To give you a bit of background. I’ve been into unicycling since learning around 2011/12.
I got hooked then and ended up riding a range of sizes and types - but would only really call myself a confident rider on safe-ish paths or tracks (some woods etc - light MUni?!?).
My most favoured wheels, where I feel the most confident is my Nimbus Oregon with its 26” Larry tyre - and a KH36er. But I’d still not say I was advanced.
Then for the last 3 years I stopped riding and gained some weight, a bad 1.5 years with a frozen shoulder - and never thought I’d pick up my wheels again.
Happily I’ve quickly found the bug again… and been riding both the Oregon and my 29er+36er. So the skill is there and I’m getting my fitness for unicycling back.
Enter the chance - and challenge to learn to ride a Schulmpf/Geared uni!!!
I’ve seen and read enough to know this can be a bit Marmite - some love GUni-ing, others can’t stand the speed or feeling it gives. But some how I believe I can learn and ride this new rotating machine, and in fact will love riding it - so I’ve gone in eyes wide open to the difficulties.
Plan to learning is broken down into this:
- Familiarise myself with riding in 1:1 on the 26” Hookworm
- Ride ride ride until confident in 1:1.5 high gear
- Riding 1:1 test an up shift with the realisation a UPD can easily be the first or fiftieth result
- Try downshifting with the same expectations.
After all this comes the freemounting aspects. But I have learned you needs to be ace at riding the machine and know its every mood and quirk - and how it reacts under load - before even really worrying about freemounting it. It will come with overall ability riding.
Today: had a proper test ride.
Very basic route. Converted railway path now bike path. But with a good few long inclines and a bit of a camber in part.
I can easily ride the uni in 1:1 gear but the hookworm is new to me. I’ve normally had much more knobbly tyres - but the lack of rolling noise was nice. However the noise was oddly a feedback loop that helped me know where my tyre was. With the Hookworm it just feels like I’m floating. Probably all in my mind really, due to just liking the rumble feedback from my usual tyre types.
However. For a GUni that I’ll likely only ride in roughish bike paths and maybe a little lite woodland pathways, it’s probably fine and with the fact it is 2.5” and I have the older KH26 frame that precludes any 26x3 tyres. For the moment I’m sticking with this.
Riding is high gear today was a bit more up and down than my first test ride in a nice flat street (when I first got uni!).
But once I’m up on the uni with it in high gear - my wife helping me to shift myself up there (phew!) - I was pleased to see how smooth the actual ride is. It feels like a higher minimum speed is almost needed to make the control feel more natural.
The up and down nature of today’s mini ride was more due to feeling like I was learning unicycling all over again. Going up a slight incline or decline which wouldn’t phase me on other unicycles, felt more edgy with this set up - but it was pleasing to find I could push through the cranks and power over what seems like points of wiping out.
Core takeaway observation from my experience of riding high gear :
-
Going up hill is “easier” - still a huge puff, and workout, but somehow the speed and rate of attack made me more willing to keep going. Often on non-geared unicycles when a hill gets too slow for my tastes. I’ll just decline to push and walk it. With this I was happy to use the speed to help make it more like riding up - than struggling one half crank rotation at it time it would be on a non-GUni!
-
There’s a weird sense of not being able to gage your actual speed. On a regular unicycle I have never had the feeling of needing to check if I was going “too fast” to run out of a UPD. With this the cadence of pedal movement not being in step with the rate of the wheel meant I didn’t actually have a total handle on if I was going faster than I’d normally like. Not sure if this is making sense when I write this. But I found I had to actually check my speed with a bit of back pedal pressure now and again to say: OK I can run out of any UPD here - type check. In short the geared may give you a feeling of almost over confidence with the speed your going at, and for the first time I think I realised why I’d welcome a decent brake on a unicycle like this, to help me if I were finding the speeds a little too “out of control”.
-
The cranks have ever so slight forward-backward play which makes it just feel different (not bad) to other unicycles. I did check all bolts with tight and the cranks are firm and there’s zero play away from or inwards to the wheels sides. I am sure this is part of the gearing’s design as with other any micro play the cogs with be mashing together all the time and shifting would be scrape-scrape / miracle! - but it was an observation worth nothing in that in both 1:1 and 1:1.5 the cranks didn’t feel as connected to the wheel as a regular uni (by about 1%). (Sure this feeling will increase during shifting up and down)
-
At times - I just felt out of control. I mean it would creep up on me and suddenly I wasn’t sure if I was riding the GUni or it was riding me (with me hanging on in hope I’d make it a few more meters).
-
In spite of this feeling - it was easier than I’d pictured high gear. Once power is applied to the cranks it just GOES and flies forward which is like no other unicycle ride I’ve had. Love 36ers and the big rolling feeling. But this is much more like a revved up mini flywheel that hurls you forward. Downhill also feels different. And normally it feels like you let a unicycle descend a hill (controlling this) - where as for me the GUni felt like it was still riding with power on the gas forwards even down hill.
I didn’t UPD or wipe out once and was happy to be able to chose when I’d stop and gracefully dismount. This too feels different in high gear.
I’ll try and keep posting now with my progress and hope it’s interesting. This is just my way of working with my fears and the GUni. But by summing you the experiences of each new ride / practice it should be a good way to positively reflect on micro improvements in the project to master the GUNI-Schulmpf-Machine 
Cheers
/Felix
Photo is in this thread: Post a picture of your unicycle(s) - #187 by mindbalance