Step-up, step-through, side mount, whatever its called, this is one of those
moves that I pulled perfectly, first time then spent the next half hour failing
abysmally and not knowing why. So these hints and tips and half from me and half
from one of the blokes from the Ecole Cirque de Brussels whose name I’ve forgot
but he was riding impossible wheels and doing lots of impressive stuff.
Anyway, to start. Uni in front of you, left hand on saddle. Right foot on pedal
with crank down. Lean on the pedal, make sure it doesn’t move the wheel at all.
I seem to twist my foot so the toe is pointing slightly inwards, this stops the
uni from twisting as you step up. Lean the whole uni over to the left so the
ball of your foot is close to the contact patch of the tyre. Push the uni
forward until the frame makes a straight line with the crank. This does not look
right. The seat looks far too far away and if you run a saddle with a high front
end, like my DM, you think, my leg will never get over that, way too far up. But
that’s the way to do it.
Practise stepping up onto the right pedal. The uni should not move at all.
Now the tricky bit. Look up. Step up onto the pedal. Right up. Get that left
thigh high. Keep your back straight. Don’t look down or that’s were you’ll go.
By this point the uni should not have moved.
When your leg’s right up, let the saddle move sideways, underneath you till it
hits your right leg, while putting the left foot on that pedal. Then sit down.
Now I do this as very much a two part move. The leg goes up, then the saddle
moves and leg finds pedal. The trick is to get the first part in balance. You
should be able to stop with your leg up, nothing moving at all. The second part
is pretty much trivial.
Don’t lean forwards, maybe lean back a little. Throughout the move, fix
your eyes on the middle distance. Don’t look for the left pedal, don’t
worry about your left foot finding the pedal. Feet are much more inteligent
than is generally supposed and can be quickly trained to find and retrieve
errant pedals.
This is not a wonderfull crowd-pleasing move. Once you get it dialled in it
looks excessively easy. Its should be fast, simple and smooth, so that people
tend to miss out on the fact that you’ve just done something pretty unfeasible.
Just two brief further notes. The funniest thing ever said to me by some
innocent bystander: “You’re on a unicycle, does that mean you’re a eunuch?”
Apparently there’s the British Uni Convention in Cardiff in June? and a one-day
event in London at some point. Does anyone have definite info sources for these?
Jez