I sent my frame in to be powder coated last monday ad it won’t be ready to pick up until this monday so I’m stuck with my 20" for the week. This turned out to be quite good actually because I had the chance to work on some of the freestyle skills that I can only do on a 20" today. It was another one of our weekly bike shop unicycle rides and we had another unicyclist turn up making a grand total of 6 of us (but it’s still growing). Alexander’s a young guy who rides a 16". Here are some of the things I got up to today:
Removing two shoes and a sock while riding - I decided to try to ride abre-footed for extra touch on the wheel and so on which I can’t do on my muni because of the wheel and pedals. I thought why stop and take them off when I could have much more fun trying to do it while riding. I rode along bending over the front of the uni to undo the laces (with double knots of course) and the slowed down ready to take the right shoe off. I went to do an idle and when the right pedal was forwards I lifted my foot off the pedal and removed my shoe with my right hand. then I did the same with my left foot but with more trouble because I find it harder to idle with the right foot down. I got the second shoe off and the right sock but eventually fell off before removing the last sock. It was lots of fun.
That new thing where you half 1 foot ride and half 1 foot wheel walk - For anyone who hasn’t yet tried this, it’s really fun. Great work to whoever it was who thought of this one (sorry I’ve forgotten). I don’t know exactly how everyone else is doing it but I was dragging the right foot on the wheel until the left foot (on the pedal) reached about 2 o’clock (just behind the frame) where I then pushed with the right foot to get the left leg going again. It felt really cool doing that in more of a stopping and starting sort of way. I’ve also been thinking that this might make a pretty good backward skill. If you just wait until the left pedal passes the frame then dig the right toe in kind of like the koosh-koosh. What do you think? I’m planning to use this skill (not the backwards one) to lead up to gliding. I think it’ll work well if I do it down a hill and work on dragging the right foot smoothly without having to press too hard with the left foot on the pedal. Then I’ll just take the left foot off the pedal and put it on the crown. Sounds really handy.
Riding a 16" unicycle with a tiny seat post - I had a go of Alexander’s tiny 16" unicycle with a really low pressure tyre. It was great fun and so low that I could drag my hand along the ground while riding. There’s a pretty funny-looking photo in the “Miscellaneous” section of my gallery.
I also found out today that James, one of the members of the weekly riding gruop, will be joining me at UniNats this year (probably). In 2001 the 1st place time in the Mens Junior 10m Slow Race was 14.89sec. Today without any practice, James did it in 14.9 seconds with a bit of practice he should do well. I did it in 15ish seconds but the 1st place time in 2001 for Mens Open was 23sec. 3rd was 15ish so I’ll do some practice and aim for a place. But I’m not going to UniNats to be realy competitive. I’m really looking forward to meeting all these other unicyclists.
Sorry for the long post…I think that’s about all. There are some photos and a video (of the new 1 foot thingy) in my gallery (see my signature for the URL).
I love unicycling,
Andrew