It is now my second week and some odd days on a unicycle, and I can
ride considerable distances, turn, and dismount (however, going
backwards and anything fancy is another story!). I’ve had to teach
myself through the fall, get back on, do it yourself method, and
that’s worked fairly well. My only complaint is that it did this to
my legs: http://www.freewebz.com/misanthropic/IM002038.jpg (copy and
paste into your address bars to get a look at the beating i’ve taken
on that thing)
shudder. anyways, my question is, about how long did it take all you
to get a good feel for riding, and to get confident enough to venture
out into town? I’m doing that a lot, but I find myself walking my uni
through a lot of areas, all the people makes me kinda nervous. So,
estimating, how long would you say it took you to learn to be
competent riders?
I wish I had these more than any other piece of safty gear when I learned, in which I employed a simmilar method to you- pain reinforcement. It only get’s worse when you start using cleated pedals. I have marks on my Roach armour from impacts I didn’t even know happend- they are that good. My only complaint is that they occasionaly slip down to reviel the knee. Tommy has had some issues with the knee strap rubbing his leg raw- something I have not experienced.
‘How Long’ questions are impossible to answer- however, I think you already have the primary skill needed for riding around people- knowing when not to. After a few close calls, I always try to error on the side of caution, these days. Keep your judicious nature and your comfort- and safty- margin will grow.
Uh-oh! I don’t want to turn this into a unicycle gore pix competition.
I still have ankle bite scars from 30 years ago.
I’m not near the competent uni rider as you will find in this group but I
started publicly riding as soon as I thought I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
It’s not so much being a competent rider as it is being a competent
dismounter when something goes wrong.
Doug
“Jessica Edgar-Wilson” <the_jessica_show@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:11f5f75.0203241910.64fc18c1@posting.google.com…
> It is now my second week and some odd days on a unicycle, and I can
> ride considerable distances, turn, and dismount (however, going
> backwards and anything fancy is another story!). I’ve had to teach
> myself through the fall, get back on, do it yourself method, and
> that’s worked fairly well. My only complaint is that it did this to
> my legs: http://www.freewebz.com/misanthropic/IM002038.jpg (copy and
> paste into your address bars to get a look at the beating i’ve taken
> on that thing)
>
> shudder. anyways, my question is, about how long did it take all you
> to get a good feel for riding, and to get confident enough to venture
> out into town? I’m doing that a lot, but I find myself walking my uni
> through a lot of areas, all the people makes me kinda nervous. So,
> estimating, how long would you say it took you to learn to be
> competent riders?
>
> Thanks!
> Jess
> http://www.freewebz.com/misanthropic
Personally, once I was able to free mount, ride for however long i wanted to, and gracefully dismount, I started riding where the people were.
Its not a question of how long (time), but rather how advanced.
As for those legs, how did you manage to do that? There was no Muni involved, was there? Is that from the pedals hitting you, or something else? If it is from the pedals, stop trying to freemount for a while, and focus on other things. I am assuming that that would only happen from trying to freemount, 'cause I cant figure out how that could happen from just riding. Wear jeans.
-David Kaplan
Thanks for the advice, guys. I will seriously consider that leg armour, seems like a very good investment! The bruises and such on my legs aren’t from free mounting, because I haven’t given that a real try yet. I think it’s mostly just from my first few days, when I would pedle once or twice, and fall off in a not-so-controlled way, that included tripping over the unicycle, and falling on my bum, etc. I’m not going to try freemounting until I feel more comfortable mounting with support, which hopefully wont be too long from now.
Thanks again, glad to make contact with some experienced unicyclists, I look forward to posting more :)\
“Jessica Edgar-Wilson” <the_jessica_show@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:11f5f75.0203241910.64fc18c1@posting.google.com…
> It is now my second week and some odd days on a unicycle, and I can
> ride considerable distances, turn, and dismount (however, going
> backwards and anything fancy is another story!). I’ve had to teach
> myself through the fall, get back on,
<SNIP>
So that’s what I’m doing wrong
I’ve only got to being able to do left and right turns on smooth
ground so far after ten hours “in the seat”.
But I’ve only fallen off four times.
I think as a previous post pointed out - its an age thing -
Once you get past 50 you tend to avoid pain
Are there any other newbies over 50 here?
I know it will take longer to learn
but do I have to fall of as often as the young’ns?
Well…I’m not quite 50 (45 in July), but I started riding two months ago. A few bruises, but no serious injuries …yet :). I haven’t been able to practice as much as I’d like due to the weather, but I’m not doing too bad. I can successfully freemount some of the time and ride 100-150 feet before I lose it. I’m going to be in NYC in a couple of weeks and plan on meeting up with David Stone and the Unatics of NY for an afternoon. I’m sure that after getting to ride with them, and picking up plenty of good advice, my skills will greatly improve.
>Are there any other newbies over 50 here?
I was 47 when I started riding 1.5 years ago.
>I know it will take longer to learn
>but do I have to fall of as often as the young’ns?
Interesting. I think that if you have a prudent, pain-avoiding
learning style, that you have to fall off less often to acquire a
certain level of competency. That must make you happy. But it takes
longer (which does NOT make you happy).
Klaas Bil (48)
“To trigger/fool/saturate/overload Echelon, the following has been picked automagically from a database:”
“GSS, meta, 20755”
“Klaas Bil” <klaasbil_remove_the_spamkiller_@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:3c9fb440.14717784@newszilla.xs4all.nl…
> On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 19:58:25 -0000, “Slat#s”
> <Phil@NOT.Slatts.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Are there any other newbies over 50 here?
> I was 47 when I started riding 1.5 years ago.
>
> >I know it will take longer to learn
> >but do I have to fall of as often as the young’ns?
> Interesting. I think that if you have a prudent, pain-avoiding
> learning style, that you have to fall off less often to acquire a
> certain level of competency. That must make you happy. But it takes
> longer (which does NOT make you happy).
Pain — Baaaad.
It’s OK really, taking longer, I’m not in a hurry.
So I guess keep to my more gentle style
After thinkin about it I have found that I got most of my scars from last year, and now when I started. Odysse Pro pedals are a killer on the back of your legs when you try to go off a small drop no footed! But i was stupid doin that…and next time will wear more protective clothing.
Well, no pain no gain I guess eh? Or at Slatts demonstrated, no pain, still gain, but takes a little bit more time :). I don’t mind getting hurt, I quite enjoy grossing people out by showing them my scars and bruises that I have. Then surprising them when they guess it’s a football or soccer injury, and i say “nope, unicycling!”
haha, gotta love this sport. Out of curiosity, what’s the male/female ratio on this board? I haven’t seen many females posting here, comeon girls! lol
>
> haha, gotta love this sport. Out of curiosity, what’s the male/female
> ratio on this board? I haven’t seen many females posting here, comeon
> girls! lol
>
There’s Rebecca, but she’s stewing about not getting into MIT and being
anti-social in general. There’s Anne, who seems to have dropped off the
face of the Earth. She used to post here a lot. There’s Sarah from the UK
who does some hardcore muni riding. There’s Megan but I think I’ve seen
maybe one post from her on here. Can’t forget Cherie from Oklahoma, and
one other woman from up that way whose name escapes me right now. There’s
a girl near Houston who rides that I talked to a couple of times in email
but I haven’t seen her on here at all. A 12-year-old girl rides in my
group but doesn’t post on here. I don’t think she reads the group at all
either.
I probably missed a few, but those are the ones I remember off the top of
my head.
women on unis…
I came across this… http://tinyurl.com/1wt
last night - it blew me away… I haven’t seen any freestyle uni-stuff before [well nothing like this]…beautiful.
