My wife is not a total uni geek the way I am, but she rides well enough. Right now, we ride together on 24" unis. Alone, I ride a 26er muni and a 36er on mixed road-trail rides and so have a good idea of the range of sizes.
My question is for shorter folks out there. What’s the jump like from 24" to 29" if you’re 5’3" (my wife’s height) or shorter? At 5’8", I found the jump to a 36er mildly daunting, and getting a reliable free mounting hit rate took a couple of weeks of focused practice. For shorter folks, is the jump to a 29er similarly difficult? Or if you can mount a 24", will you be mounting a 29er fairly well within a day or two?
First of all, everyone’s different. A lot of people can jump on and do things that I can’t do after weeks of practice. So she’ll just have to try it and see.
Second, how does she do on your 26" muni? If it’s got a fat 3" off-road tire, I’ll bet it measures out to almost 28". Check it and see. So if you plan on a road-equipped 29r (relatively narrow tire), the difference would not be that great. If she can mount and ride your 26r, then the 29r shouldn’t be a big issue. (In my own case, while I’m a good deal taller than your wife, I found the difference between my 26" and 36" to be substantial, but the difference between my 26" and my recently-built 32" to be not-that-much.)
Similar here. Except freemounting. That took more getting used to with the bigger wheel and, in my case, longer cranks. With 125s on the 24 and 150s on the 29, the leverage was about the same.
When I went from a 24 with 127s to a 29 with 127s I didn’t have much trouble with the mounting. Once you are on the riding is much the same. I find 127s ok on the sealed paths, could go shorter in truth.
The comment about lowering the seat is good. Every now and then my mounting goes to pot and I drop the seat about 20mm to get in the groove again. Then put it back up.
I can see that point; and, yes, I observed the same thing that you have; that once you’re on, the riding is very similar.
In my case, not only were the pedals higher, they were also further apart, so I had to jump further forward as well. Only an inch, but still. I have since moved to 127s on the 29 and can now go pretty much anywhere that I used to on the 24. I could probably go shorter on easy paths, but I ride all over the place, and suspect that the hills around here would thwart me. Several of them are pretty challenging as it is. I could slap some 102s on there, but I’ve got square tapers, so I can’t just be trying out sizes willy-nilly. I also don’t have any business spending the money. I could just drive to such paths, but so far, the ride to the path has been more interesting to me than the path, itself. Of course, that could change with shorter cranks.
It wasn’t until I switched to the shorter cranks on the 29 that I really felt the rotational inertia of the wheel. Idling is just nuts.
I still ride my 24, but usually not for more than a few miles. I mostly use it for idling and reverse riding practice or when I want to do some riding in a small area, which does happen. I’ve put the 150s (that came on the 29) on it, and they are surprisingly exhausting on the small wheel, at least until I’ve gotten used to them again. They do make it slightly less impossible to ride around in my yard, which is very hilly, lumpy, soft in places, and covered with grass and mole tunnels. A better tool for that job would be a muni with a nice fat tire, but I already have the 24 because it was my learner.
I also only have the two unicycles, so if the 29 is down for maintenance, I can at least still ride something.