Mark,
Why don’t you try riding in different locations sometimes? I understand that these are your lunch time rides, but riding before or after work might also be possible. If the streets are too wet or slippery, one good place to try is parking structures. Usually the are well lighted and at least partially protected from precipitation.
Good luck with your riding. Get bike shorts. Put your weight on the seat. Practice …
Scott
The Pather Pride Unicycle Team will be riding in the Daffodil Festival Parade this spring (April 10th). You should stop by and say hi! Unfortuantely, I will be out of town that day so can’t ride with them.
I just might do that!
You might let someone know that http://www.nbeschool.com/unicycle/
doesn’t have a link to the webpage above.
Thanks, I’ll get that fixed.
I let them know about the link - apparently it’s an ancient link
(I found it with a Google search).
Had a pretty good session today.
I tried the “Curb Method” a few times w/ not much success,
but I want to keep doing it a couple of times every practice
session.. or at least every couple of days.
I went to a wider hall way, which was fun, but tiring.
Went back to my narrow hallway & found a couple of times I actually
rode a little ways without touching the walls.
Rode past the endo of the hallway - good solid two revolutions.
One time I even tried to steer away from the ping-pong table,
and I think I might have gotten another revolution if it hadn’t
been there.
Then at the end of the session I went back to the wide hallway,
felt much smoother than when I firts started the session, and got
one really good ride down the center of that hallway that might
have been a full three revolutions long - it was definitely my
longest ride w/o touching anything so far.
I started the session feeling like I might have regressed a bit,
but ended it feeling like I had made a small increment of progress,
and feeling more comfortable on the unicycle.
My knees ache a bit, but the modification to the shape of the
seat seems to have really helped almost eliminate the chafing
and bruising to the inside of my thighs.
One question: when you do a free mount, how do you make
sure you don’t sit on your nuts? (Not you Natosha!)
I find the same thing even now (8 months after I started). It usually takes 15-20 minutes of warm-up on the uni before I feel like I’m riding my best. The good news is those skills that seem to give you so much trouble now will soon become second nature and you’ll move on to new challenges.
When it comes to freemounting at first you just try to make it onto the seat and start moving before you fall over. I remember instances when I’d be able to mount but couldn’t make it more than a few revs because I was positioned so poorly on the saddle. With practice you’ll find that you can shift your position a bit as you settle into the seat in stages to avoid crushing anything.
At least I’m done having kids anyway. 
After a few bad landings they somehow learn to get out of the way on their own… 
Avoid sitting on your nuts the same way you sit on a sofa… Sit on your butt… They do seem to have a mind of thier own when it comes to getting out of the way eventually.
Had a good session yesterday and today.
Yesterday I warmed up in the narrow hallway I started learning in,
then went to the wider one where I can only touch one wall at a time.
Actually, one side is a chain link fence, even though it’s inside a building
on the second floor.
I got one really good free ride - it may have been as many as four revolutions.
I also tried messing around with free mounting - I managed to get up and
get both feet on the pedals and balance for a half second or more (maybe a
full second or two).
Today I didn’t bother with the narrow hallway at all. It felt pretty awkward
in the wide hallway for the first few minutes, but then I was finding myself
trying to let go of the wall as quickly as possible, and trying to only touch
the wall as little as possible to keep from falling. I got a few semi-extended
free rides of about 3 revolutions.
Worked on free mounting again - one time even got up and managed to
get to the wall to catch myself (May have already been within reach
of the wall).
Modifying the seat seems to have alleviated a lot of the chafing & bruising.
I also taped a neoprene mouse pad and sating cover on over the terrycloth
cover I already installed when I cut the corners off of the seat foam last weekend.
It feels like a big improvement.
Yes, children learn to ride a unicycle incredibly fast. - I usually say that I begun unicycling about 40 years too late. But better late than never. 
Best regards,
Sanne
Here’s the latest video…
I always make at least a couple of freemount attempts.
This is not my best, but typical.
Good improvement. Now you just need to start relying less and less on the walls and sticks, than you can improve by leaps and bounds.
For the freemount, you just need to try not to step on the back pedal so much, your already doing pretty good, but just a little bit more. The more even your pedals are when both feet get on them, the better.
Good work though. Happy to see you coming along. Pretty soon we can take you on a MUni ride
Yes, if the pedals are up and down when you finish mounting, you’ll find it very hard to start pedalling. You should work on a method where they end up as near to horizonal as you can. Try jumping forwards more as you mount maybe?
You are making great progress! Now loose the sticks and practice without them. Put your weight on the seat and look up in the direction you want to travel.
It looks like the mount you are working on is a roll-back mount. In that case you want to roll the wheel back about 180 degrees before rolling forward. Alternatively, you could try a static mount where the wheel does not roll back at all.
I would advise you to stop learning mounts at this point. You are taking two difficult things, riding and mounting, and combining them to give a very small overall chance of success. Instead, focus on riding, and when that is coming along focus on turns. When you can ride nice figure eights, then go back and try mounting and it will come quickly.
Good luck with your riding.
Scott
Those sticks look scary. Don’t skewer yourself!
Actually it looks to me from the videos that you and your son are both to the point where you need to stop leaning on things and just start going for it. After a certain point, it becomes a mental thing. Try leaning up against a telephone pole or something to get mounted, push off, and start pedaling (usually much faster than you feel comfortable pedaling ;)). My experience learning to ride is that if you have something available to you to lean on “just when you need it” (like a wall or fence or apparently ski poles), you won’t really start going for it because you always know you have a crutch there. Just my 2 cents of course – YMMV.
+1 Don’t worry bout the freemount til you can ride unassisted.
As a follower of this thread I find all the advise you give Mark very helpfull for me. I will stop trying to freemount and head into the scary prop free world. Thanks (ouch).