My story is similar but different to yours. I was away from Unicycling for 20 some years (went to college at 30 got a real job, lost it a few months ago. Broke up with my 2.5 year fiance. . . and somewhere in that 2.5 years I came back to Uni to learn the tricks (idle, ride backward) that I never learned riding in my 20’s.
Now I’m happily single and have 3 unis. Even though its 37 degrees out and 2:00AM I’m heading out to ride now. Uni was the one thing that was a bright spot in my life for for the last six months of my relationship. Now besides those tricks my goal is to ride my age.
At least my ex wanted to keep her uni that she was working to learn to ride when we broke up. I hope she learns to ride it. Tonight I sent her the link to the blog about that lady who rode the continental divide. She is a very good skier and very athletic. I think she will like it if she learns to ride it.
Welcome back to the one wheeled fraternity, its a small but very cool club. I stand on the shoulders of giants here. Many of them have mad skillz. Unigeezer is my freaking idol. (cuz he’s old like me) JF has forgotten more about Unis and most wheeled contraptions than I will ever know.
This quote made me lol. reminding me when i had a break at my work today. i was talking with a coworker:
Me: I hope it doesn’t snow. i wanna pedal a bit…
Him: umm… a fellow biker?! <happy face>
Me: you could say that…
Him: What bike do you have? I’m riding a fixie <very large smile. king of the world expression>
Me: lame. your front wheel isn’t fixed - it rolls free. all my wheels are fixed
Him: wha?<confused>
Me: Unicycle. <King of the Uni-verse>
just gotta love the fixed gear fanboys :>
so today i… did about 1,5km on the snow almost freezing so i went home and i’m hoping for a nice unicycling monday
today i learned and practiced, how to one foot idle. i can’t seem to get one foot riding because i cant get my foot onto the frame when the pedals are in the right position. the pedals are supposed to be 6 and 12 o’clock when you lift your foot off right?
Hopping - Getting quite comfortable with these, have been handy for getting to some places I thought were off-limits before.
Idling - I can now do about 3 idles unsupported, up from 0 this morning. I’m dead pleased with this.
Riding backwards - I can ride backwards about 4 revolutions now, and can sometimes even switch back to forwards motion if I feel like I’m losing it.
SIF - I can ride pretty much indefinitely now holding the seat in front of me (forwards!). Hopefully it won’t be too long until SIF hops are in the bag too.
Suicide Mounts - Still shaky and accident-prone, so I’ve been working on other things today. Maybe tomorrow!
So definitely a very productive day. I’m getting some good practice in now that all the snow has cleared and it’s warming up a bit.
been getting better and better at hopping up and down stairs lately. working on riding and hopping SIF. been taking bigger and bigger drops. trying to learn how to pedal grab…can leg wrap mount now, SIF mount, static mount. side hop static is fairly big and even bigger off obsticals
Been 25+ years since I was on a uni up untill a few weeks ago, and the weather has been spotty for me here so I havent been on the “new” one much… It was 50 and sunny here today and my baby girl needed milk so I rode a tick over one mile to the store, put a half gallon in the back pack and rode home…
So I got my one mile badge twice today… Help, cant walk or sit now! LOL
Today I accomplished my first trials practice goal, and got a lousy quality video of it! Two weeks ago I couldn’t even hop up onto a pallet, but today, after an hour or so of practice, I did this!
It was pretty high stress 'cause my G1 will only record a minute so I had to get it just right in that minute. This was only the second time I accomplished this ‘feat’.
I’ve been working on rolling wraps too I think it’s called a crank roll when you only do the rolling bit.
today I broke my side jump record by learning to jump seat out. First day of seat out practice and I got up 4 pallets! I also got a few revs of 1 foot wheelwalk unexpectedly…I didn’t think I would be able to do it but it’s surprisingly easy, coasting here I come!
I can almost prehop seat in, at the moment I feel that it just distracts me from the actual jump, I’ll have to work on it. Though, I haven’t been able to prehop seat out yet at all…I’m still working on my balance with that. Like I said, I only tried it today.
I’ve actually been riding since about August, so I think I could be a lot further along than I am now if winter didn’t get in the way!
Hopping… Hmmm… Well, it’s something I’ve been attempting on and off for a few months now. Good balance riding one handed is extremely important, I found that lots of riding v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y holding on to the handle was good for that. Also lots of stopping, still standing as long as I could, and then riding off.
Of course everyone is different, but I think the two biggest things that helped me finally conquer hopping were:
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Make sure there isn't too much air in the tire, if it's too hard you won't get any "bounce" (but make sure there's enough so the rim doesn't hit the gound).
Hop with the balls of your feet on the pedals. I tried it for too long with my feet too far forward and really struggled.
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