hey
I was just curious on how long it took people to learn to ride? Meaning just being able to ride around as in commuting.
it took me about three hours to learn how to ride, i went to the local circus and got them to teach me on one of their ancient 20 inch uni’s, i haven’t been riding long so the best advice i can give is practice practice practice
Some people take longer than others
I was riding to work in 9 hours and off road in about 12 but lots of people take a lot longer.
As Chazpantz says it’s all about practice, and if you are focused and dedicated you can get the basics very quickly.
Enjoy the process as the early stages are an enjoyable time as you make rapid progress but don’t expect to be a pro overnight
wow! it took me about two days to even start turning
I was turning in a matter of hours, but not intentionally. 
A week of daily practice to get riding down the road, two weeks to ride around the block and make turns, probably a solid month before I could go up and down mild hills and manage little bumps, so let’s say a month of almost daily practice before I’d consider a commute.
After four years I can roll over logs 12" in diameter and more less ride every mtb trail in the area, what a long road…
The more you do it the better you get, it’s a serious commitment but one well worth the struggle.
Grrr… all you people who learnt in a couple of hours 
It was about eight months from when I started trying to when I could ride around in a controlled manner. That was only an hour or two every weekend though, but still a fair few hours. I was self-taught though, and I think I spent too long practicing in a narrow alley leaning on the walls - when I decided to go out in an open space I was closer to riding than I thought. I’m trying to teach my 6yo daughter at the moment - see if she picks it up faster than I did.
Rob
Hey rob.northcott I’m with you! It took me YONKS to learn, but I got there in the end.
I can freemount most of the time and ride forwards (note I never said in a straight line though 
)
Learning to do little bumps on my magical muni.
Muni123 as NurseBen says, ‘‘the more you do the better you get’’
rob.northcott I’ll bet you a book of first class stamps (That’s a lot over here!) That your daughter will be leaving you in the dust in no time. Take lots of video for the family album!
I was able to ride several hundred feet consistently after a week (about 5 hours) of dedicated practice. Then I spent another few hours learning to free mount, ride further and eventually indefinitely. All in all, being stable and comfortable on the unicycle took me 3 weeks… Then I upgraded, and finally got my Coker about 1.5 years ago.
I think people say they learned in x amount of time a lot, but it takes longer to really become proficient. I could ride after a week, and I tell people that, but it took longer for me to be good at it.
Well I can beat Rob - it took me over a year from when I bought my uni to be able to ride.
To be fair, for over a year I only tried riding for 10 or 15 minutes a time, maybe once a month or so. When I decided I really was going to learn it took me a week or two, practicing an hour or so every day. Once I could do the basic riding along, everything else came fairly quickly from when I started working on it (it helped that from where I was learning I had to do a turn to get to 50m, and ride downhill to get to 100). Apart from idling that is - 7+ months on I’m still working on that, though I realised recently that I’d been doing the 10-15 minutes every couple of weeks thing, so have been trying to get 20+ minutes practice of that in every day - getting there now, but has definitely been harder than just learning to ride.
It took me two weeks to be able to ride reliably without falling off. I had observed a rider, but had no assistance learning. I pulled myself up by a lamppost and pushed off until I could do it.
In hindsight I think that’s a faster way to learn than the “grovelling along walls” method. Once I decided to go for it in an open space I felt like I progressed much faster. I think that’s what I’ll encourage my daughter to do as soon as she’s fairly happy with holding onto a bar.
Rob
I agree. I rode along a fence until I was comfortable on it, then I pedaled over to the edge of the fence and took off. I must have mounted at that fence post hundreds of times… good memories.
I agree with that too - when I actually tried properly I mounted holding onto my car and then pedalled off into the blue yonder. ISTR that what I found hardest though was getting the second half pedal rev in without stalling at the bottom of the first half - spent some time riding alongside my car using it for support trying to sort that one out (I have a big estate car so can get in a couple of revs alongside!) I was learning in front of my house - we have a large communal paved area with no traffic which the kids play on - ideal for learning, but no walls/fences to hold onto, which I thought was a problem, but in hindsight helped. Here’s a gratuitous picture of it!
The first day I spent half an hour or so by the kithen bench just getting used to the uni.
This video is from the second day of practice (the first day outside):
The second video was recorded 8 days after the first:
