Today I (brag thread)

Today i had a UW session where I rode 1km spread over 6 stretches ranging from 140 metres to 200 metres. Im drained of all energy now. The freemounts are totally random. Sometimes I hit it at the first time and other times it takes 10 times. Either my front foot is too far to the left or too close to the wheel, or my balance point is not in the middle or I didnt stand upright fast enough. All I did learn is that I dont need to hop on the wheel, just calmly step up.

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I’ve never had the chance to try a UW, but it looks like it would absolutely exhausting.:sweat_smile:

As soon as I wanted to get out of the car when I got back from my session, my legs could hardly carry me. I just think I’m in bad shape. With a bit of training, I can get a lot further. I can place the pedals closer to each other, like riding with shorter cranks. Maybe while making a smaller rotation with my legs it will also be less tiring, but at the same time, the balancing might get a bit more diffi.

A month back I wrote:

The steps actually appear a lot higher when you approach them on a 36er! But today I rode them on my 36" Oracle. When trying for the first time I was really scared when I realised that I had moved beyond the point of no return. 3 steps later I UPD’d. So I took a seat on the bench and waited for the train …until the itch to try it again grew too strong.
Second and third tries were successful! :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: I think this was partly due to me using the brake and leaning back a bit. Anyway, it’s funny how two steps for me are a little bit easier on the 36er than on the 26er fatty, but with three steps it’s clearly the other way round.

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Today my kid had to go to a bday party which finally gave me the chance to do a 10km ride on the 24” muni Ive been spending a lot of time on. Last month every time I wanted to mount, I needed to mentally prepare a few longer moments just before, which was real annoying. But now I just hop on. Then some days ago I managed to come to a stop, do 3 hops and continue. Today there was a very strong wind, which was quite a fight, but I was gonna finish the ride so I pushed on. Then there is one bend where the inner side is very low compared to the outer side and today with the 24 muni managed for the very first time to stay put and ride through. I failed this with all other uni’s


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Today I had my first proper giraffe ride! :collision:

So far I’ve sat in the saddle of a Torker TX giraffe uni for a grand total of 3 times. The first time I shimmied up the side of our house and sat on it for a while. I managed to ride it into our driveway for a few feet before I ran out of space and had to dismount. Technically that was my first time riding the giraffe, but I wasn’t too satisfied with saying “I rode a giraffe” after just a few cranks. The second time I got in the saddle it was much the same, but I UPD’d pretty much right away and I decided I had enough for the day.

Fast forward to almost a year later, I figured I felt ready to give it another go. I’d been wanting to give it a try since I got done with my spring semester of college :slightly_smiling_face: So I put the giraffe and my 20" CyclePro in my van and went to my local park, which had a nice open parking lot to ride in. I brought my regular 20" along since it had been a while since I’ve ridden a smaller uni, so I rode around on that for a bit to acquaint myself with the feel of it. As usual the hardest part for me was just getting myself onto the giraffe; I brought a small step ladder and mounted the uni next to my van for support.

After sitting in the saddle for a bit and rocking back and forth, I leaned forward and rode off into the parking lot. I was still rather nervous at the start, but after a minute or two I shook off the nerves and focused on riding. I chose a pretty unfortunate day to ride :woozy_face: It was very windy, like 20+ mph (32+ kmh) winds with 30 mph wind gusts. I somehow managed to stay on the giraffe despite the winds, though there were a few times where I had to just ride with the wind in order to not fall off. Thankfully being I was in a parking lot I had plenty of space.

I rode pretty much until I got tired of riding. I decided that I’d end the ride by trying to idle, but then I experienced another first: the cog slipped :smiling_face_with_tear: Thankfully I dismounted safely! I guess my plan for the giraffe now is to get some red Loctite and make sure things don’t move… I’m half tempted to build up a giraffe wheel with bolt-on cogs

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Hats off to you with your giraffe, I’ve had one I brought just before covid that I’ve not ridden :frowning:

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OK, so feel like posting here today:

After lots of practice I can finally stand walk!! That’s where you stand with one foot on the crown of the frame and the other foot pushes the tire forward.

Yesterday I had quite a few runs of 20-30 seconds where I went 15+ meters.
Today I successfully transitioned from riding to stand walk about 10 times.
And I transitioned from 1ft wheel walk (sitting) to stand walk 3+ times.
It finally clicked and my control is pretty good. I can’t yet return to pedals but I think it is near.

Note that 2 weeks ago in the freestyle competition I tried to mount to stand walk twice in my routine and fell both times after only 1-2 pushes.

I also did free hand stand hopping for the first time! (One-handed stand hopping was already solid and I successfully did it in my freestyle routine). About 10 times I did 5-10 controlled hopps and then went to wheel walk. (I now have a decent bruise on my inner knee from holding the seat while jumping).

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Our daughter brought a six month old puppy home from University. I have been wanting to teach it to “unicycle” like our dog does. Everyone has been scared for me to try it with both dogs. However, I felt that my dog would be needed in order for the puppy to learn quickly. So, I harnessed both of them, connected them to each other with a 4 foot splitter (two feet for each dog) and hooked the splitter to the retractable leash. It worked great! We saw one rabbit that required some (quite a bit) correction and a raised voice. But, no dismount was needed. Then we came upon a family headed the opposite direction on the path, with another large puppy. There was no way to navigate that safely, so I dismounted. That was tricky, with both dogs pulling hard. After remounting, both dogs did great and the puppy just took cues from my dog.

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Today I learned how to one foot idle! I’m working on mounting into it and transitioning while riding

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I kinda accidentally learned to mount into one foot idle. I was practicing some trick (probably one foot idle or one foot backwards) and had to mount every 20 seconds or so. At some point the mounting was so smooth (on a 20er, it’s a bit different on a big wheel) that my second foot became hesitant to step onto the pedal but wanted to directly land on the crown. So eventually I just did that and it worked first try. In short: mounting directly into one foot idle can be a free trick if you practice the right stuff.

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I’m using a 20”/80mm uni, I want to put 114s on it soon but I don’t have a crank puller yet

Maybe worth a try to see how it is.

Just a note: “advanced” freestyle is best with 75-100mm cranks, so 80mm is a actually a good length and 114s are quite long (I would say too long unless you’re just beginning but doesn’t sound like the case). However, learning idling, 1ft riding and backwards are easier initially with longer cranks, so maybe worth changing. But if you are making progress with 1ft already, you might leave them? That being said, I switched from 100mm down to 89mm a while back and then went back to 100mm (I tried 75s and found them too short and now mostly ride 89s).

So this week my stand walk is solid: a few times I did 20-30 seconds where I did 2+ rounds around the gym. :wink:

And twice I stepped down from stand walk to the pedals!! Still too tense going down and need to trust my balance more but so nice to have landed it 2 times (had done it a few weeks before but was just luck).

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Today I raced a 36er while on a 20” and won

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video?

Unfortunately not

prolly was the old lady you put on the 36" and she couldn’t ride it 1 yard. I can win that way too.

No it was someone competing flatland at unicon