Today I finally got the Huni equipped with a brake!
Quick rundown of the parts I used:
Shimano Deore BR-T610 V-Brake Calipers
Avid FR-5 Brake Lever
M10x1.25mm brake bosses
This is my first unicycle with rim brakes, so the braking feel took some getting used to. After a few minutes though I managed to get comfortable enough to take the Huni for a proper ride with some hills. Now I can at least point it down a hill and be reasonably confident that I can slow down safely!
Iām planning on buying some brake pads with different compounds just so I can try to dial in the brake feel, but other than that Iām happy with the setup.
This morning I rode 6km with the 24" muni, which went great and then in the afternoon, I went with the kids to a park. They on my longboard and me on the muni. Somehow my feet slipped off the pedals and I was perched on the seat, having no clue which way I was gonna fall off or when. The wheel just kept rolling. It was a very strange sensation. Iāve only had this once before in my 11 years of unicycling.
Today while cleaning up the frame to my 29er I discovered that my disk bolts had actually been lapping the bearing housing.
This was previously a G29 and is being rebuilt with an ungeared hub so I can get my muni on. When I built it, my dads old torque wrench decided that day was a good day to give up on clicking so the cranks were massively overtightened. While I filed the housing back to fit the disk side crank, evidently the mud and grime from winter riding briged that gap and shaved about another 1/4mm off.
On the other sides, it looks like there was some polishing action between the hub and the housings as well.
I wonder if this was a factor in me not getting on well with geared riding and potentially the slippage that broke my elbow.
@Setonix That is a terrifying experience! Iāve had that myself on a quite steep downhill and it still haunts me. Iāve had it on flats as well at least once, and it is either extremely weird or horrifying, canāt remember.
Myself, I have to admit that my 24ā Torker is still in a terrible Stateā¦
Another thing not to brag about is that the tire is having a weird Leak I canāt fix, prolly the vent, and I canāt even find the spare tube. And I can only get 24ā 3ā tubes from unicycle.whatever, which I am not about to place an order on anytime soon.
Today I learned that the (only) other member of my school unicycle club, @unisssasworks, can now ride about 30 feet unassisted! Very proud of his progress.
I managed to bring a uni in vacation (yay!) and got out yesterday for an aborted ride (wheel choice not the best and some things getting loose ). Today second try (earlier in the day and on my own), I try to discover the forest next door but was reminded that I got the wrong tool:
Today I decided to take the uni to do the daily shopping. Thatās nothing special, except I have sore muscles from yesterdayās muni ride. First I wasnāt sure if I would be able to mount at all (didnāt even bother to try and freemount). To make mounting easier I took the 20er instead of the 29er.
Particularly the first 100-200m were a very interesting ride. I felt I was back at the beginner level since my clumsy legs didnāt quite make what I told them to do. As a consequence I was flailing distinctively more than usual.
Another issue was my route not being completely flat - riding even slightly down āmassagedā the already hurting muscles in a brutal way. Thatās when I realised that the brake-less 20er also had its downsideā¦ Thankfully the pain started to ease off a bit, after a while. Iām happy to report that I made it without a UPD. Phew!
EDIT, 1 DAY LATER: same procedure as yesterday. The front part of my thigh hurt as if it were one big contusion.
EDIT, 2 DAYS LATER: basically the same procedure as the day before, but with some improvements.
Today I was going to ride my 29er down to the river but went to Urgent Care instead. The good news is I didnāt have a heart attack and have a clean bill of health
I didnāt include this bit of information in my latest post in the āPictures of your latest ride continuedā thread because that post contained highlights of my ride and I didnāt want to adulterate an otherwise mostly positive ride report with this lowlight, but this thread seems like a more appropriate place to spill the beans.
On my last ride, after I made my way down to the bottom of the ramp at the back of the park on W 72nd Street, there is a somewhat serpentine connecting path that takes you to the Hudson River bike path. I was cruising along this connecting path (which nearly always has pedestrians and cyclists on it) at a slow to moderate pace. I am very used to maneuvering around people and cyclists in confined areas, so I felt quite confident that I could easily avoid any person, cyclist, or obstacle. Although I was riding a consistent and predictable line (and not doing any funny stuff), an older gentleman riding a bicycle (I think it may have been one of those rented city bikes) turned off the Hudson River bike path on to the connecting path in the opposite direction that I was travelling. While we may have been on a slight collision course, there was still plenty of room between us, and I couldnāt yet move to my left due to a bunch of pedestrians being next to me. I didnāt consider moving to my right because I was already on the far right side of the path, and moving to the right would have taken me off the path and put me on the grass (which would have been fine and a non-issue had I know what was about to occur). At this point, Iām just waiting for a moment to pass the pack of pedestrians so that I can roll to the left, when I see the man on the bicycle who was coming toward me ride off the side of the path on to the grass and fall down. I think he saw me on my 36er, may not have realized that I could easily maneuver it (since it doesnāt have handlebars like a bike and some people donāt realize that it is still fully controllable), panicked and rode off the trail to avoid a collision that never would have occurred. The good part is although he had the bike on top of him, at least he fell down on the grass. He didnāt seem to have any major injuries and I asked him if he was ok, but I think he may have been a bit annoyed with me. I felt pretty bad about it. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me. Has anyone else on the forum ever experienced anything like this?
Iām not bad, but I am still alarmingly wobbly and twitchy for the tastes of most pedestrians and cyclists. I usually just try to stay as far on my side of the trail as I can get and people donāt seem to mind too much. If I am ever in a situation where I have oncomming traffic and Iām also trying to get around someone, Iāll either ride very slowly or dismount to give the oncomming traffic time to clear before I pass the slow(er) traffic on the bike trails.
People donāt see many unicycles where Iām at, and I suppose that freaks them out a bit. A bicycle cop saw me and stared at me for a while before he rode off ā¦ I waved ā¦ .
I was pretty much as far right on the path as I could be and I would have surely considered hopping off if I thought I was going to be in the way, but this guy veered off onto the grass while there was still a decent amount of space between us, so it really wasnāt a close call situation. It may be possible that his crash had nothing to do with me, or perhaps seeing a guy on a unicycle distracted him.
Iām not sure there are too many places where people see many unicycles, so that could be a fairly universal phenomenon. Perhaps we should have a thread: āCities, towns, and villages where you are most likely to see unicycles,ā or something similar.
Thatās when I realised that the brake-less 20er also had its downsideā¦ Thankfully the pain started to ease off a bit, after a while. Iām happy to report that I made it without a UPD. Phew!
).