Hey all, I’m considering putting together a trials/street style obstacle setup in my back garden, using easily available materials (wood, long screws, Makita, pallets, possibly a cable drum) and was wondering if you had any ideas for obstacles I could use to improve my overall street ability. What materials should I use, and would covering the wood with something like carpet increase traction & save me injuries?
I’m pretty good with hopping, crank landing (incl. to rubber), but want to improve skinny riding, beam hopping (from one narrow object to another) and rolling hops. I’d also like something to practice pedal grabbing onto.
I’ve put together (just quickly in paint) an idea i’ve had, so you can take a look and comment. If you have any ideas for obstacles and can describe them well enough i’ll try and add them to the current picture.
Cheers joe. I’ve got loads of materials cos my dad kind of hordes wood & stuff. The ground isn’t as flat as in the drawing either, so once its all levelled and set up properly the distances between palettes (vertically) will probably be more than a single palette height. I’ve got a design for a movable skinny beam that i’m working on at the moment, i’m going to get it built over the next couple of days…
You should jave some way of taking stuff apart and moving it,because once you do somthing a million times,it gets easy and you might want to make it higher/farther/harder.
Cheers for the comments, I’m going to make it out of pallets mainly, so they’ll unscrew and move about pretty easily… Plus theres a lot of room up there, so i’ll be able to vary is a lot, from easy warm up stuff to things way outside my current skill level.
A tip:Use wedges.Cut the ends off of scrap wood into wedge shapes,use them whenever somthing wiggles or isnt stable enough(like pallets or anything)It works great.
i never bothered screwing my pallet stacks together. or attching most things 'securely" i did make a bunch of skinnies/gapping bars which i screwed together but the pallets were just stacked.
i’ve never had to screw pallettes down/together, always seem to be plenty firm enough without. You will quickly get bored aswell, so its nice to be able to jus pick them up and put em somewhere else/the other way up or whatever.
YEah,same here.If they wiggle or wobble put wedges under the edges,works PERFECTLY and you can move them around whenever you want.If you have to screw 'em together,use a nail or two,its easier to take apart.
You did that quickly in Paint?? Great job! The course is nice too. I love the skinnies for grinding and riding along, and with a bit of practise you can ride up one, turn the 90 degree corner, and down the other…that’s fun!
If you want to work on trials as well as street, maybe you could add some more technical gaps in there. Sandwich boards would be appropriate…they’re very versatile. There are some sandwich board building instructions at www.unicycle.2ya.com .
On Tue, 10 May 2005 05:10:03 -0500, “Loosemoose” wrote:
>was wondering if you
>had any ideas for obstacles I could use to improve my overall street
>ability.
There are some ideas for simple trials props here:
>What materials should I use, and would covering the wood with
>something like carpet increase traction & save me injuries?
Carpet is a bad idea because generally the tufts (is that what you
call it) are directional, so you have a weird constant pull to one
side if you ride on carpet.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
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