"Uni-noob" or "What I've learned so far"

Riding Advice
1

Hi all.
I’ve been lurking on the group for a while, reading stuff.
I’ve had my unicycle (a 24" Torker LX from UDC) about a week, but have
only put in about an hour and half attempting to ride. mainly because
the first day i had it i bruised the bone on my right ankle on the crank
from trying to ride pigeon-toed. It’s still quite tender, but i went out
and gave it another go tonight, and only just barely tapped it once.

So, lesson #1: don’t try to ride pigeon-toed, especially with dead
straight cranks.

Did my manage to drop my whole body weight on the family jewels, though,
as my feet shot off the pedals, as i was mounting off the back steps.
Lesson #2: Don’t do that. Really.

For all that, though, i’m having a really good time falling down, riding
two feet, falling down, falling down, riding a foot, falling down,
riding TEN feet, falling down, veering into the yard and falling down.
Did i mention falling down? It’s a blast, though.

A jerky two miles an hour never felt so fast in my whole life. heh.

And thus far, i’ve always managed to land quite easily on my feet.
Which i find encouraging.

I’m really looking forward to being able to ride to work, and to all my
friends’ places, since i’ve managed to keep my new ride a secret, so i
can surprise everyone.

Anyway, just saying hello with this post, and all that. I have various
other things i want to talk about in other threads.

Should anyone have any brilliant advice to dispense to an utter noob, i
wouldn’t mind, though. :wink:

-matt

2

:smiley:
I love learning to ride new things, I just got my BC wheel today and its really fun

3

A few quick bits of advice.

#1 Learn to ride on gradients (uphill and downhill). You will probably find downhill harder as you have to brake using your pedaling legs (using them to resist letting the wheel pick up a huge amount of speed by applying force backwards on the pedals).

#2 Be ready for unoriginal insults from the ignorant general public, either have a witty come-back ready or ignore them. Beating up a member of the public (though [an idiot]/[idiots] they maybe) because they insulted your unicycling doesn’t give unicycling a good name.

#3 As you progress learn other unicycling tricks like idling (very useful) and riding backwards. This website may help you (
http://www.unicyclist.org/cont/levels.cfm
).

#4 Have fun!

4

For ideas on those snappy comebacks.

Ooops! Didn’t mean to put that thumbs down. Can I delete it?

5

http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38668

Threadjack: Can I delete something from the title of a post w/o deleting the whole post?

6

Re: “Uni-noob” or “What I’ve learned so far”

skilewis74 wrote:
> unicycletips.com
>
> ‘For ideas on those snappy comebacks.’
> (Quote of the day (from non-riders))
>
> Ooops! Didn’t mean to put that thumbs down. Can I delete it?
>
>

Don’t worry.
I’m on usenet, so i didn’t even see it. :wink:

7

Re: “Uni-noob” or “What I’ve learned so far”

delcypher wrote:
> A few quick bits of advice.
>
> #1 Learn to ride on gradients (uphill and downhill). You will probably
> find downhill harder as you have to brake using your pedaling legs
> (using them to resist letting the wheel pick up a huge amount of speed
> by applying force backwards on the pedals).
>
> #2 Be ready for unoriginal insults from the ignorant general public,
> either have a witty come-back ready or ignore them. Beating up a member
> of the public (though [an idiot]/[idiots] they maybe) because they
> insulted your unicycling doesn’t give unicycling a good name.
>
> #3 As you progress learn other unicycling tricks like idling (very
> useful) and riding backwards. This website may help you (’’
> (http://www.unicyclist.org/cont/levels.cfm)).
>
> #4 Have fun!
>
>

I live on a bit of a hill, so i’ll have plenty of opportunities for
both. It’ll be interesting, certainly!

8

Welcome to the forums Matt!

Sounds like you’re doing fine for just a week or so.

I just learned to ride a few months ago, and my wife is just started a couple of weeks ago.

One thing that I found to keep me motivated, is to keep setting goals. My first goal was to ride all the way down the driveway. Took a couple of weeks. Then to ride around the block (about 7/10ths of a mile with a few hills). I thought that would take the rest of the summer, but it only took about another two weeks. As soon as you can go 30’ or so, it won’t be much longer before you can ride indefinately on flat ground anyway.

After that, free mounting. By the way, for me anyway, after I could free mount maybe 1 in 5 tries, I have never gone back to holding on to something. That forced me to practice till I got it right. After getting my left foot free mount down pat, I switched to the right leg free mount. Only took a few tries to get that down, and now I pretty much alternate, just for the practice.

You’ll soon (within a few weeks) get tired of flat pavement riding, then it’s time to hit the trails, which have been a blast. I ride in MN, mainly on the Battle Creek park trails, lots of easy off road, and fairly challenging single track as well. I keep setting goals, like getting up particular hills, jumping over small logs, etc. Keeps it fun and challenging.

Stick with it! Nothing more satisfying than coming down a steep trail over roots while a bunch of mountain bikers stand aside gawking. :slight_smile: