I just joined the forum, and I have a few questions. I’ve been unicycling for a few months on a cheap unicycle I bought off a friend. I’m wanting a trails unicycle so I was thinking of getting this.
Personally, I think gloves are a must. You tend to lead with your hands in a fall, and it only took a couple good scrapes to convince me that I should be wearing protection on my hands. (I’m kind of surprised you got through the learning curve without a similar revelation. Maybe you’re a natural…)
The Canadian UDC has these: http://www.municycle.ca/kris-holm-pluse-glove-fingerless-p-939.html
I use “Hillbillies” with the plastic splint, but opinions are split on which are better. The Canadian UDC site only seems to carry Kris Holm safety stuff, so that limits the choices a bit. But I’m sure these are great gloves. (and they leave your fingers open)
cheers, LanceB
nickjb makes a great point. If you’re planning to do trials, I think you should jump on some shin protection. With regard to the gloves, not only are they important to keep gravel out of your palms, but I also caught my uni once during a dismount and cut very deep gashes in two of my fingers because a nut had a sharp edge on it–that keeps me away from the fingerless gloves.
I might be reading too much into an ordinary typographic error but I noticed you said you want a trails unicycle, then posted a link to a trials unicycle.
And you got some helpful responses about trials unicycles, which are made for extremely technical low-speed riding, for hopping onto and over and off of stairs and tables and whatever else you should happen to find to do stuff on. The wheel on one of those would probably be smaller than you’d want if you used it for riding on trails. You wouldn’t cover ground very quickly with it. Unicyclists tend to go for a “muni” (mountain unicycle) with a 24", 26", or even 29" wheel for trail riding.
Yes, those are the ones I have, but I have the open-finger variety. Lloyd Braun does make a good point about the full-fingered style. The open-finger ones allow you do do things like answer your cell phone and get stuff out of your pockets while wearing them, but I have dinged the same spot on my (exposed) thumb twice. So there are trade-offs.
