Wheel walking and rail riding improvements and more general fun...

Unicycles and Equipment
1

I just wrote about 10 lines of this thread in an old one of mine and then decided to put it in a new thread. So I copied what I’d done, and about to start on this one, but before I did I copied a link and therefore lost all my work…damn!
…and just then, I hit ‘Back’ and found what I’d written!

I’ve already written a bit about this morning’s ride in this thread but I also did some more riding this afternoon.

Today was our second weekly unicycle ride through the bike shop. We had a new member arrive who made some good progress and had a lot of fun. As well as a little bit of coaching, I had the chance to do some more wheel walking practice and about 5mins of 1 foot riding with the other foot off the frame (I can’t do normal 1 foot riding anymore because I have to do a lot of adjusting to the frame and new wheel size).

I had a few little goes at wheel walking and did about 15 paces or so each time. Then I turned to Gary and said, “I’m going to do 50 paces right now, okay?” So I got on the uni, rode along for a while and did exactly 50 paces :). Of course, since I had told myself I was going to do 50 paces I lost balance once I had reached my goal. It was really fun and I really felt in control once I passed about 30. With the 1 foot riding with the other foot off the frame I only got 1 and a half turns though…I need more practice.

Another thing I did today was I rode along a low, short (about 2m), round, 80mm diameter rail. It felt great. I had a very useful low roof above me which i used for stability when I slowly mounted the uni on the rail. I also hopped up sideways onto the rail once which felt great too. There was also a flat concrete barrier next to it that was about 90mm x 4m that I managed to ride along.

Once again, I had a great day of unicycling. Sorry to bore you.

Andrew

2

Glad you had fun

:slight_smile:

3

Hey, thanks for starting a thread about a great day of unicycling, because I had a great one too. I was going to start my own, but this one looks good.

Actually I have had a pretty good week. I wheel walked over 100 yards earlier in the week, going around the outside of a couple of basketball courts a little more than one time.

But last night I was unable to sleep and found myself thinking about all the skills I can’t do yet, and dreaming up new ones I haven’t seen anyone do. It must have sparked up something because today I did a couple.

First I was able to idle and then pull the seat out in front and continue idling with seat out front. I got more than ten a few times.

I have been practicing a new skill that isn’t listed in the skill lists, but I find useful: sharp turns backward. At first doing a 90 degree turn was good, but then I started doing 180’s inside the 1 meter square. My belief was that sharp turn skills eventually lead to the ability to do spins and tighter circles, so I decided to try riding backward in a tight circle. Hey, I did a very tiny circle. I tried again and found myself spinning! I was doing a backward spin of a few revolutions.

So then I decided to try the technique on a forward spin. I couldn’t believe that I actually was getting spins. It feels like you get caught inside of some sort of spinning other world. Spinning seems to present two problems: first is consistency. You need to maintain a consistent speed and spin diameter. If the diameter become too small, you end up doing a pirouette, which ends your spin. The second problem is getting out of a spin. First of all, today anyway, I never had a real desire to get out of a spin, but a few times I tried it. Sometimes I would come out riding backward, sometimes I would end up idling, sometimes the unicycle would fly across the room. I’m better at spinning to the right, but was able to do spin to the left as well.

I have to thank the Japanese team’s performances at UNICON 11 for demonstrating the beauty of spinning.

Finally I started really practicing getting out of wheel walk. Who cares if I can ww 100 yards if I can’t just go back to riding? Right now I am able to ww a fixed distance, and knowing where the pedals will be at that point, I can get my feet down. It seems like a good way to practice, since you can vary a little the starting pedal position so that the ending position will also be different. I’m stopping with my left foot on the wheel and putting my right foot down first, then the left. Most of the time I end up riding backward or idling. Before today I had never succeeded in getting back to riding. It seems like the trick is to put minimum pressure on the first pedal, and then move the foot on the wheel to the other pedal.

4

WOW

Thanks “iunicycle” for encouraging me to learn to spin.

5

Sounds like a great day. When I’ve been trying to get back to the pedals after wheel walking I’ve found it hard to get the back foot bakc far enough to reach the pedal (although I haven’t really set my mind on learning that skill yet). I think what you said may have solved my problem, I’ll try to go into an idle to start with and then move on to giong into riding.

Thanks (I just had an amazing day again today),
Andrew

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Your lucky to always be a day ahead of the rest of the world, but just how to you handle the upside down riding required at the underbelly of Planet Earth? (This week we have relatives from Wollongong.)

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:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Do you mean they’re staying with you at the moment, or they’re just your relatives for this week? :slight_smile:

Andrew

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I’ll let you know at the end of the week. :slight_smile: They’ve already succeeded in getting my wife to buy a house (today).