I agree the 36" is good fun. I don’t ride it too often and need to practice the free mount every time, but when I then manage, it feels great to have tamed the beast.
Unfortunately this month I won’t be riding anymore, because my wife is about to pop out our son. Last weekend I was already slightly nervous when riding deep into the forest. If she would have called, it would have taken quite some time to get back to the car and then another 15 mins to be home to take her to the hospital. Hopefully next month I can ride with the trials while pushing the pram.
Looking through my Strava history for road rides, at my fastest I am pretty much as quick on my 26" with 100mm cranks as I am on my 36" using 125mm cranks but this does not tell the whole story at all.
A few thoughts to explain:
On average I am slightly quicker on my 36er rides
I feel I have a maximum speed on all unis that is more to do with feeling “safe” than my physical ability. And it is easier to hit that limit on a 36.
Maintaining similar speeds on a 36er is much more relaxing. As @UniMyra said, you can “cruise” at higher speeds on a 36, while with smaller wheels quite a lot of concentration is needed to maintain the same kind of pace (a repeat of a point made by @finnspin).
Several people have talked about how special a 36" feels and I would certainly agree. It is not my most used uni (though I do use it often) but after having owned one I couldn’t imagine not having one.
This is probably the reason why I wouldn’t buy a 32". It does not seem that much bigger than a 29" and the range of tyres for a 29" is so much greater, so I can’t quite see the point. Might as well get a 29". Then again I have never ridden a 32". Maybe I would change my mind if I had.
I know I’ve heard other riders say a 32 is not that different than a 29er and as an owner of both in hoping to find a noticeable diffedence. There definitely is a noticeable difference visually and free mounting the 32 is definitely more difficult. As for speed i am not getting any gains on speed over my 29er, hopefully that will change as I get used to it. My hope is that I will be able to ride further not fasfer. As the weather breaks we will see what the difference is between the two and weather it’s worth th extra effort.
Im not sure how much speed gain I have on the 32", but as it has a road tire there is less friction that with the Nimbus 29" muni. Also turning on paved roads is much smoother. Mounting for me feels the same on both. Maybe if you really want to be fast, you should take a bike instead of a unike
One should never ride a unicycle to be practical or fast, but for enjoyment.
The only practical use of a unicycle, would be a medium sized wheel to get quickly around town.
However, there are “road” style 29” tyres. So surely it would be easier/cheaper for most people to make a tyre change on a 29 rather than switch up to a 32”. But again, I fully admit I am saying this without ever actually having tried a 32”, so perhaps my opinion should be taken with a pinch of salt.
(Maybe @UniMyra will let me try his kid’s 32” one day and then I can make an informed opinion. )
You know as well as me that being a unicyclist, having different tire sets is a hassle and it is then easiest to buy both a 29" muni and a 29" road. Sure peeps might not have the financial means to just do that, but as a result they mostly will stick to the tire they have. Apart from the fact that my 24" has a road tire, I won’t otherwise choose to have smaller unis than the 32" with a road tire. A muni tire is more versatile for XC.
Not sure I fully agree with that. For speed, yes they are slower than a bike at max speed (with the same rider) but I can cruise at the speed of an Oslo average city cyclist (16.3km/h), even on a 26". So while I agree that for absolute speed, a bike is hard to beat, they are not necessarily slow and faster than many other forms of active travel that people use, like running. I have 3 colleagues who have occasionally run to the office and I am faster than all of them (on a unicycle of course, they are better at running than me ).
With regards to practicality, I have found unicycles quite practical.
They fit in places most bikes would not, e.g. inside storage areas, a car, a cargo bike, under a desk at (my) work, etc. (yes a folding bike† is another solution)
You can often wheel or carry them in to stores or other locations where a bike would not be allowed (again a folding bike would work the same way)
Your hands are free to carry things, shopping, eating food on the go, etc.
They also make great makeshift cargo bikes‡ for travelling with small children.
I do agree with you on the enjoyment part though!
† The problem with folding bikes is that their small wheels make them less suitable for off road or dealing with snow in the winter. So a unicycle is still preferable for me. I own a Brompton folder and never use it any more.
‡ I used to do that with my youngest to bring him to kindergarten. I would put him in the pushchair /stroller and I’d push it while cycling the unicycle behind. Much quicker than walking. I also did multimodal travel with him like this a few times. The local busses don’t seem to mind you taking a pushchair and a unicycle on board but they would bulk at a real cargo bike.
Fair enough. Though I think I would still prefer have a 29" muni and a second 29" road unicycle, rather than a 29" and a 32" because you have the flexibility to change what the 29" are used for with a simple tyre change and there are very few 32" tyres.
I think that another big difference between a 29+ and a 32 is that the 32 will be running a much higher tire pressure and will have less compression where the tire contacts the ground. So even if a 3.25" 29er tire is nearly the same diameter as a 32, the actual distance from the ground to the axle will be significantly less as the bigger, lower pressure tire will squish considerably more.
You can find 3" road tyres that support 65PSI. I own one myself, albeit for a 26". The 26x3.0 “Super Brick” (a.k.a. Innova IA-2236 “City Tire”). I’d be very surprised if you could not find a similar tyre for a 29er. Granted such tyres are heavy.
That said, I wasn’t really thinking of a plus sized tyre. Just a normal 29" (road) tyre is close enough in size to a 32" that you are not going to see much of a speed difference. Or at least that is what I would imagine. Again I should state again I have never tried a 32", I am probably completely wrong.
I’ve run 2.35" Big Apples on a couple of my mountain bikes for years now and those are fairly light and I think they have a 65 psi max pressure. It’s quite a bit smaller than a 29+ however. I like them quite a bit however as they are relatively fast and comfy and for me they have had excellent puncture resistance.
To add on what ruari said, you might ride a unicycle to be practical, and not take a bike because one wheel is more fun. Unicycles can also be fast for running errands or whatever else you’re doing… just not racing-speed. If you’re in a city or suburban neighbourhood, I bet a 36 would almost always have the potential for more speed than you’d need to use. When I’m rushing to a semi-local event and I’m a bit late, I’d even take my 26" instead of my bike any day, and it’s only about a minute or two slower (on a ride of about 2-3k) because of the hills.
Absolutely agree, and just to provide clarification to my question for everyone: I don’t mean cyclists trying to cover distance or go fast, I’m talking about the casual ride of a group of friends hanging out on some wheels - picture a group with a couple comfort bikes, several big-box retailer bikes, and one that looks more like a garden ornament than anything else
I feel like 30k of riding in a single session would be where I’d want to max out on a 29.
Thinking about riding in Vancouver, if that is where you plan to ride based off where you seem to reference, I feel like the city itself is set up well for cycling with a lot of the lights being set up to only change when someone presses the walk button and dedicated lanes and side streets that only buses seem to ignore.
That being said when I think of potentially congested routes like Kitsilano, Spanish Banks, English Bay, the Stanley Park loop, maybe heading over Lionsgate, etc I can see where walls of oblivious walkers might start to get grating as you try to navigate. Thinking about it, the main issue will probably arise from comfort on the bigger wheels which seems to take longer the larger the wheel.
Given the nature of cycling culture and the layout of that particular city, I’d think it’d actually be fun to play the “how much can I slow down before the light goes back to green” or the “which parked car can I hold onto while stopped” game. You might get flattened maneuvering through Granville Island or on Broadway but it’s also good to remember that on a 36" tire, not many people will be able to miss you and you can assert a bit of dominance on the road.
Just don’t try to bring it on the 7:30 am Rt 41 bus to UBC. Hardly enough space for the people.
I guess anecdotally I used a 26" through Vancouver to get to the grocery store, school, and the beach. I’d say furthest single ride was 5k and maybe 12k on the day with it. It worked well and it was all I knew so I was never longing for a larger wheel. If that’s all you plan to do, get around the city, then a 29 may be all you need. If you have bigger plans for long rides, commutes, trips all around then it’s definitely worth having a larger tire.
Probably doesn’t help at all, but I guess it’s all fuel for consideration
I might ride through Vancouver a bit, but I’m about a couple hours out so Spanish Banks, English Bay etc. would not be my usual stomping grounds. But still, they’ve got some good places there. Now with Covid, routes like the Seawall are just cleared of pedestrians, so that would be a nice place to get to when I do come into the city, which happens every once in a while.
I’ve gone 30K a couple times on my 26er, it’s… a long ordeal and I don’t think going further would be that great. That’s actually why I was thinking of getting into the bigger wheels, because I want to expand my horizons beyond that ~15K boundary.
I’ve gone on rides with friends on bikes and since they are not at the equivalent skill/fitness level as me we can sort of ride together. They will always leave you in the dust on downhills but I tend to do better on uphill purely from a fitness level. Keeping up with cyclists at speed is not only difficult but quite dangerous if you are not accustomed to high speeds on a 36".
My experience was 20", 29", 36" then changed crank length to 150/127/110. Now I’ve progressed to Geared 36" on 160mm. I’m still learning and I’ve yet to fully tap the potential of the guni. 36" unicycles in general are great for cruising on especially utilizing a handlebar but there is a pretty steep leaning curve. Once you are sufficiently skilled at riding a 36" they are quite manurable in urban environments even with short cranks.
)
/stroller 
and I’d push it while cycling the unicycle behind. Much quicker than walking. I also did multimodal travel with him like this a few times. The local busses don’t seem to mind you taking a pushchair and a unicycle on board but they would bulk at a real cargo bike. 
