I’ve been reading this forum for quite awhile, now. At least a year and a half. But I didn’t have a uni on which to learn for the longest time. I was watching craigslist, looking for my learner, but nothing worth buying was showing up. Until a decent-looking 24" cheapie showed up right before xmas and I jumped on it. I would have preferred a 20" under similar circumstances, so learning would be easier, but this is what became available.
I started practicing every day and assumed that some learning was occurring. As a juggler, daily practice sessions and trying to do something until you fail at it less are not new concepts to me. Strapping on the safety gear and going outside for it is kind of a drag, though. Once I’m out there and doing it, I’m fine.
For two weeks or so, I did this religiously. Even to the point of bringing my uni with me when visiting my gf’s folks for the holiday. Then, between cold/wet weather and a month of illness, practice went on hold. I wanted to practice, but was prevented from doing so. I do go out and practice when I think I can manage it without making myself sicker, but only recently has that meant I could get out at all, much less once a week or more. Frequency will improve as the weather and my health improve.
The last few practice sessions, infrequent as they have been, have been great. Much better than the first couple of weeks. I can’t ride competently yet, but I am feeling improvement, whereas I was not before. I don’t count revolutions or measure distance, but I managed to ride from my carport to the end of my driveway yesterday for the first time ever. I’m guessing that’s a distance of maybe 75-100’, much of which is on a downhill grade (my level app says about 3-4 degrees), and it is quite uneven in terms of bumpiness, grade changes, and camber. I have only managed it once so far. I have gotten at least halfway down it on a few occasions and nowhere near that on many more.
A few practice sessions ago, I dragged myself out to a local park to use the Tennis courts for learning, since they have attributes that my driveway does not have. When I got there, I saw a sign saying “Tennis use only” or something similar. I am a good citizen and obeyed the sign, so that was disappointing. I had driven all of the way over there, though, so I figured I’d try to see what I could do in the parking lot, which, while not exactly level, was more so than my driveway. I had sort of managed some short unassisted rides without much control from a curb mount in my driveway before. I did an assisted mount using the bed of my truck in the parking lot and went out into the abyss. It was my best feeling ride thus far in terms of distance and control. It wasn’t very far, but it was much better than I had managed in my driveway. Some of the subsequent rides even got me to where I ran out of tarmac, though that would have taken longer to happen if I could keep from veering down grade. This was the session where I started seeing the aforementioned improvements. This was also the first time I was successfully able to use my arms to have any kind of actual steering control at all. The two are probably related.
The park was also my first real exposure to strangers seeing me practice. Everybody either ignored me or seemed at least ostensibly supportive, which is nice. Nobody asked me about the other wheel. Most of them were probably there to play frisbee golf, which might have something to do with that. Somebody seemed to be taking pictures of me, but I don’t know why anybody would want pictures or video of a stranger who can’t ride and also isn’t wiping out spectacularly. They could have been doing something else. I was concentrating on practice and only really saw them out of the corner of my eye.
I haven’t been back to the park since, but I seem to be getting better at handling the shortcomings of my driveway. Not good yet, but less bad; as is evidenced by being able to get to the end of the driveway instead of riding in an unintended lefthand circle until the inevitable UPD. I also almost managed a static mount once or twice. Maybe I’ll actually pull it off in my next session or the one after that.
