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Frequently Asked Unicycling Questions
- opengrass 11mo agoHow do you downhill?
- stavros 11mo agoProbably the same answer as "how do you brake", you use the pedals to slow down.
- clort 11mo agoNormally your top speed is not really very fast as the pedals are fixed to the wheel, so you get one rotation per pedal (extremely low gear) and slowing down is not often necessary. You can overtake bicycles easily going uphill, but downhill is hard on your knees!
- jeffreygoesto 11mo agohttps://youtu.be/wIvrPY-jIwE?si=sPvn4pMMVaozJzIf https://youtu.be/wIvrPY-jIwE?si=sPvn4pMMVaozJzIf
- xarope 11mo agomakes me a feel a little bit better that they deigned to show a fall (~1:46mins in). some of those slopes I would have problems just hiking down (the scree, the pain)!
- wiredfool 11mo agoI love how the brake lever positioning there makes it look like they're grabbing their crotch the whole way down.
- y-curious 11mo agoWhen I was hiking in Joaquin Miller park in Oakland, I saw a man on a dirt bike version of a unicycle. He had just finished a route that I wouldn’t do as a novice mountain biker. Learning that unicycles don’t have suspension has made that memory even more surprising. I want to understand the motivations, which were not addressed in this FAQ.
- OuterVale 11mo agoAuthor here. You really don't want any disconnect between the rider and the uni. You're making tons of constant micro-adjustments, and any lag or reduced feedback would make riding really difficult. Suspension would also allow the wheel to move upward relative to the frame and pedals when hitting a bump. As well as this, it'd waste energy, which would tire the rider faster and eat hops. There is also the case that most suspension solutions aren't really designed to handle the sort of aggressive lateral torsional stresses of the entire weight of the rider and their movement in the way that unicycles dish it out. As someone who goes along gravel paths with relative frequency on their unicycle, it isn't too bad. I'm not sure if the dirt bike-style unicycle you're referring to was an electric one, but most municycles (mountain unicycles) have decently thick tyres to handle some of the jolts. Take the model I have as an example: https://www.krisholm.com/en/gear/unicycle/kh27.5 https://www.krisholm.com/en/gear/unicycle/kh27.5 Thanks for the comment. I'll make an update to provide a tad more information on suspension.
- dcminter 11mo ago> Suspension would also allow the wheel to move upward relative to the frame and pedals when hitting a bump. Perhaps I'm being dim, but I don't get why this would be bad; it just sounds like the definition of what suspension is! Edit: I was briefly confused by the "relative ... to the pedals" bit here as well, but only 'cos I was thinking of the type where the pedals are directly attached to the wheel.
- retsibsi 11mo agoNot a unicycist (or a physicist), but I wonder if it would throw off your balance by changing the centre of mass?
- CarVac 11mo agoI would pick up unicycling again but I live on a fairly steep hill, rendering it less convenient.
- OldSchool 11mo ago"Which Engineering degree are you studying?"
- Unicycler 11mo agoI would like to add "middle aged dads at campgrounds" as a frequent asker of the "Where's the other wheel" question.
- gloxkiqcza 11mo agoIs it a viable way of short to mid distance urban transport? Can you bunny-hop it to overcome e.g. curbs? I’ve learned to appreciate simplicity in machines. For a long time I thought of a skateboard as the simplest one for transport but this got me thinking.
- OuterVale 11mo agoYou can absolutely bunny hop (and so much more). With a 24″ or larger wheel, you can pretty confidently do short trips. If you're looking to do a few kms, 27.5″ is the sweet spot I've settled on for the size/speed/comfort trade-off. Where I live you're even permitted to take them on the bus/train, assuming you're not being too much of a pain. Unicycles are specifically outlined in the terms.
- zavec 11mo agoThis is exactly why I just bought one! I take the bus to work, but I live about 1.5k from the nearest bus stop and it's pretty flat. Unfortunately it's just starting to be icy here so I probably won't be able to make much use of it for several months, but at least it's something to look forward to!
- Unicycler 11mo agoYou can bunny-hop to go up curbs. I've witnessed a friend go up an entire staircase (something like 60 steps I think) doing it. He then proceeded to ride straight down without issue (somehow).
- codethief 11mo agoUnrelated but I really like the table of contents on the left! I first came across this type of in-article navigation last week on this magnificent website: https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/shaders https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/shaders
- OuterVale 11mo agoThank you! Oooh, that linked site is sleek. I love the effect they've got going on. I'm wary with this post that I've highlighted a flaw with my implementation, which is that items overlap on smaller screens when headings have small amounts of text. I was aware this could be an issue but hadn’t bothered to address it, as there were no sections with such minimal amounts of text. If you're interested in the implementation, I've made notes here: https://vale.rocks/posts/the-implementation-of-this-site#scroll-indication https://vale.rocks/posts/the-implementation-of-this-site#scr...
- zavec 11mo agoOoh I'm definitely going to have to give that a read for my blog! For somebody who usually hates frontend development I sure do like to tinker with small blog improvements for some reason.
- nickcw 11mo agoI think the best heckle I had while riding my unicycle was from a policeman who shouted "Are your brakes working?" (In the UK you are required by law to have working brakes on a bicycle. My unicycle had no brakes at all! Though slowing down was never a problem with the fixed wheel drive.)
- _Wintermute 11mo agoA fixed wheel counts as a brake, though I've only seen the law in relation to bicycles which require 2 working brakes not sure how this applied to unicycles.
- 4gotunameagain 11mo agoIn Germany a fixed wheel does not count as a brake, and passionate fixie drivers will have a rear brake installed but never use it. The signs on the rim of a brake that has been used is frowned upon by o̶b̶s̶e̶s̶s̶e̶d̶ passionate fixie drivers.
- shawabawa3 11mo agoSounds like the rules are the same actually In the UK a bike is required to have 2 brakes, and a fixed wheel counts a single brake, i.e. you can't ride a fixie with no extra brake but you can with a single brake
- dghf 11mo ago> In the UK you are required by law to have working brakes on a bicycle. But are you required to have them on a unicycle?
- kentiko 11mo agoThis reminds me of this excellent article: Sex, aggression, and humour: responses to unicycling Sam Shuster compares men and women’s responses to the sight of a unicyclist https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2151169/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2151169/
- watwut 11mo agoThe level of aggression he describes made me uncomfortable. Sounds like the culture of some, well men specifically, where is lives is to be jerks.
- OuterVale 11mo agoUnfortunately I can confirm his observations. They're all pretty accurate, though those that stood out to me most are: > Young men in old cars were very aggressive, acting as if to frighten me off the road—they lowered their windows and shouted abusively, waved their arms, and hooted. I did not see this with women drivers and older men in more expensive cars. I've had so many slurs, usually of the homophobic variety, shouted at me from cars. Some have felt the need to swerve their vehicle erratically at me. > They tried to put me off balance by suddenly shouting, jumping out of hiding, kicking a football, throwing stones, or riding a bicycle at me; a few asked for a ride in addition to aggressive behaviour. I've experienced plenty of teens that are aggressive and then proceed to ask for a go. The positive experiences far outnumber the negatives overall, though.
- watwut 11mo agoYeah, those actual attempts at harm or threats of it was what made me uncomfortable the most. Especially the ones with vehicle, like there is not even any possible benefit of doubt to be awarded. They are not trying to be funny and are full adults.
- metalman 11mo agoI met the inventor of the "luny cycle" which is two unicycles connected with a shaft that has attaches with universal joints and swivle joint on each seat post. He had a web site that is gone (15 yr), with video etc, with various manouvers, like one rider going strait, with the second, orbiting there progress. said his home base was the North mountain, Nova Scotia
- InfiniteLoup 11mo agoCould you perhaps link a picture of that vehicle? As searching for "luny cycle" doesn't bring up anything relevant. However, there this, which looks like an interesting take on the unicycle concept: https://inventist.com/inventions/lunicycle https://inventist.com/inventions/lunicycle
- OuterVale 11mo agoNot double saddled, but a circus bike is pretty similar to what metalman was talking about. https://www.municycle.com.au/catalogue/B-CIRCUS-HOPP20_item.html https://www.municycle.com.au/catalogue/B-CIRCUS-HOPP20_item....
- metalman 10mo agoI have tried a few times, but search is dead, there is a long established artists "colony" on the north mountain in NS, writers, theater, and the rest, but the luni, luny, loony ?,just tried again, SEARCH IS DEAD right, and it is too revolting to bother digging through the grasping,simpering, greed validation machine.
- Fricken 11mo agoWhen I was a teenager I borrowed a unicycle for the weekend from a friend at school. I practiced obsessively the whole weekend long and by Sunday afternoon I was able to go to the end of my street, turn around and come back. That Monday I returned the unicycle to my friend and never rode one again. Later in life I made a concerted effort to learn how to manual a bicycle, and after a couple seasons of regular practice I gave up, I never really got the knack for it.
- juanre 11mo agoIf you want to learn how to unicycle, and you speak Spanish, you may be interested in a booklet I wrote about how to learn to unicycle when my kids were learning: https://juanreyero.com/monociclo/ https://juanreyero.com/monociclo/ I have used the technique to teach other people, and it works surprisingly well.
- dorianmariecom 11mo agomatches my experience with the unicycle
- donatj 11mo agoI always wanted to be able to ride a unicycle. Picked one up in my late twenties and spent a lot of time with it in our garage. Never was able to balance for more than maybe ten seconds. Forward movement wasn't happening. Well over a decade later I'm thinking I probably should have had more space to move around, and start with moving, not balancing. I did it in the garage because I was terrified to fall and I could grab the walls or rafters.
- jawns 11mo agoI bought a second-hand unicycle with my own money in eighth grade and spent nearly all of high school trying to ride it well. At my best, I could ride forward with no problem, but never quite mastered how to remain in one spot by rocking back and forth. The answer to the "Does it hurt?" question is very accurate. There's just no getting around the fact that the saddle is going to be mildly uncomfortable all the time, and more than mildly uncomfortable the longer you ride. But I was surprised that one question does not appear among his FAQs, because it is one that comes readily to mind to me. "Does it help with the ladies?" The answer is a resounding no. It does not help with the ladies.
- jmclnx 11mo agoA long time ago I was out for a ride with some friends. A guy on a unicycle ran into us and rode with us for 20 miles (~25km). He was riding across country (US) and his setup was amazing, his wheel was maybe 700x35, his things were packed under his seat. He had a WEB site but sadly I lost the link :(
- thebruce87m 11mo agoThis guy? https://www.worldunicycletour.com https://www.worldunicycletour.com
- jmclnx 11mo agoNo, but a great site! When we ran into him, it was before 2005 or so. But the unicycle look like it. He was riding across the US. If I find the site I will post it here.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- infinet 11mo agoI'd love to know more about Unicycling. Is it just my browser, or is anyone else seeing the huge black Q letter or magnifying glass icon that occupies 2/3 of the screen?