alt Hacker NewsFrequently Asked Unicycling Questions
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When 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.
I 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.)
Unrelated 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
I would like to add "middle aged dads at campgrounds" as a frequent asker of the "Where's the other wheel" question.
Is 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.
If 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/
I have used the technique to teach other people, and it works surprisingly well.
matches my experience with the unicycle
This 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
When 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.
"Which Engineering degree are you studying?"
I would pick up unicycling again but I live on a fairly steep hill, rendering it less convenient.
I 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
I 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.