I agree the video won't help much at all for curbs. Actually the
video is not a good representative of the USA/IUF levels. But it
does give a good idea of what the trick is.
*
* Greg> I've practiced
* Greg> going off curbs, and that is pretty easy, but the thought of
* Greg> moving on to 2 steps is pretty scary. I was thinking about
* Greg> trying some steps that are spread out more, with each step about
* Greg> 4 feet or longer. It still seems that going to 2 steps is the
* Greg> tough/dangerous part, after that 3 steps wouldn't be much more
* Greg> difficult.
*
[good info deleted]
*
* 4) If you lean back, you wont make it. You need to commit to doing the
* trick. It's just like skiing in this respect - if you don't lean down
* the hill you'll lose it backwards off the uni.
Actually I tell people who start to do curbs is to lean back just before
going over them. Same goes for stairs. Usually if I fall doing curbs
or stairs it is forward. Of course if you lean to far back will make
the unicycle go shooting out down the curb or stairs and leave you
standing (or sitting) on top of the curb or stairs.
*
* 6 & 7) This is a great stabilizer. Another thing to try (highly
* recommended) is pulling the seat up towards yourself. Pull hard. This
* will keep the pedals on your feet for longer. One problem you'll
* initially encounter is your feet getting bounced off the pedals. This
* helps to solve that.
*
This is a very good thing to do. Use on hand to hold the seat
(the new Miyata seat handles work great for this) and the other for
balance. This way I can control where the unicycle is in comparison
with my body. When I do curbs I don't hang on to the seat but when
I do stairs I will hang on the seat.
*
* Apart from all this, just try it. Yes of course the smaller and
* further spread the steps you try, the better. For a sense of scale, I
* have ridden down a maximum of 9 fairly normal stairs. I haven't yet
* screwed up the courage to do more and flights of ten or more around
* here all seem pretty steep. I've gone down sets of 6 stairs that I'd
* rank as as steep as any normal flight.
I would highly suggest this method. It gets the confidence up. What
I have seen some people do when the stairs are a little wider apart
is to go diagonally down them.
*
* Greg> I'd appreciate any help or safety tips (I assume falling off the
* Greg> back is the preferred panic maneuver).
*
* It's preferable not to panic at all :-) I have always managed to keep
* my feet, except for once when I twisted my ankle :-( I actually prefer
* to "fall" off the front - jumping over the uni to clear steps.
8) Wear some gloves if you have some. Not that you will need them
but they will make you feal more confident, and confidence is key
to doing curbs and stairs. The other day I did wipe while doing
a set of three stairs and I landed kinda hard on my hands, I wished
that I had some gloves on to cushion the blow.
9) Use a 24" wheel (or larger) for stairs. The bigger wheel will make
the stairs 'smoother'. When I was Quebec City last summer for the
UNICON (Unicycle Convention), there was a bunch of people doing
stairs on day (showing off) and all of them had 24" unis. The
number of stairs that they were doing (with ease I might add) was
about 10-15.
*
* Terry.
*
__________________________________________________________________________
Andy B. Cotter CAE UW - Madison
cotter@cae.wisc.edu Application Support