I've spent most of the last 5 years or so dabbling with various circus-type skills (juggling, diabolo, devilstick, cigar boxes, balloon modelling etc.), and then in summer 1997, I finally took the plunge and bought a 20" DM Ringmaster (British made) unicycle.
The following is a brief history of my riding career to date.
Here in the UK, we don't usually have long driveways or huge basements in our houses, so there was no alternative but to get out there in public from day 1 and make a complete fool of myself.
Being one of life's more sensitive souls, I took to going out in the late evening when it was going dark and the only people around were a few dog-walkers.
All set up with an old cycling helmet and gloves, I spent the first couple of sessions just trying to get on the thing with the assistance of a wall, and just to rock back and forth to get used to the pedal action.
The next couple of sessions were spent cycling beside the wall with my hand banging against it every foot at first, then every yard, and eventually just the occasional dab.
I had decided that when I eventually could do this as far as the end of the wall (about 25 yards), I would just carry on cycling into the open space beyond - no problem. Sure enough, the first time I went beyond the wall, a mad panic engulfed me and I fell flat on my face about 1 yard later.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, in about 3 more sessions, I managed to get up to about an average of about 5 pedal rotations in the open, with the occasional 10, and about 3 more days later I reached that magical moment where you are suddenly able to just keep going for 30 or 40 rotations.
Even at that time, it was still very marginal - a small twig or crack in the tarmac was enough to cause a pretty spectacular wipeout, but with perseverance I was soon at the stage where I could keep going for maybe 400 yards, at which stage my muscles or concentration usually gave way.
By the time I had mastered the forward riding, I was getting tired of the fact that I could only practice in places where there was something to lean on while mounting the uni. The car had come in useful as a "portable mounting aid", but the fingermarks on the roof had begun to look unsightly.
Having read a lot of stuff on the web about free mounting, I concluded that there are really 2 methods for the basic mount:
Method a. seemed simpler in theory, so this is the one I tried first. After 3 or 4 sessions, I could do a successful mount very occasionally (about 1 in 10), and I thought that with more practice it would improve pretty quickly. Over the next week or so, I continued to practise, but there was no improvement, and I just couldn't achieve any consistency. Everything happened too quickly and more often than not, I ended up stranded with the cranks vertical and slowly toppled over.
Feeling slightly despondent, I thought I'd try a few days with method b. I found almost immediately that because of the natural angle of the top foot when it lands on the pedal, it is quite easy to pedal backwards, even if the pedals are completely vertical. This was a huge discovery, because it meant that I could do things more slowly without having to panic if the pedals reached vertical before my second foot was in place. In another hour or so, I was beginning to control the change of direction from backwards to forwards pedalling, and then everything came together very quickly so that within a couple more days I was making one out of every 2 or 3 attempts.
This was a huge step forward, as I could now ride anywhere without having to look for trees/walls/cars/people everytime I needed to get on the uni.
Since I started unicycling, I always felt that idling was the "holy grail". Not until I could idle for a reasonable time would I feel like a "proper" unicyclist.
As my mounting technique already involved pedalling half a turn backwards before setting off forwards, I felt as if I was already half way there, and just needed to add the other change of direction at the end of the forward stroke.
Having read of a few problems in falling backwards while learning to idle, I donned my helmet for the first time since the early days, and tried to get into an idle directly from a free mount.
Progress was pretty good and after the first session, I was up to about 3 complete cycles (i.e. 3 forward/backward pairs).
Over the next couple of nights, the average improved, and eventually (last night) I got up to a record of 12 complete cycles. I now feel that with more practice, the confidence and relaxation will increase, and hopefully within a short time I should have mastered it, and I will finally think of myself as a "proper" unicyclist!
So,that's my unicycling career in a nutshell - if you've made it to here then thanks for sticking with it. It was quite enjoyable to recall some of the struggles that I had to get this far.
Regarding injuries, to my great surprise, I've never really had a bad one (yet). I usually manage to get my feet down even if I can't catch the uni.
In the very early days, I once lost the uni sideways and slid down the wall on my arm, which was a bit painful, and I also had several nasty gashes where one foot came off and the pedal came round and whacked me on the back of the leg. Other than that, I've had nothing more serious than a few bruises mostly on the backs of my thighs from when I come off and try to catch the seat between my legs.
Anyway, that's all from me for now. Please keep the chat coming. Apart from asnything else, it's always nice to know that you're not the only one struggling to learn what looks from the outside to be a pretty simple skill.
(Trying to) keep on top,
Mick
Mick Whitehead