Everyone learns at a different pace. The average is a total of 15
hours, including the extremes (I read of one guy who took him 5 hrs. a
week for a year).
Longer cranks and/or a smaller wheel may get you out and riding (see
below).
When I couldn't ride my uni, I road my bike everywhere and practiced
w/o hands as much as possible, and kept making it a bit harder all the
time (one eye closed, around turns, over speed bumps, and weave around
lane bumps on non-bussy streets). Definately not as good as riding my
uni, but I felt it helped a bit.
I was a slow learner as well. It took me 40 hrs over two monts. After
a while it felt like I had to look w/ a microscope to notice
improvements (one eye closed, one or both hands on the seat, too
much/little air in the tire, and on bumpy dirt allong a fence in my
back yard). I found it easiest to ride w/ about 50 psi but after
riding w/ what felt like way too little for a while, I got used to it
and then 50 psi was harder, so I switched it up a lot untill it didn't
make any difference.
A UPD for me meant not landing on my feet so riding in open spaces was
too terrifiing to me. I found a LONG railing a few blocks from my
house. It was 80-90 ft long and 2" in diameter. I found this
significantly better than a wall (so I could push *or *pull myself to
the rail), or a short rail (saved a lot of time in turning around and
could work on consistency more).
After 6 wks of practicing on my 24 I could fairly consistently ride the
full length of the rail on each side, but I didn't have the guts to
ride in the open, so I ordered a 16" CX. When I got it 2 wks later, I
could ride all over the playground w/in a hour. UPD's were still
scarry, but not as bad.
When I could ride around the neighborhood on the 16" for an hour w/ few
UPD's (two months later), I got a 20". Two months later I started
doing my 2.5 mile commute a couple of times a week on my 20 w/ 127's.
Then another two I could do it at night on well lit streets and I could
finally ride my 24 w'o fear of injuring myself in basic UPD's (8 monts
after I first started).
Later I got some 150 mm cranks to experiment w/ and put them on my 20
and used it and my 16" for learning to ride backwards.
The easiest to ride fpr me, from easiest to hardest of my unis,have
been:
16" w/ 127 cranks
16" w/ 114's or 20" w/ 150's
16" w 102's
20" w 127's
20" w/ 114's or 24" w/ 170's
24" w/ 150's
20" w/ 102's
--
skilewis74
Ride everywhere and never just ride anywhere. If you can ride where you
are going within a hour, do it, and if you can do a trick 50-75% of the
time do it along the way.- Bob Burnquist
What next? 'IUF skill levels'
(http://www.unicycling.org/iuf/levels/)*'
Street'
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Unicyclopedia/Street)*'unicycletips.com'
(http://unicycletips.com/)*'Trials class system'
(http://tinyurl.com/yqpvxk)*'Trials Building'
(http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64235)
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