who gets HIGHER

trials_uni said:

Watch 'this' (

) movie

Having watched that, as well as a couple of others that show up on the
same page, I can't help thinking what a superb escape vehicle a trials
bike would make. All you need is a criminally devious mind, several
years of practice, and you could get away with just about anything. I
can't imagine the police would stand a chance at keeping up with one of
those things, and I'm sure they'd never be able to predict the route
you could take.

So... any decent trials riders out there, and any bank robbers that are
looking for a mastermind for their operation? 😄

STM

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semach.the.monkey
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This is a subject i often contemplate in my mind...
Being that i ride both unicycle and bike trials, I'll add some insight
to this conversation.

First of all, lets just compare side-hop height. and second of all,
lets compare uni sidehop onto a ledge, and bike sidehop, over a bar.
this way, it takes out the advantage of bikers that they can go to
their front wheel first, then slide the back end onto the ledge. And,
I'll throw out two numbers that are prominent in my head.
-I believe Benito Ros can sidehop over a bar at least 138cm, and
probably around 140
-I have sidehopped onto a ledge that was 109cm high, and can probably
do around 112 optimally.

so... this leaves a difference of about 30cm, or 1 foot. This is
accounted for (in my mind) by the extra leverage that bikes generage,
and the fact that Benito, and other bike trials pros, "train"
consistantly, and are genetically suited for their application. Myself
on the other hand, practise many different sports, am not very
physically suited for jumping high, and i'm not paid to unicycle
professionally. With this in mind, i think that someone who unicycles,
and who is genetically a very good jumper, could sidehop upwards of
120cm on a unicycle. This makes the difference down to 15-20cm. This is
almost solely based on the leverage thing, and a very reasonable
figure.

Now, for the discussion regarding the "Why should we uni, if we'll
never be able to match the height of a bike?!?!?!?"
well, in my opinion, unis are super wicked because they are way more
maneuverable than bikes, and we can do more technical "close together"
trials. I highly doubt that bike trials riders (even the best in the
world) would be able to pull off alot of the super-technical trials
that myself, and other unicyclists have done. (also unis are really
cool!)

Just for reference, I can sidehop about 100cm on my trials bike, and
i've been riding (not very often) for about 1 year.

-Ryan

--
m_extreme_uni

"Yeah, Gravity is bad" Leo Kottke
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You're pretty much correct on most parts Ryan,

but, sidehopping to the front wheel first on a bike is something that
only some people do, like yourself. It isn't a bad thing though. This
is normally the case if you sidehop towards your forward foot side. The
'norm' in biketrials is to sidehop towards your back foot side for
reasons I can not be bothered to explain in detail right now. So
sidehopping to the front wheel is 'odd' as it were.

Some people naturally sidehop to both wheels at the same time, whilst
others can't help but land on the front wheel first slightly. It
doesn't matter too much.

Almost every single one of the top riders in biketrials sidehops to two
wheels directly, almost never to front wheel first (except if they do
it to their odd side). Benito, CLS, Tunnicliffe, Hermance etc.. all
sidehop to two wheels to their prefered sides.

^But the point being, that when biketrials riders use their front
wheels to lever themselves up on a sidehop, it is considered 'not quite
the same' as sidehopping to tyre on a uni.

However, sidehopping to two wheels directly, or onto the backwheel on a
bike is as fair as a uni hopping to tyre because the backwheel of a
bike is the equivalent of a uni's wheel, and since sidehopping to two
wheels directly involves the backwheel touching down immediately it is
the same as uni landing to tyre...

Benito infact sidehops to two wheels onto walls directly, and can get a
good 57" or so right now. To sidehop to backwheel directly I expect he
can get something like 54" or maybe higher.

So a fairer comparison would be how high a bike can sidehop to TWO
WHEELS (yep, its fair because the backwheel makes it up there at the
same time) to a uni landing to tyre.

57" vs. 110cm. -- that's what it is really.

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Sponge

MSN: [email hidden] feel free to add, I'm always up for a
good chat and get to know other unicyclists 🙂

update on Hodges vid... delayed, need a few more clips.
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But having said all that above, bikes and unis are quite different, and
as Ryan said, unis are cool and something totally different to do.

I see my unicycling as a way of exploring trials further, and to
compliment my biketrials riding.

And as we speak, newer heights are being explored on bikes, so I think
that there will always be a 30-40cm gap between the biggest sidehops on
unis and bikes.

But hey, forget that for a bit, and if you're out sessioning with
decent biketrials riders and you want to keep up with them, your pedal
stalls are their sidehops to tyre. That's how I think (and later Joe
Hodges became convinced) that uni riders should try to keep up with
biketrials riders.

I try to pedal stall as high as Joe hops--
Joe tries to pedal stall how high biketrials riders can sidehop to
tyre.
^That's our way of setting ourselves goals regarding sidehops.

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Sponge

MSN: [email hidden] feel free to add, I'm always up for a
good chat and get to know other unicyclists 🙂

update on Hodges vid... delayed, need a few more clips.
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