Muni on a 36er is just awesome. Yesterday I was out riding XC trails
with a friend. I had my UDC 36er, he had a 26" muni. My 36er
absolutely flew over the trails, including bits of flattish single
track - it was awesome. If you keep your wits about you and plan for
the trail ahead the huge wheel rolls happily over *everything* in your
path, at really high speed.
For the majority of riding, my Qu-Ax / Wheel TA / slick tyre works fine
- it has a big contact patch so it's fairly grippy. But I wish I could
get a 36er tyre with knobbles on.
We were looking at descending a steep hill. My friend's 26" (which
he's not yet used to) slipped in the mud, and he UPDed. I was
confident that with the high speed possible on my 36" I should be able
to successfully spin out the bank, despite its steepness and slippery
mud surface. And I was right, I descended the hill no problem...
Unfortunately, disaster struck on the flat. With the speed I'd
acquired down the hill I carried on rolling through the singletrack.
Unfortunately, I hit a particularly slippy section and the slick tyre
just stepped sideways underneath me. Suddenly I was stepping off
sideways, kinking my ankle painfully outwards underneath my weight as I
fell from a height, at speed. Ouch.
The result was a nasty sprain - no worse, fortunately. I was glad to
have been wearing boots with ankle support (they do have some safety
disadvantages but I always figure that for me these are outweighed by
the extra protection). After lying there recovering, I found that I
had landed in a patch of stinging nettles - oh dear. Fortunately my
long sleeved top protected me - mostly... I'll be unable to ride for a
while, am taking ibuprofen and am wearing an ankle support (and icing /
elevating / resting the injury). Still, it's tedious being injured -
as always.
Anyhow the bottom line is that coker muni is great fun and I'll
continue to do it. However, I'm going to have to be wary of slippery /
steep sections in future. Obviously falling from the height and speed
of a Coker is never going to be good, but in this case I really
*really* wished I could have had a proper knobby tyre (not like the
standard Coker tyre - real knobs) to give me that little bit of extra
grip. I guess I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope enough
people realise the utter awesomeness of coker muni-ing for a knobbly
tyre to be put into production!
--
mark williamson
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat? And no
pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!
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