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Is anyone else riding an electric unicycle?


NateW

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The first 15 minutes were just frustrating.

Then I started using a fence as a crutch, and it still sucked but at least I didn't have to jump off every 5-10 seconds.

Then it hit me - if keep my eyes up, looking forward, rather than looking down, I can actually do this. My hips kinda just started steering the wheel to keep it underneath me, and things progressed steadily from there. I'm still pretty wobbly at low speeds, and tight turns are a challenge, but I made it about a quarter mile out-and-back without embarrassing myself.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

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I have about 3 hours on it now and I'm almost comfortable on it... It's a lot like riding a bicycle in that I have a very limited intellectual understanding of the forces involved to steer it, but my brain stem is figuring it out anyway.

No body armor yet, but helmet + wrist guards + knee pads + elbow pads for sure. No noteworthy crashes yet either though, so far I've been able to hop off and run, or maybe just have an unscheduled sit-down.

Compare that to my OneWheel, which was intuitive to ride, but knocked me down hard a couple times in the first couple hours. They're great on smooth ground, but surprisingly small bumps and cracks turn into serious obstacles. Whereas the EUC just takes it all in stride.

On 7/3/2022 at 12:18 PM, scottishsurfer said:

I think it was instagram but i saw a vid of a lass hit a very steep dirt jump on one 😆

People are hitting huge jumps on these things now! It's pretty amazing.

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That video was very instructive. Those trails are about 45 minutes from my house, and I ride them almost every weekend in the summer - on a bike - so I know them well, and was thinking about working my way up to the same trails on the EUC. Suddenly I'm not sure that's in my best interest.

With a bike, speed management is pretty easy because it's mostly dictated by gravity, plus a little bit of finesse for fine tuning.

With an EUC, if you land with your weight forward, it "helpfully" speeds up to get itself back under you. I'md bet real money that's what led that guy to overshoot the jump at the end. He landed perfectly at 1:51 and then went into the stratosphere on the next jump.

That kind of thing does not happen on a bike. If you land in the right spot on the previous jump, you're just about guaranteed to land in the right spot on the next jump - and that holds true for most of the jumps on most of the trails at that park. The EUC gave him a big dose of speed at just the wrong time. I wasn't sure he was going to walk away from that one. 

You and he may have just saved me a trip to a hospital. I'm going to tone it down a bit with the EUC. 🙂

Me riding the trail shown in the first half of that video:
https://www.facebook.com/nate.waddoups/videos/10222139695784103

Me riding the trail shown in the second half of that video:
https://www.facebook.com/nate.waddoups/videos/10223713996860646

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I should have mentioned, it's called Duthie Hill park. That place is fantastic. It opened back around 2010 and I try to get out there once a week in the off-season. I'm a little surprised I don't already know the guy in those videos. 🙂

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