I’d done a 30 km bike ride with Shruti in which we’d ridden to Ekängen, and looped back to the city via Rystad. The route was very nice, and included a really nice long bike path which was almost completely uninterrupted by intersections for several kilometers, and that had made me realize that it was ideal for unicycling. On May 27, I decided to do an out-and-back ride along the same route, turning back at or around the 5km mark, to get a 10k ride.

The ride started with a short walk to Linköpings resecentrum, and after I’d crossed the tracks, I was onto Södra Oskarsgatan, where I began the ride. The little stretch of the bridge on Kallerstadsleden feels a bit unnerving to ride across, though there’s a slightly elevated pavement for bikes and pedestrians, as the cars whizz past from behind us. Having a rearview mirror is a great blessing, but I still need more confidence with my freemounting to be able to just hop on and ride off, without worrying. Once that little stretch is over, the pavement then becomes a bike path that goes under an underpass, and onto the side of Gumpelkullavägen, which after crossing Tekniska Verken Linköping turns into Ekängenvägen

The ride was fun; I’d raised the saddle height further, and the increased height made for reduced pressure on the knees, and I was able to ride straight, and ride long without any pain in the knees. I was able to comfortably ride on and needed very few remounts. My stopanalyzer script showed only 18 stops. The stopanalyzer script which I wrote originally to help me revisit places I’d stopped at, post ride, from the GPS data, works very well to track the mount/dismounts on a unicycle. I spent some time consciously workin on smoother pedal strokes, and reducing the back-pressure with the pedals. Reducing the back-pressure greatly reduces exhaustion, and increases range.

A word of caution too, about unicycling: When I’ve biked long distances, I’ve experienced many variations of highway hynosis, where the mind tends to switch to total autopilot, and that affects situational awareness; that is very much a factor while unicycling also. When one is fairly early on the learning curve, one is more focused, and the pain is perhaps something that draws more attention too, but as the legs get stronger, the pain goes away, and since almost everything about unicycling is muscle-memory, it’s easy to slip into an autopilot state, and that’s not too bad, except if we need to do some descending while in that state. Descents are always a bit taxing, as they need more conscious speed and angle adjustments and the margin of error goes down quite a bit. I found myself getting into the autopilot state and even a small descent made me suddenly switch from autopilot to a hyperaware state, which caused me to almost lose balance. I controlled it and dismounted, took a few deep breaths, and resumed.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. Here’s the output of the stopanalyzer script, for the ride. The coordinates can be copied and entered into google maps, allowing us to ‘see’ the places I’ve stopped and remounted.

python3 stopanalyzer.py -f may27.gpx

1. (58.423056788, 15.63602153) 0.30 May 27 2020 16:41:21 0:0:0:0
2. (58.423057626, 15.636016249) 0.10 May 27 2020 16:41:53 0:0:0:32
3. (58.432457092, 15.643596088) 0.75 May 27 2020 16:51:32 0:0:10:11
4. (58.432771665, 15.643962545) 0.00 May 27 2020 16:53:18 0:0:11:57
5. (58.434103466, 15.645101227) 0.67 May 27 2020 16:55:38 0:0:14:17
6. (58.448571385, 15.644893188) 0.72 May 27 2020 17:08:51 0:0:27:30
7. (58.452846659, 15.642717916) 1.62 May 27 2020 17:13:55 0:0:32:34
8. (58.46332035, 15.639887431) 0.50 May 27 2020 17:24:53 0:0:43:32
9. (58.456649947, 15.64051247) 3.05 May 27 2020 17:30:42 0:0:49:21
10. (58.455960619, 15.640956962) 0.00 May 27 2020 17:34:51 0:0:53:30
11. (58.455887026, 15.641023012) 1.15 May 27 2020 17:36:00 0:0:54:39
12. (58.434611996, 15.645680919) 0.17 May 27 2020 17:54:17 0:1:12:56
13. (58.433863827, 15.64470208) 0.00 May 27 2020 17:57:14 0:1:15:53
14. (58.433823594, 15.644718425) 1.05 May 27 2020 17:57:24 0:1:16:3
15. (58.423071959, 15.635941483) 0.20 May 27 2020 18:09:10 0:1:27:49
16. (58.422956373, 15.636010298) 1.73 May 27 2020 18:09:45 0:1:28:24
17. (58.422942962, 15.635954894) 0.38 May 27 2020 18:11:44 0:1:30:23
18. (58.422384978, 15.629464283) 0.77 May 27 2020 18:15:55 0:1:34:34 Cumulative stoppage time in minutes: 13.15