This summer has been exceedingly warm; warmer perhaps than even the super-warm summer of 2014, and today was a pretty muggy day. I’d not ventured out all day, and at half past five, I was a bit miffed at having spent all day indoors. I topped up my hydration pouch, slung on my backpack, and set off with my 36-er, to try and practice for a bit. Unicycling gets a lot of attention, and before long, I was surrounded by kids in the neighborhood, asking me questions and cheering me on enthusiastically.

While I’ve been making steady progress with my 36-er, I hadn’t shot a video of my riding or mounting it, till today. Today though, as I was practicing, I saw a couple of people seated on a bench, looking at me, and even shooting a video, as I attempted to freemount and ride away.

It’s been slightly over a couple of weeks since the last update, where I’d realized I was able to mount the 36-er, but was still unable to roll away on it. For the first time in a while, I spent the weekend (28 Jun - 1st Jul) biking, riding to Örebro, and participating in a 200 BRM, my first BRM this season. The ride didn’t go to plan, but I wrapped up the weekend by enjoying a strong ride back to Linköping. On the unicycle front, I began to detect a strong reluctance to get on the 36-er. Each time I wanted to try it, I found myself subconsciously steering towards the 20” uni instead. When you analyse it for a bit, the reason becomes quite clear; on the smaller wheel, I’m so much better, and each time I ride it, I come back with more confidence and the realization that my skills are getting better, and I can also ride till my legs scream. On the 36-er though, progress is still slow, and all I could do was to hop on, and then step off. Sure, I was stepping off more gracefully now, and was now almost always able to catch the unicycle before it dropped to the ground (which feels nice), but that was about it.

After quite a bit of a hiatus, I spent some time on my unicycles again. I spent about half an hour, trying to free-mount and ride out on the 36-er; the anxiety of the big wheel is definitely history now. I’m now able to confidently hop onto the wheel, but I’m still unable to mount and get the huge wheel to overcome inertia and move ahead. I’ve done this in the past, but by dumb luck, and I need to be able to do it again now, but as a part of an easily reproducible chain of actions. I’m getting there, but it didn’t happen today. After a while, I switched the small wheel and for the first few minutes, I was struggling with it, with the opposite problem: the small wheel gets into motion too easily! Since I’d been laboring to get the big wheel moving, my actions caused the small wheel to just escape from under me! After a few moments though, I got it under control and was able to enjoy the next thirty minutes or so riding and even climbing a few grades. I wrapped by by going down the same grade, and it was nice to note my now increased control and the ease with which I balance and turn. Riding a unicycle is something I’m definitely on my way to internalizing, and it feels great.

Unicycling is a lot of fun when things go right, but it can be very, very, frustrating too; it’s very much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For starters, it appears to be similar to bicycling, and if you bike a lot, you might even be forgiven if you think you’ll find it easy to pick up unicycling, but nothing can be farther from the truth. A unicycle has a saddle and a saddlepost, much like a bicycle, and even has two pedals, but that’s where the similarity ends. I thought a unicycle might be similar to a fixed gear bike, and it is so, to some degree, but it still requires a completely different set of skills which you need to master, and you’ll need to overcome these challenges on your way to learn to unicycle.