Sweet, tonight I watched one of the Voodoo Unicycle tutorials (Edinburgh folks can play spot the location). Now, 360 unispins are a bit beyond me right now, but it gave me the idea to try hopping on the spot. Ten minutes later, and I’ve totally nailed it, woot!
I’ve tried hopping before without success, but this time I a) lowered tyre pressures waay down, b) lowered the seat waay down, and c) tried to hop in a four-corners-of-a-square pattern rather than on-the-spot. The last thing is what made all the difference. Trying to hop on the spot was just a dumb idea. The whole point of hopping is to ensure that you land with the wheel under where your centre of gravity is going to be. So, if you tilt a bit to the side, you need to be jumping to the side. By forcing myself to jump around in a square pattern, it made me do a side-to-side pattern which is what led to my breakthrough. Four hops led to ten hops, then thirty, then fifty, then a spectacular crash before I finally managed to do a hundred. I love numerically quantifiable progress. 🙂
I also tried cycling backwards tonight in my corridor (lots of walls to hang onto). Strangely, it doesn’t feel too different to cycling forward. When unicycling your sense of balance is primary and your eyes are kinda secondary. Someday I’m going to have to try it out for real without a wall. Given that I still haven’t nailed idling, I’ll try cycling backwards for a while and see if that helps me grok idling.
Oh, and I finally changed the title of this blog to be a bit more accurate. Can’t remember who told me I should do this, but I’ve finally done it!