If you’ve spent any time with me over the last few months, you know that I’ve been learning to ride a unicycle. Way back in March or April, I bought a 20” learning unicycle off Facebook marketplace. I eventually bought a 36” unicycle with the goal of commuting to work. My workplace is about 10-13km away from home, depending on the route, making this goal pretty ambitious for a beginner.

It has been a long time since I have learned a completely new skill. Before my mountain bike was stolen, I was spending lots of time riding off road, which means learning a whole host of new bike related skills. At work, I’ve been learning to code in C++. I’ve been learning to speak, write and read Hindi. Each of these things represent learning something new, but each is building on existing knowledge or using learning skills I’ve been developing over a long period of time. With all of these skills, it’s hard for me to be aware of myself learning. Unicycling, on the other hand, is unlike anything else I’ve ever learned. With no real frame of reference for riding a uni, I find that I am hyper aware of the the learning process. It’s as if I can feel my brain slowly rewiring itself. With enough repitition, I learn to make the tiny adjustments necessary to balance not only side to side, but also fore and aft. Many of the narratives I hear with regards to learning new skills involve some “aha” moment, or something finally clicking into place. This has not been my experience. Learning to unicycle has been a slow, sometimes excrutiating process, characterized by incremental, fleeting improvements that fall away almost as fast as they come. Eventually, with time, these improvements stick. I’m now at the point where I can reliably (almost everytime) free mount my 36er, and I can do about 15km in one ride. I think I’ll be ready to ride to work in the next few weeks.

I estimate that I spent three to five hours getting to the point where I could ride the 20” uni more than about five meters. Two schools of thought exist with regards to learning to ride a unicycle. The first comprises riding along very close to a wall, using it for support in case one starts to fall to the side. The second involves using the wall to mount, and then attempting to ride away, unsupported. I took the latter approach, because I didn’t want to fall into the habit of using the wall as a crutch. The 20” uni is small enough that I could simply step off of it if I started to fall, meaning that I wasn’t too worried about falling on my bum due to the uni slipping out from under me.

Once I learned to ride the uni around that parking area of my apartment block, I endevoured to learn how to free mount. This means getting on the unicycle without any external support. This proved almost as difficult as learning to ride in the first place! Learning to free mount taught me that acquiring any new unicycle related skill takes a lot of time and patience. At one point I stopped riding for over a month because I was so discouraged by my lack of progress with the free mount. Eventually, after trying and failing hundreds of times, I succeeded in getting on and riding away. With a few more hours of practice, I was able to pretty reliably free mount. I felt that I was ready for a bigger and better uni.

I ended up buying a KH 36 unicycle. This represents a significant upgrade over my learning uni. The KH has a giant 36” wheel, a hydraulic disc brake, a top of the line saddle, and a pretty blue aluminum frame. Wheel size, in the land of unicycles, is like bike gears. Given that the pedals are fixed to the wheel, each pedal rotation equates to a single rotation of the wheel. A larger wheel means that one can ride further with a single pedal rotation. The 36er is roughly 1.8 times larger in circumference than the 20”, meaning that I can cover much more ground in the same number of pedal strokes. I figure that I could get to the point where I would average about 15 km/h on the 36er, meaning that I could get to work in less than an hour. For distance road riding, the 36er is the only way to go. Another interesting aspect of unicycles is the fact that the cranks are far shorter than those found on bicycles. My 36er comes drilled with two pedal positions, one at 150mm, and one at 127mm. Compare this to the 175mm cranks on my commuter bike. Shorter cranks allow one to pedal faster more comfortably, as the foot is not making as big of a circle as on longer cranks. With 127mm cranks, I might expect to get up to 180 rpm, which would be nigh inconceivable on a bicycle.

Moving from the 20” to the 36er was much trickier than I anticipated. At first, the size of the wheel was super intimidating, as it puts the saddle several centimeters above my navel when I stand next to the uni. Unlike the 20”, I could not step off the uni, I could only fall off. Moreover, given the increased size, it takes significantly more effort to get the unicycle moving. For the first few days of riding it, I struggled to get it moving even with the help of the wall. Once I was reliably able to get it moving, I was entranced. Riding the 36er incites a feeling of exhileration of the type I haven’t experienced before. The sensation of riding a unicycle is more like walking than that of riding a bicycle. Unicycling, like walking, is an exercise in controlled falling. The pedals serve to conteract this falling, in the same way that the heel of the leading foot prevents one from falling when walking. The height of the 36er is almost reminiscent of riding a tall bike – when riding down the Capital City Trail in Melbourne I tower over everyone else on the trail. The 36er is also remarkably quiet. Without a chain, brakes (I removed the disc brake for the purposes of learning), or steering mechanism, the uni doesn’t really have anything to make noise. On quiet sections of the trail, I’m greeted only by the rythmic slap of the tire against the ground and my breath.