Unicycles vs. bikes.

1 Conversation

Intro.

Many people think of unicycling as just a clown skill, confined to the stripy red and white circus tent and can not imagine that I am very serious about the whole 'One Wheel' idea. As a result of this, I get asked many questions about my uni, usually just "Oy, mate, where's your other wheel?" but sometimes I get a more sensible, "Why not just stick to two wheels?". I wrote this page to save my breath and to raise awareness about the sport. I have listed many good and bad points for both modes of transport.

Unicycles:

It's a lot more impressive to onlookers,

It's easier to fall off of, especially when there are lots of onlookers,

You can't go very fast,

It hurts less when you fall off because you're not going as fast,

You get laughed at a lot,

It's a lot more fun,

It takes a lot longer to learn,

You have a greater sense of achievement once you eventually do learn,

Unicycles are more manouverable,

It's hard to find someone else to uni with,

You get stupid stuff shouted at you,

You can shout stupid stuff back (i.e. "We're too good for the extra stabiliser.",

They are easier to transport,

You get a lot more saddle-sore (I speak from experience!),

Lets face it, it looks pretty dumb! (but people are usually far to amazed to notice minor details like that).

Bikes:

It looks a lot less impressive,

It's harder to fall off, but hurts more when you do,

It's faster,

It's less manouverable,

You can free wheel down hills,

You look less stupid,

You get laughed at by unicyclists, and it sounds a bit naff if you try and answer back,

You can laugh at unicyclists if you shout first,

Other people laugh at you if you can't ride a bike.

If you add up all the pros and cons of each, unis just win, but it's all to do with personal preferance and whether you can be bothered to spend endless hours learning to ride. I hope that from this you non uni-ers will take us a bit more seriously and that maybe I have inspired a few of you to try it!

If you want to learn to ride or just want to find out more, a good site is unicycling.org www.unicycling.org, or if you want to go one better and actually buy one, pop down to your nearest bike shop and ask there, they quite often have a couple at the back of the shop or know where to get them from. I would also recomend the UK Unicycle Source for specialist accessories. Happy riding!


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