You ever tried to ride one of those crazy things? I have. There’s a STEP welded to the frame so that you can step up and get into the seat and reach the pedals! You have to start the thing moving and leap onto it in motion! Crazy design. just… nuts.
KNO3 sent this in. It’s all in Russian, and I don’t read Cyrillic letters, so I can’t tell you what the heck they’re talking about. I can assume it’s a sales pitch, as some of the funnier things I can imagine happening DON’T happen in this video. And the music is awfully serious.
This looks like some pretty good homespun tech going on. I say what we do is show the video to a bunch of Swiss engineers and tell them that they probably couldn’t build anything better. In the space of a few months, they’d have it down to a two-kilo racing vehicle that hovers a good two feet up and also folds neatly into its own case. In red anodized finish. Then, we find those trials bike guys in Scotland and tell ’em THEY can’t find a way to ride it up and over, say, a smallish mountain and the roofs of the town on top thereof. Then we bring whatever they invent over to the United States, have Mountain Dew sponsor a big race on these things, and pretty soon, China will be producing them for SportSmart to sell at a price we can all afford.
Boom. Fun.
So I lucked up into this nice full sized trials bike. A guy that had worked for a local bike shop (The Peddler) had owned it. Nice clean paint job. Most of the parts are ‘Tank’, a brand I wasn’t familiar with, but it was tight as a tick (as people used to say around h’yar) and seemed pretty fun. I saw it when I had taken my little BMX sized trials bike in for brake repair (but that’s another post) and they sold it to me for a price designed to get it instantly out of their store-room and into my dining room- til I make more room for in the bike shed (anyone want to buy a little 16″ trek kids bike, or a 1979 Mongoose BMX with Ashtabula forks?)
Those who do not mess around with the odder bicycles available look at this thing and rightly say “Where the heck is the seat?” Then, sometimes, they realize that the frame isn’t even designed to accommodate anyone who would consider adding a seat. There ain’t noplace for such, y’see. If it had a seat, any time you did a trick like maybe grabbing the front brake and balancing the bike on it’s front tire, then the seat would bump you in the butt and throw you over the handlebars. That’s not a good trick.
Now, if you like dinking around with tricks like that, this is an okay bike. If you find one for a couple of hundred bucks, and you have that kind of money to spend on a bike that won’t get you where you’re going, but will allow you to have a fun time when you get there, then go for it. It’s a wonderful workout. Remember to keep your head up, your knees bent, and feel your way to your balance point. Looking at your tire is not helpful, so don’t.
If you really, really, really like dinking around with tricks like that, and you want the best of the best, this might not be the bike for you. You might wish for a better balanced frame. You might also want disc brakes, which I fell in love with on my DMR, and had decided that I never wanted any other kind. The cantilever V brakes on this bike have surprised and pleased me, though. I’m glad I didn’t pass on this bike because of the lack of discs.
If you want a bike that’ll get you where you want to go, then let you ride trials, then get you back home, look for something with more gears. This is just a workout/play bike. It won’t get you anywhere efficiently unless it’s downhill of where you are at the moment.
Have fun!
It’s all fun and games til somebody gets hurt. So it’s best to bring along someone clumsier than yourself.
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. The Unicycle Diaries.
Today, I’m running it as a comic strip, but it might have to get shunted to a Sidebar item, since it’s essentially the same setup over and over with lots of punchlines. That sort of thing looks weird, popping up in the main comic every so often. I’ll try to vary the backgrounds and title color so that you know you’re not looking at the same thing repeating.
So here’s the deal: When you ride a unicycle, whether on the streets, in the parks, on the trails, or anywhere else you can imagine, you get some comments. Not a lot of comments as far as numbers go, but LOTS of comments as far as people go. What I mean is this- ALMOST EVERY PERSON WHO SPEAKS TO SOMEONE ON A UNICYCLE SAYS, “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF YOUR BIKE?” Then there are a few people that say a few other things.
I’m not saying that everyone’s being unoriginal. You’re faced with a person on a unicycle. He or she is moving pretty quick and will be gone in a moment. You’d like to say something to them. “Hi” seems sort of dull, given the circumstances. Most people are not dull, and would like to say something better than “Hi.” Most people have a solid sense of humor. So… you very, very quickly scan your mind for something clever to say. What comes out, since you’ve never had previous opportunity to say something to a unicyclist, is “What happened to the rest of your bike.” Perfectly natural.
Now look at it from the point of view of the unicyclist. He’s been here before. Not with you, but with a few dozen other people who went through the same mental gymnastics you have just done. They, too, wanting to say something fun and clever, said, “What happened to the rest of your bike.” But the unicyclist has had time to prepare responses. The unicyclist also does not wish to be dull (no dullard is going to be cruising around on a one-wheeled contraption, anyhow, right?) and so he or she eventually has a long list and needn’t repeat himself or herself. Some responses are quick and silly, some are fun, some are for when you’re three hours into the ride and you can’t stand people any more.
Today’s featured response is a good one. It’s self-deprecating, it’s clever, it’s… not mine. I didn’t make up many responses that other people hadn’t used in some form or another. So I’m not claiming to have written this gag. I’ve lived it, just like most folks who have ridden unicycles.
So from time to time, I will drop in a new Unicycle Diaries page- showcasing various and sundry comments and various and sundry responses. Hope you like that sort of thing.
As usual, I seem to be writing a product review for a product that’s no longer in production.
In fact, I’m writing a lament for a dear friend. My DMR Sidekick 2.
There are different kinds of bicycles for different kinds of people. Some of my friends, for example, like to ride on really expensive road bikes with ultra lightweight frames and tires so skinny that you measure your contact with the earth in millimeters. Some people like good, solid old beaters. Some people like true cruisers which look like art these days. Some people like Mountain Bikes.
Finding the perfect bike for you means deciding what you want to do with it and riding something that isn’t perfect so you can catch the wishes coming off your lips. “Man, I wish my knees weren’t coming up so high. Man, I wish I was on a road with this thing. Man, I wish the brakes worked.” That sort of thing.
So. I was riding an old Trek mountain bike that I bought from a buddy for a hundred bucks. It was a nice, sturdy machine, but it wasn’t right somehow. Didn’t feel substantial. I felt wonky on it. I also ride an old BMX bike I still have from when I was a kid (People who know me are now scratching their heads. “I thought that imbecile was still a kid” some think. Others are thinking “Kid? That imbecile hasn’t been a kid in thirty years.” Both are correct, somehow. I blame the language, or the lack of clever use of it these days)
So, with those two bikes, I learned that I like to ride on dirt. What’s the next step? Buy a bike built to rule the dirt.
Cannondale SuperV 400. Wooooooo. More than I’d ever sunk on a bike before. Beefy. Tough. And the first time the trail turned to sand, I thought I pulled something.
In fact, the Cannondale is a great bike, just not for around here, and not the way I ride. It’s built for the way I wish I ride. It’s built for doing YouTube style drops off of big junk.
So, it’s a little heavy but you could say ‘substantial’, and it’s a little overbuilt but you could say ‘hardily engineered.’ You’d say that stuff if you were writing sales copy, but as is seen by the fact that I still own a 1979 BMX bike that was bought new for me by my daddy… I don’t sell bikes much.
Then one day, I got a commission. I was to paint a mural at a bike shop. I’ve put photos of it up on this site.
It may be stupid to basically hand money back to the people who just paid you, but you have to understand- this was a bike shop! I love the look and feel of bicycles… on dirt. I coveted a new bike, and I had the whole time I was working on the mural to ask questions… to pin down just what I wanted.
And I did. I got the perfect bike- for me. It was the DMR Sidekick 2.
It’s a trials bike- the sort of thing that Ryan Leech jumps up onto things with. That means it’s the size of a mountain bike but it has the architecture of a BMX bike. You could, and I did, grab the hydraulic disc brake up front and balance on the front tire. (I also flew right over the front tire a few time, and I also did that silly thing where you ALMOST balance and just step gracelessly off the bike over the handlebars. Oh, the joy in my heart.)
It was great for playing around. Hopping side-wise over whatever. Jumping front-wise over whatever. It had two chainrings in the front and nine gears in the back, so you could get where you were going before you geared it for horsing around and practicing trackstands.
So- dirt, distance, tricks and fun. The perfect bike… not for guys what ride a hundred miles of pavement, but for me the perfect bike. I was in love.
Aaaand then I went to unlock the neighborhood church for the cubscouts one Sunday. In the time it took to say the pledge of allegiance and come back to the door of the church, my love was gone. The police say it’s been too long now and it’s likely changed hands, so prosecution for the theft is no longer possible and blah blah blah.
So for a few years that felt like months, I pinched myself thinking I must be dreaming to have gotten into my possession such a fine thing. It took a month up a scaffold and many hours away from my family, but it was worth it. And now for a month that’s felt like years, I’ve been without it.
As for the low-life, sonofabitch, good-for-nothing, %$#wipe, low-rent, &%$#wad, nobody &%#$heap bastard that took my bike and obviously wasn’t going to even understand what he had under him other than thinking the seat was awfully low, well, he can die. Die a long, painful, slow, ugly, mean death. Him and his dog. I hope his house burns with all his best friends inside. I don’t suppose his family will hear about it because they’ve likely ignored and laughed at him behind his back for years because he’s been a useless waste of breath upon the earth. I hope he gets both intestinal parasites and skin disease that eat his bowels and his flesh in a grisly horrifying manner that leads to his lonely, pathetic demise. In a greasy puddle behind a dumpster. And if you think that sounds harsh on my part, I don’t care.
I just want my bike back. It was perfect, and it was mine. The thought of it rusting somewhere in the hands of a thief hurts every day.
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