I think the best heckle I had while riding my unicycle was from a policeman who shouted "Are your brakes working?"
(In the UK you are required by law to have working brakes on a bicycle. My unicycle had no brakes at all! Though slowing down was never a problem with the fixed wheel drive.)
When I was hiking in Joaquin Miller park in Oakland, I saw a man on a dirt bike version of a unicycle. He had just finished a route that I wouldn’t do as a novice mountain biker.
Learning that unicycles don’t have suspension has made that memory even more surprising. I want to understand the motivations, which were not addressed in this FAQ.
Author here. You really don't want any disconnect between the rider and the uni. You're making tons of constant micro-adjustments, and any lag or reduced feedback would make riding really difficult. Suspension would also allow the wheel to move upward relative to the frame and pedals when hitting a bump.
As well as this, it'd waste energy, which would tire the rider faster and eat hops. There is also the case that most suspension solutions aren't really designed to handle the sort of aggressive lateral torsional stresses of the entire weight of the rider and their movement in the way that unicycles dish it out.
As someone who goes along gravel paths with relative frequency on their unicycle, it isn't too bad. I'm not sure if the dirt bike-style unicycle you're referring to was an electric one, but most municycles (mountain unicycles) have decently thick tyres to handle some of the jolts. Take the model I have as an example: https://www.krisholm.com/en/gear/unicycle/kh27.5
Thanks for the comment. I'll make an update to provide a tad more information on suspension.
> Suspension would also allow the wheel to move upward relative to the frame and pedals when hitting a bump.
Perhaps I'm being dim, but I don't get why this would be bad; it just sounds like the definition of what suspension is!
Edit: I was briefly confused by the "relative ... to the pedals" bit here as well, but only 'cos I was thinking of the type where the pedals are directly attached to the wheel.
Unrelated but I really like the table of contents on the left! I first came across this type of in-article navigation last week on this magnificent website: https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/shaders
Is it a viable way of short to mid distance urban transport? Can you bunny-hop it to overcome e.g. curbs?
I’ve learned to appreciate simplicity in machines. For a long time I thought of a skateboard as the simplest one for transport but this got me thinking.
You can absolutely bunny hop (and so much more). With a 24″ or larger wheel, you can pretty confidently do short trips. If you're looking to do a few kms, 27.5″ is the sweet spot I've settled on for the size/speed/comfort trade-off.
Where I live you're even permitted to take them on the bus/train, assuming you're not being too much of a pain. Unicycles are specifically outlined in the terms.
You can bunny-hop to go up curbs. I've witnessed a friend go up an entire staircase (something like 60 steps I think) doing it. He then proceeded to ride straight down without issue (somehow).
Normally your top speed is not really very fast as the pedals are fixed to the wheel, so you get one rotation per pedal (extremely low gear) and slowing down is not often necessary.
You can overtake bicycles easily going uphill, but downhill is hard on your knees!
> Sex, aggression, and humour: responses to unicycling > > Sam Shuster compares men and women’s responses to the sight of a unicyclist
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2151169/
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