POLL: Who are the EU riders? What is your age, gender, and occupation? (anonymous vote) How did you get into EUs?

[Skylightica]

Welcome stranger, to this wonderful and obscure sport of electric unicycling! Please tell us about yourself.

How did you get into electric unicycling? Let us know your story! 

[SlowMo]

How can I vote 4 times?

[PTrider]

Why dont you disclaim who you are and what is your interest in this info...

[Skylightica]

Sure, here's my full disclosure. Female, Computer Science, Microbiology and Immunology. I worked in healthcare for years. I love programming in various platforms, but iOS is my jam. I want to continue to make healthcare apps for Canada and I have zero interest in selling EUs. Current interests include: EUs, Jpop idols, Orange is the New Black, Halsey, and fluid dynamics simulations.

I post cutesy Jpop dance videos under Skylightica on youtube.

Electric personal mobility devices came under my radar after I saw a video of a Japanese girl group singing and dancing on the Toyota Winglet. After some internet research, I found the first Korean Ninebot One promo video -- it was love at first sight. I was already unicycling at that time so electric unicycling was the natural next step in the evolution.

Since I've never met another EUist in real life, I'm curious about who else enjoy this unique hobby.

[Skylightica]

On December 29, 2015 at 0:05 AM, SlowMo said:

How can I vote 4 times?

Just vote once for your main and most recent occupation! It makes it easier to count heads.

[trya]

ha. I ran into some video on youtube this summer - and it was an immediate hit. I just had to get into this, and I did  
Windsurfing is my another passion (for 15 years already),

[davek]

Never thought I'd ride a unicycle.

I'm in my fifties and create print and video graphics.

I originally saw a story on the two wheel hoverboards - meh.
Then saw an eu and thought - What is that?!

Having owned plenty of bicycles, I thought "I can do that!"
This has a high-tech appeal to it + is challenging to master = fun.

The attention this sport attracts has been 95% positive.
Mostly waves and smiles which is awesome.

I ride for recreation and the benefits from exercise are a nice bonus.

[dbfrese]

I am really interested in this particular thread, even though its a few months old already. It is amazing to me that there are so many in the 45 to 49 and 50 to 54 age groups that also ride these things (I'm part of the 50 to 54 age group). I'm wondering if the self-selecting nature of this particular forum skews the data a little bit, though. Also, there may be some who have not seen the poll and haven't taken it yet, so here's another opportunity!

What's my interest? I'm in marketing and I love analyzing demographic data and trends. I am also an "early adopter" and love new and interesting things. My Ninebot One fits right in to those categories.

 

[US69]

On 29. Dezember 2015 at 5:25 PM, Skylightica said:

Just vote once for your main and most recent occupation! It makes it easier to count heads.

I think he has 4 unicycle's :-) thats why he asked...

 

i come from The Ninebot Mini pro...which i  Found because of hoverboards...

mini pro gets boring Slow...

so now a EU....and i like early adopting and new tech...

playing with "The Dash" also in The Moment :-)

[Keith]

I'm 60 and got interested and immediately surfed the net when a guy wheeled past my house, surprisingly I've never seen him again!

Skiing and windsurfing probably helped with balance but I've not done either for more than 25 years as my heat loving wife cannot believe "snow" and "holiday" can possibly be used in the same sentence!

Background is communications, from telephone engineer to globe trotting training consultant and from the original corded manual switchboards to Cisco and Gigabit Ethernet.

Always a geek, everybody has personal organisers now, I've had one since 1980, in fact I still have every model of Psion Organiser made except the very first one. I've also had a mobile phone since the battery was bigger than the one in my EUC - bigger and heavier than a house brick in fact.

I think I might now be getting past it though as, although forums like this are great I just cannot see the point in Twitter or Facebook ;-) 

[electric_vehicle_lover]

I love bicycles, own many of them and drive daily my electric car. Sure, I love nature.

I am an electronic engineer and I decided to learn and implement OpenSource firmware for the EUC. I want to learn and share knowledge about this technology so make a better world and influence my small soon of 5 years old.

[Phil Wright]

50yo Golf Pro here, and loving the freedom the 9bot gives me along with all the inquisitive looks along the way as well.

[dbfrese]

On 3/25/2016 at 3:16 PM, Phil Wright said:

50yo Golf Pro here

 

@Phil Wright Could you play 18 carrying your clubs on your EU? If that's not possible, you could try this:

www.golfboard.com           

[Slaughthammer]

To get this thread back up and maybe get some more votes:

I am one of the "yougsters" around here, counting 30 years. I am a craftsman, more specific a church organ builder. I got into EUCs when a good friend visited and let me hop on his wheel. Took me around a quarter of an hour (I guess being a windsurfer helps quite a bit at learning EUC riding) until I could ride it round the block, and it was done. I needed one for myself. So here I am!

[Greg Spalding]

6 minutes ago, Slaughthammer said:

To get this thread back up and maybe get some more votes:

I am one of the "yougsters" around here, counting 30 years. I am a craftsman, more specific a church organ builder. I got into EUCs when a good friend visited and let me hop on his wheel. Took me around a quarter of an hour (I guess being a windsurfer helps quite a bit at learning EUC riding) until I could ride it round the block, and it was done. I needed one for myself. So here I am!

would love to see and hear some of those church organs you have built. that is awesome

glad you are here

[dbfrese]

Good idea to get a few more participants, @Slaughthammer. I find this thread very interesting. I also presented this info to my state legislator to show that Electric Unicycles are not the domain of reckless youth, but most are used by a more mature, and hopefully more careful riders. I believe it helped my case to get legislation in my state introduced that will clarify the status of EUCs, and allow them to be used wherever Segways are legal -- basically on all sidewalks. 

[Rehab1]

On 11/8/2016 at 6:34 PM, Slaughthammer said:

To get this thread back up and maybe get some more votes:

I am one of the "yougsters" around here, counting 30 years. I am a craftsman, more specific a church organ builder. 

You definitely receive my vote! Please tell us about your very interesting skills of building church organs! Being a past keyboardist in a rock band your occupation is of great interest to me!

[HermanTheGerman]

What REALLY surprises me is, that the majority of drivers is between 40 and 59. I thought before I'm an old alien in a sport for youngsters.

Who I am: I live in Austria, am 57 years old, do a lot of mountaineering, rock- and iceclimbing and of course skiing, and I'm implementing hardwareprojects for datacenters for a living.

My way to EU's is comparable to @KingSong69, but more complicated.

I followed Segways closely since 2005 when I saw one, but they were far to expensive for me. But every now and then I looked in the net if something comparable, but cheaper would become available.  2015 I met a boy with a hoverboard, which was very cheap, but trying it I found out it is slow and especially useless on rougher terrain.  But looking around in the net I found the Ninebot MiniPro in April 2016, which had kneesteering instead of footpadsteering, loved it immediately and bought one, at this time with firmware 1.7.

It was great, after 1 or 2 days I could drive it to it's limits, and after a few weeks I rode across meadows and gravel roads (from current point of view I think it is more dangerous than an EU, because e.g. when only one wheel of the MiniPro enters a slippery surface, it will throw you off, and it's also a lot easier with the EU to drive on a sideway slope).  Then came Firmwares 1.2.7 and 1.2.8, the device became really slow and bad, and also with 1.3.1, though better again, it was not the same anymore than with 1.7.

Additionally with it's 18 km/h limit it was just to slow for me, and my former excitement changed a little bit into frustration.  Then one tire lost airpressure, and while the guy where I bought it ordered a spare tire, he offered to borrow me a EU until the tire would arrive.  I selected a KS16, because it's 30km/h maxspeed and 60km range impressed me.

You know what happened:   It would not have been necessary to select such a strong wheel like the KS16, because after 3 days I still believed I would never master this thing which seemed to be made in hell just to annoy me.   In these 3 days I rode approximately 10km altogether.

When I picked up the MiniPro tire I wanted to give the EU back telling the seller that this is not made for me.  Then the guy took one hour time to give me an EU lesson, and for some reason that was the breakthrough. He allowed me to keep the KS16 for 3 further days, and I could really do longer (though still cautious) rides.

What should I say: I bought it afterwards. 

Though I still changed the tire on my Ninebot MiniPro, riding it afterwards appeared so slow and boring to me, that I did only 5 km on it after that.

Since this time (August) I drove 1308 km on my KS16, and I LOVE it, and unfortunately never entered the MiniPro again, therefore I sold it at the end - though with some regrets because it is still a great vehicle, but just to slow for me, and I also do not want to miss the range of the KS16 anymore.

Meanwhile I feel as safe on my KS16 as on a bicycle, and I already know, I will exchange my current one for the new KS16S when it comes next year, because it will have a stronger motor and a longer range (my current one has only the 680Wh battery).

That was my gyro life, which started in April this year.

[Cerbera]

Ha ! 96% male. Boys and their toys, hey  

[Greg Spalding]

At 54 years of age and a practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years I always figured I'd be one of the older people to get involved in the EUC world but I guess I'm wrong about that which makes me quite happy

 

[MaxLinux]

On 12/29/2015 at 11:15 AM, Skylightica said:

Since I've never met another EUist in real life, I'm curious about who else enjoy this unique hobby.

That's one of the great benefits of this forum, especially for those of us who live in areas with sparse EUC populations!

[MaxLinux]

On 12/29/2015 at 11:15 AM, Skylightica said:

Sure, here's my full disclosure. Female

I was surprised at the massive gender gap in this poll. I knew there was a strong male majority, but I didn't realize the females are almost nonexistent! However, I have noticed in group ride videos, there are usually very few or no girls. Based on YouTube, it seems to me that Asian countries have the most female EUC riders.

[MaxLinux]

On 12/28/2015 at 7:01 PM, Skylightica said:

How did you get into electric unicycling?

I saw Solowheel on YouTube randomly while looking for something else. As I started researching on the Internet to learn more, I saw hoverboards. Hoverboards looked easier to learn. It seemed a unicycle would be very difficult. So as I was riding hoverboards, I was still interested in EUCs, wondering if I could possibly learn to ride. Eventually I got enough courage to buy a TG T3 EUC. Practicing 30 minutes per day, it took me a month to learn how to ride. For the past year I have ridden 1 hour per day, sometimes 2 hours on a weekend. Currently I ride IPS 121 and IPS 191 Lhotz.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

1 hour ago, Cerbera said:

Ha ! 96% male. Boys and their toys, hey  

 

32 minutes ago, MaxLinux said:

I knew there was a strong male majority, but I didn't realize the females are almost nonexistent! However, I have noticed in group ride videos, there are usually very few or no girls.

  

[TremF]

I'm 41 and always enjoyed being outside on long walks or bike rides. A few years ago I started having mobility issues due to problems with my spine and eventually it got to the point where I could only walk very short distances before I was in a lot of pain. I don't drive so it meant getting a bus to and from work and each weekend was spent resting so that I could be ready for work again on the Monday.

Last year I had an op on my spine that has stopped some of the symptoms and pain that I had but hasn't fixed me totally as I still have trouble walking distances, especially when it's cold and damp.

Just after my Op I decided I needed to find a way of getting out and about again and initially I looked at the "Hover boards" but quickly decided the wheels were too small and it wouldn't be maneuverable enough for commuting to and from work.

One day I was have a slow walk around a nearby lake with my girls when I saw someone following behind their small child, who was riding a tricycle, riding an EUC and started to look into them.

The bulk of videos I found where by Ian at Speedy Feet UK and I was convinced that I wanted a Ninebot One E+ so purchased from him. Even though standing and walking usually gives me a lot of pain, somehow, standing on an EUC and riding for miles doesn't - when the weather isn't cold & damp. When the weather was nice, very quickly, the Ninebot became not enough. I was riding on it's tilt and it didn't do enough miles to a charge. I picked up a spare battery but didn't fancy carrying it around and messing about taking the case apart to replace it.

Earlier this year I saw images and snippets of information regarding the Gotway ACM and instantly wanted one. When they were released I gave it a few weeks then got one - still too soon as it appears they don't/aren't able to test them properly or they would have picked up on the poor screw quality, small pedal size and random low speed cutouts. Since I bought mine the pedals have been made bigger and the control board has gone from 6 to 12 MOSFETs. There seems to be less reports of issues now.

The EUC is my version of a mobility scooter. I use it to commute to work, pop to the shops and general cruising about, when the weather is nice. My kids love it too as daddy looks cool riding it and we get to go for rides, with them on their bikes, like we used to. Unfortunately for them the ACM can do upto 25 miles on a charge for me so they have ridden 21+ miles in a day during the best parts of the summer hehe