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


Skylightica

Demographics of Electric Unicyclists  

272 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your age?

    • 65+
      15
    • 60-64
      20
    • 55-59
      23
    • 50-54
      42
    • 45-49
      41
    • 40-44
      42
    • 35-39
      30
    • 30-34
      22
    • 25-29
      22
    • 20-24
      10
    • 15-19
      4
    • 10-14
      1
    • Under 10
      0
  2. 2. What is your gender?

    • Male
      261
    • Female
      10
    • Other
      1
  3. 3. What is your occupation? (Pre-retirement occupation counts too.)

    • Student
      11
    • Accounting and finance
      7
    • Creative arts and design
      17
    • Education
      13
    • Engineering
      44
    • Environment
      2
    • Healthcare
      13
    • Hospitality
      0
    • IT
      63
    • Law
      4
    • Management
      17
    • Marketing
      5
    • Sales
      9
    • Science
      8
    • Service
      16
    • Other
      43


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I am an anesthesiologist so I chose the name Ethereal (since it has the name "ether" in it). I recently turned 51 years old. Prior to discovering the EUC in July 2015, I was an avid bicyclist, rollerblader and occasional snowboarder. I am so glad to see that the majority of EUCers are in my age group. So far I am the only one in my New Jersey area wheeling around. I always get stares and "That's so cool!" comments. This definitely makes me feel young. My bike is hardly ever used now. Poor bike. 

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I’m a new EUC rider ,The first time that i saw the EUC was two years ago , I walk on the street with my friends,suddenly A Boy ride the EUC across the street so fast . I amazed what is this .That time I thought  it would be the popular travel choice .Fortunately now i become the member of the EUC. i have been addicted in it.

 

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This poll is pulling my leg , how is it possible that my agegroup is the biggest ?  , I tought I was among the older fewer and that younger human beings use euc more 

I think I saw someone going on an electric onewheel in the city nearby  and I also found info videos on the internet , this was not a question for me , I had to learn

 

I'm going slightly mAd

 

Drive anywhere

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29 minutes ago, FLASH said:

This poll is pulling my leg , how is it possible that my agegroup is the biggest ?  , I tought I was among the older fewer and that younger human beings use euc more 

 

I'm going slightly mAd

 

It's getting hot in here

i'm the same boat as you

i'm so shocked, too

at 54 years of age i'm wondering.... what ARE the YOUNG folks riding INSTEAD of an EUC?

how old is the average e-bike rider?

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8 minutes ago, Greg Spalding said:

i'm the same boat as you

i'm so shocked, too

at 54 years of age i'm wondering.... what ARE the YOUNG folks riding INSTEAD of an EUC?

how old is the average e-bike rider?

Maybe they are playing pokemon and eating pizza , maybe they are told to not go outside its to dangerous , maybe we are the last of a generation willing to and enjoying taking risks ?

Indiana Jones

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6 hours ago, Smoother said:

@Ethereal that makes sense. Which exit? ( I bet you're tired of hearing that one ?) is that you in your pic.? 

Ha ha! That is the common question I get asked when I say I am from NJ. I never get tired of it at all. Turnpike exit 9. Yes that is me in the pic on my KS14C. I try to get my other doc friends to join me but they get intimidated by the one wheel thing. My orthopedic and neurosurgeon friends always joke that they will take good care of me though. Lol

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4 hours ago, FLASH said:

This poll is pulling my leg , how is it possible that my agegroup is the biggest ?  , I tought I was among the older fewer and that younger human beings use euc more 

 

I'm going slightly mAd

 

It's getting hot in here

You know @FLASH, it was just the other day I was wondering if I would ever see a man in a kilt, wearing a Darth Vader helmet and cape, riding an actual unicycle playing the theme from Star Wars on bagpipes that shoot flames.  Thanks for that, I was worried I might be in for a long wait. ?

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15 minutes ago, Smoother said:

You know @FLASH, it was just the other day I was wondering if I would ever see a man in a kilt, wearing a storm trooper helmet, riding an actual unicycle playing the theme from Star Wars on bagpipes that shoot flames.  Thanks for that, I was worried I might be in for a long wait. ?

Glad I could help , my pleasure  :cheers:

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  • 2 months later...

42 yo Aussie female. Love it that people in our age group are rockin' it on these wheels! I'm a physical oceanographer. Saw a wheel featured in a 'strange-and-unique-inventions' youtube. Now another friend (21 yo female, in engineering) and I  ride every chance we get. Yay!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/30/2017 at 10:38 PM, Munsense said:

42 yo Aussie female. Love it that people in our age group are rockin' it on these wheels! I'm a physical oceanographer. Saw a wheel featured in a 'strange-and-unique-inventions' youtube. Now another friend (21 yo female, in engineering) and I  ride every chance we get. Yay!!!

Very cool! You should post a video of you and your friend riding!

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

Current interests include: EUs, Jpop idols, Orange is the New Black, Halsey, and fluid dynamics simulations.

Blender animation software can model fluid flow.

Here is a video of my collection of Blender animations. If you're interested in learning Blender to model 'fluid dynamics' there are many tutorials found on the subject of Blender animations on YouTube.

'Hello World - walking man' is from a Blender tutorial.

 

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On 11/20/2016 at 9:56 PM, Ethereal said:

I am an anesthesiologist

I was a graduate student in Center City Philadelphia in the late 1970's. A few other graduate students were aspiring medical school applicants. Philly was like culture shock for someone like me who loved trekking the woods in NH and Vermont. I got a free ride at Hahnemann aspiring to do something clinical with biochemistry and possibly enzyme kinetics. I took an on call job as an arterial blood gas tech 40 hrs a week (long weekends) to pay rent. My advisor was interested in transplanting pancreatic islets (to cure diabetes type 1 for a short period of time) and also in becoming a veterinarian. Everything started to go haywire during a thesis attempt and I found I had neither the aptitude for nor the interested in becoming an academic in biochemistry. Transplant research in diabetes involved endless conceptual and real requirements for donor animals (mice, dog, hamster, fetal) of a very young age but required comparitively few quantitative measurements. While one researcher might claim at that time that the derived islets were for culture in petri dishes the bottom line was that islets had a finite lifespan in culture fluid of several tens of days followed by death and detachment from the culture plate surface.  One day as I was obtaining pancreatic tissue from a bunch of donor mice the fellow next to me was performing an islet transplant of microporous fiber encapsulated islets into a hamster. He explained that the hamster was sedated with ketamine and the erratic head motions of the hamster were caused by the drug. He went on to explain the idea of dissociating pain perception with ketamine, a very different anesthetic effect than the assorted fat soluble drugs like ether that I later learned about in pharmacology. I think the guy went on to med school. I however left the program citing a spectrum of personal issues. Not completing the degree program has definitely been a life handicap and an eyesore on my CV. 

I can see a scenario where, had the EUC been available then, I could have commuted around Philly on one. At the time I owned a car, insured a car, paid for monthly parking, etc. In those years typing was done on an Electric typewriter and paper since the word processor was maybe 10 to 15 years into the future.

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Bob, you're a very deep man.  But don't go on continuing to beat yourself up about not completing your degree.  Yes, it's absence on a CV ( BTW  I thought it's "resume" in the US) can be glaring, but most people in the US don't ever use their degree in a career, me included. I got a degree in marketing, and the (not so funny) joke was they gave you 75c with your diploma, because you would need it to buy a cup of coffee.  The point being, that degree was worthless.  And they were right;  I never took/got a job in marketing.  And non of the, many, jobs I have had since then required a degree, or I got because I had a degree. 

What I learned as I was towards the end of my college "decade" was that most marketing grads, if they got a job in marketing, went to the poor end of town and stocked toilet rolls in 3rd tier grocery stores, and shuffled them around on the shelves (and that was if they won the interviewing lottery and got the highest prized marketing job with P&G), to make Proctor and Gambol products look nicer than those of their competitors.  Several years of that, and you might get to do it on the nice side of town,  IN A DIFFERENT TOWN, so to " further "your career, you had to uproot your family and move across country to some city, not of your choice, and shuffle more bog roll.  Maybe, after several years of this, in several different cities, you might get a regional manager position, in ANOTHER town not of your choice.  Notice, almost none of this has anything to do with "marketing".  a high school drop out could shuffle toilet rolls, or Tide, or whatever.  Doesn't look a bit like "Mad Men" does it? Only a small percentage made it to the headquarters to do marketing, and hey, with P&G that was somewhere I didn't want to live anyway.  I never even applied to interview with them when they came on campus, and, if you don't know, P&G were, and still are THE marking people.  Every heard of a soap opera? The first soap opera was on Chicago radio in 1930, since then P&G spend heavily  to sell Tide and other products during these, historically,  daytime audiences, i.e bored housewives, hence "soap".

Lets look at Lawyers, $1,000 suits, fancy cars, trophy wife, big houses, vacations in the Caribbean, sking in Vale, country club, kids in private school, etc.  Sounds glamorous doesn't it!  now, open your yellow pages  to "lawyers". look at all the ambulance chasers in there! Pages and pages of hopes dashed on the rocks.  Doesn't look a bit like " Suits" or "L.A. Law, or "Boston Legal" does it?  No, those 6 figure jobs go to friends and family of the guys who are already there.  Ask college kids studying law what their parents do.  The ones who say lawyer at "so and so big name firm" might get these fancy jobs because of the family connections, the rest... Ambulance chasers, or eking out an existence in a rented wood panelled office on the  fringes of town, taking little jobs here and there, for the little guy like you and me.  And even those that get the big jobs are under constant pressure to perform; to bring in the big clients and cases.  It's stress stress stress.  Hard to enjoy all the luxuries of life when you can't quite make partner because you continue to fail to bring in sufficient work, and younger talent is passing you by.

No, College is not all it's cracked up to be. And degreed  jobs  are not either. It's a giant carrot dangled in our collective donkey face to encourage us to sign up, and pay up.

Certain, specific degrees; doctor, engineer, etc are necessary and frequently lead to a "degree needed" career in the respective field, but most are just proof that the holder did more studying that high school graduates.  I know several high school graduates who can run rings around generic degree holders, or even specific, degree holders. Example, My friend in Texas got her LVN (licensed locational nurse) diploma.  It's inferior to an RN certification.  She had to stop her RN studies ( for private reasons). After many years in nursing with several different employers, her body of work, and experience, now has her supervising, not only RN's (registered nurses) but also BSNs (batchelor of science in nursing) . And she's paid A LOT MORE THAN ANY OF THEM.  True, they don't like it, but her knowledge and experience is vastly superior to theirs, and her employer would fire (has fired) any one of them, before her. She also works on the side, making five times her officials sallery, for doctors who can't get enough of her skills, and she never even got close to college!

one last example.  My elder brother dropped out of school and got a job because the family needed more income.  He soon realised that there was a better way.  He worked hard and saved up for a big old house and turned it into apartments.  Today he owners enough property that he hasn't had to work ( for someone else) in years, and he's in the top 3% in terms of income. He does absolutely what he pleases.  Yes, maintaining his property is work, but no one can fire him, and if he doesn't feel like doing it himself, he can afford to hire someone to do it.  I recently heard him say to someone  " the last thing I need is more cash" who else would like to be in that position? A lot of college grads I suspect.

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  • 3 months later...

Well...

I'm 50 years old, works with front-end, middle-end programming at a web agency, and saw my first EUC a couple of years ago. I thought it looked hard, and dangerous, but at the same time intriguing.

Everyday I ride a speed-line buss out of the town centre to where my job is. I have to change busses from the speedy one to a more normal one a few kilometers from work, and the damn thing is always out of sync or late. So I typically spend twenty minutes waiting to go 3-4 kilometers. Have thought of taking the bike, but don't most of the time. The problem isn't the distance per se, but the road to get there. Either I choose the shortest way, which is 8 km, but dangerous as hell. Or I take the long way around, about 10-12 km, and parts of that is less than safe too.

So I thought to try the "last mile" solution of a EUC. This was just a couple of months back, but already I've been smitten by the EUC-bug. It took me a day to start riding, but I hurt myself the first day, so I had a week without the wheel. Then another few days of retraining to feel safer, and then off. Now already I feel pretty safe on the wheel and realise I've chosen the wrong one for my needs and wants. Nothing bad about it, it's a good piece of gear, but I want more range and speed. And I chose one of those twin-wheel Inmotion V3, and now I want a true unicycle.

So I've ordered a GT16, and wait with trepidation for it to arrive. My plan is to get it to a football field nearby and get to know it without the risk of tumbling on asphalt.

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10 hours ago, Scatcat said:

So I've ordered a GT16, and wait with trepidation for it to arrive. My plan is to get it to a football field nearby and get to know it without the risk of tumbling on asphalt.

Just a comment... learning to ride on grass / dirt can be more difficult. 

The constant subtle variations of the surface alter the torque required to ride. And if the surface is soft, the loading on one point can sink (making it hard to start moving).

Artificial turf is a lot more consistent. 

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1 hour ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

Just a comment... learning to ride on grass / dirt can be more difficult. 

The constant subtle variations of the surface alter the torque required to ride. And if the surface is soft, the loading on one point can sink (making it hard to start moving).

Artificial turf is a lot more consistent. 

Oh, I want it to be difficult. I'm going to take my time, learning the difference between my new and old wheel. And at least on grass, taking a fall won't be as rough :) 

And the place I plan to go is a soccer-field, so it is a fairly flat and well kept surface.

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/12/2017 at 1:02 PM, Bob Eisenman said:

I was a graduate student in Center City Philadelphia in the late 1970's. A few other graduate students were aspiring medical school applicants. Philly was like culture shock for someone like me who loved trekking the woods in NH and Vermont. I got a free ride at Hahnemann aspiring to do something clinical with biochemistry and possibly enzyme kinetics. I took an on call job as an arterial blood gas tech 40 hrs a week (long weekends) to pay rent. My advisor was interested in transplanting pancreatic islets (to cure diabetes type 1 for a short period of time) and also in becoming a veterinarian. Everything started to go haywire during a thesis attempt and I found I had neither the aptitude for nor the interested in becoming an academic in biochemistry. Transplant research in diabetes involved endless conceptual and real requirements for donor animals (mice, dog, hamster, fetal) of a very young age but required comparitively few quantitative measurements. While one researcher might claim at that time that the derived islets were for culture in petri dishes the bottom line was that islets had a finite lifespan in culture fluid of several tens of days followed by death and detachment from the culture plate surface.  One day as I was obtaining pancreatic tissue from a bunch of donor mice the fellow next to me was performing an islet transplant of microporous fiber encapsulated islets into a hamster. He explained that the hamster was sedated with ketamine and the erratic head motions of the hamster were caused by the drug. He went on to explain the idea of dissociating pain perception with ketamine, a very different anesthetic effect than the assorted fat soluble drugs like ether that I later learned about in pharmacology. I think the guy went on to med school. I however left the program citing a spectrum of personal issues. Not completing the degree program has definitely been a life handicap and an eyesore on my CV. 

I can see a scenario where, had the EUC been available then, I could have commuted around Philly on one. At the time I owned a car, insured a car, paid for monthly parking, etc. In those years typing was done on an Electric typewriter and paper since the word processor was maybe 10 to 15 years into the future.

Being a doctor nowadays is not like what it used to be. It is funny that when an aspiring college student shadows me around the hospital in hopes of me writing them a good recommendation letter for medical school, the other doctors such as surgeons, anesthesiologists, internists, etc, always tell the college student to choose some field other than medicine. I, however, am happy with my chosen profession. There are some frustrating negative sides but overall, I am content. Don't worry about what happened back then. Good thing you went on to do other fields. I agree that it definitely would've been awesome if EUC's were around when I was a med student back in the early 90's. I was in South Jersey and Philly back then too and I would have had a blast wheeling around.

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1 hour ago, Ethereal said:

Being a doctor nowadays is not like what it used to be.

I don't think that I ever intended nor had the will to become a doctor (MD or PhD). I was interested in making money with what I knew or was learning which is a touchy subject with the academically entrenched who have so many stories of their own to about life before becoming a  professor.

Although a college room mate went on to become a well known orthopedic surgeon in the New England area, my interest was vaguely in the realm of Clinical Chemistry (med tech kind of supervision). The school had a paid professional program ($'s for credits) for it which I avoided paying by getting a 'tuition scholarship'. The coursework had some highs and lows (I'm not a very good immunologist beyond the RIA assay trend of the 1970's, and the finer points of the nephron, ion transport, etc. sort of escaped me until twenty years ago. A membrane associated transporter (ex. glucose) was a blackboard doodle and nothing like the post genome sequencing sub-classification system that is well known today. I think I just burned out for a variety of reasons. Going to the slaughterhouse for porcine pancreas (neonatal mice are sometimes hard to get from the mouse caretaker) was a memory of foul smell, approaching the foreman on the slaughterhouse floor for a 'gland', bringing the gland back to the lab in a jar full of media and antibiotics and attempting to culture enough islets to run an experiment only to find the cultures overgrown with 'staph' and wreaking in smell before throwing the plates out. I watched my pay for credit classmates go on rotations and then graduate while my weaknesses in the pancreas research field left me numb. Looking at ads for medications like 'Trulicity' make me smile with its glucagon receptor agonist function and conjugated immunoglobulin. Yes there is a target binding site....but in the 1970's about the only thought to pursue was to add some GABA and see what happens.....if you had a working culture system that is. I also found out that the med techs fight tough for their 'turf' and promote candidates of their own for lucrative paying supervisory jobs. 

 

 

A 'friend' at Jefferson Medical college once said....you're guaranteed to become rich if you become an MD. He does heart surgery in the Pittsburgh area. He knows all about my graduate school difficulties, the divorced catholic mother I was friends with whose former spouse became a spine surgeon. A rock climbing friend and co-editor of the medical school yearbook, he wore a bowtie then and continues to wear a bow tie today

http://www.languageofcaring.com/team_member/robert-h-coblentz/

I was a pretty knowledgeable about radiation and chemotherapeutic prototype drugs and targets back then. When a brother in law passed away a few years ago following aggressive sarcoma, lung metastases, surgery, radiation treatments , chemo and brain metastases I saw the other side of these treatments from the viewpoint of the family member being 'treated' which was rather hard to watch from a theory perspective.

The doctor who recently saw me for a broken shoulder in March did a residency in orthopedics at Jefferson. In his own words, regarding his current practice, family commitments, knowledge of my former room mate and orthopedic surgeon ...he says ....I can't stop (referencing some older doctors who are slowing down or retiring).

I remember (family movie recording) going to the annual Army Navy football game with my Dad (Army vet) at the old Veteran's stadium when President Kennedy crossed the field at half time, as was the tradition.

Thanks for your reply.

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Ok I'll play in this thread.  I'm 36 and am in charge of a luxury car dealership service center.  I started researching the ninebot mini's when they were on sale, almost bought one.  Somehow came across the EUC while researching the "segway" like vehicles.  Sure glad I came across the EUC.  The mini seems like it would get really boring really fast.  I have never seen an EUC in person other than the one I own.  Fun times.....................................

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