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Pushing 60 and against my families wishes - I just ordered my first EUC!


Grandpa_Jay

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I started when I was 69.5 years old on a V8F, back in August 2021. I did about 15 to 20 minutes of beginner drills, using fence to mount, rock back and forth, some short runs. Following the advice of Kuji Rolls and Wrong Way, I used support to mount and launch, rather than attempt free mount (no support). I ventured away from the fence at 3 to 5 mph using arm flailing | yaw steering, flail left to steer right and vice versa, for balance and to guide my V8F. I was able to do laps around a tennis court on my first attempt. My wife took a video on the next day. I didn't realize I was hunched over until I saw the video which I corrected afterwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPyy84EThmM

Arm flailing for slow speed riding is almost instinctive for many beginners and it's often taught for beginners on pedaled unicycles. Example of a 3 year old kid arm flailing:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z9YiHu5HJ6o

Using a rail can interfere with learning to balance, since some riders will panic reach for the rail rather than arm flail to regain balance. You can always step off if not going too fast.

Most of the how to ride videos emphasize getting a bit more speed when learning to ride, so after 2 days and a total of about 1 hour at the tennis court at 3 to 5 mph, I moved to a long straight outdoor parking lot, which allowed me to ride at 6 to 8 mph, about 45 seconds per run, where I discovered my V8F became stable, and I no longer had to make balance corrections, and relaxed my arms. I was still using support to mount and launch. Speed control by leaning forwards | backwards to accelerate | decelerate wasn't an issue. I then tried tilt steering (inner foot down, outer foot up) for the first time. At first small tilts to see how my V8F would respond, then mild weaving pattern, and lastly large radius turns. I waited till day 5 to try free mount, which I got on my third try after compensating for my only time on a grassy field. My wife took a video on day 10 on a very long and wide pathway at a park:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keDvRMScO1g

In Kuji Roll's how to ride video where he teaches a girl to ride on a V8, there's a similar progress. The girl uses extended arms for balance at first, but then goes fast enough for the V8 to become stable, and she's tilt steering to maneuver towards the end of the video. You can see the supported launch method, rock forward and back and while rocked back and leaning forwards, release (don't push) from support to launch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6o8ZMlo5ko&t=414s

Becoming proficient at tilt steering, different speeds, different turning radius will take a while, learning to coordinate how much to tilt an EUC (which is mostly independent of speed), versus how much to lean. Wrong Way made a video comparing responses of tires, and in this 3 view comparison, the Z10 in the middle is tilted the least:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsXW4OKnmWc&t=314s

For slow speed tight turns, the EUC is titled a lot (even a pedal scrape near the end), while the rider barely leans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqoNhGEhk2Y

When I was learning. Wrong Way hadn't made his tires and turning video yet, so I used this video of a girl on an S18 as guide for tilt steering. She's riding Marty Backe | Duf style, minimal movement, no carving, no body twisting, just leaning her body and tilting the S18, very stable. Due to speed, turn radius, tire, ... , she tilts the S18 less than she leans. The weave she does at the end is what I tried to emulate when I first tried to tilt steer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hWMwK3Cfs0

For a tilt steering drill, I would lean a bit, then tilt my V8F inwards enough to return me back to vertical, weaving side to side. Then I prolonged the weave by tilting just enough to hold the lean for a bit before tilting more to return back to vertical. I varied speed and turning radius to learn how to coordinate tilt and lean. Slow speed tight turns were almost like learning a new skill.

Once you can ride reasonably well, learn to be able to move your arms and | or look around without upsetting balance or changing direction (such as looking to the side for cross-traffic at intersections). As an extreme example of this, this girl slings a back pack around, puts her cell phone in the backpack and slings it back on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5HB40I4C3g&t=438s

 

Edited by rcgldr
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On 11/22/2022 at 3:23 AM, winterwheel said:

I started riding at 56, did not fall at all when learning, ride daily, wear no gear whatsoever.

I call BS for any rider who says they have not fallen off an EUC when learning! You may be one of the lucky ones that hasnt hurt themselves and thats great for you.As an older rider myself ,i dont react as fast,am not as nimble and as not as unbreakable as i thought.Gear up!

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2 hours ago, Daley1 said:

I call BS for any rider who says they have not fallen off an EUC when learning!

Call it whatever you want. My first fall was when I started learning off-road. @winterwheel is absolutely correct in that with a good instructor (or otherwise a good learning technique), you don’t necessarily fall at all.

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1 hour ago, winterwheel said:

I teach people as a part time job. It is very rare for people to fall when they have proper instruction.

I don't doubt that is true, but I think he means learning in the wider context. Do any of us rider really ever stop learning ?! Not many people fall while holding on to a fence, or holding the hand / arm of a teacher as an early guide, but the falls are guaranteed shortly after that, when the rider goes out on his own in the wild. On leaving the tennis courts and easy parks where training begins it's only real-world XP that teaches you what slopes, gradients, cambers, level of bumps and surfaces your machine can successfully deal with, and that is surely going to include some falls when the wheel shows us what it, or rider skill can't yet accommodate ?

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1 hour ago, winterwheel said:

This is misinformation that prevents many civilians from getting into wheeling.

Well, as literally thousands of videos attest, it's evidentially not misinformation. Not only has it happened to me personally a fair few times, sometimes down to my own lack of XP, and other times down to technical failure of wheel, but every damned day we get a new video or 10 of someone falling off these things. Some of those are beginners, so to call it misinformation to merely point out that we should expect to fall at some point is flat-out wrong - it is realistic, off-putting or not !

Edited by Cerbera
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2 hours ago, Daley1 said:

I call BS for any rider who says they have not fallen off an EUC when learning!

I thought so too, until I witnessed one.

I know of a competitive figure skater who learnt to ride an electric wheel without falling nor dropping a wheel. Not even once.

Also, an extremely fast learner. BTW, I am the opposite. I did drop the wheel, but not many times. However, it took me forever to learn.

This person started by standing on a wheel stationary for a few minutes. Then did an A to B drill (about 5 feet separation) for about 10 minutes. This is when acceleration and braking was learnt. This was repeated for the following two days. Then this person went outside and did the A to B thing for about five times (20 feet separation). After that, practiced in the alley, back and forth for about 5 times. This included making U-turns.

After that, the rider went round the neighborhood on residential streets. Did around the block a few times, then went across town. Learned to free mount the first time. Still no crashes, falls, nor drops.

Figure skaters usually look graceful while skating on ice. Well, even when this person was learning, the poise was already ridiculously good when riding on a wheel.

 

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People can be as graceful and balletic as they like - eventually they are going to fail to see a pothole, slip on some mud or wet leaves, or somebody else will do something they can't avoid that could make them crash ! It's only a matter of time :) It is neither alarmist nor misinformation to point this out; indeed forewarned is forearmed !

Edited by Cerbera
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20 minutes ago, Cerbera said:

People can be as graceful and balletic as they like - eventually they are going to fail to see a pothole, slip on some mud or wet leaves, or somebody else will do something they can't avoid that could make them crash ! It's only a matter of time :) 

I was not addressing your comment, which you were well aware.

But it is possible for someone to learn to ride an electric wheel without crashing, falling, nor dropping the wheel. I merely provided a data point.🙂

Having said that, I cannot be certain that this person will fall in the future, riding an electric wheel. 

As an aside. These figure skaters get plenty hurt on ice, since they have to attempt the jumps without any gear. No helmet even.

Edited by techyiam
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58 minutes ago, winterwheel said:

It's a mistake to generalize one's personal experience to the community as a whole.

Yes, which is why I referenced all the videos as well. Have you not seen those ?! :)

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1 hour ago, winterwheel said:

very rare for people to fall when they have proper instruction.

HA! I fell in spite of the fact that I learned from a top flight teacher (that would be me) who was at the time, far and away the best rider in my immediate neighborhood (I can say that with some certainty because I'd never actually seen a wheel or rider in person), and my teacher had access to the finest and most authoritative and foolproof methods promulgated by none other than (bow head in reverence)… youtube itself.

On second thought, perhaps I should have journeyed north to learn.

Maybe not. In retrospect it was a lot of fun and extra rewarding conquering the beast on my own! The rush of actually going a full meter after the seemingly endless series of unplanned uncontrolled dismounts was quite something.

But. Having a quality teacher would have been very nice indeed... 

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1 hour ago, winterwheel said:

There are lots of videos of car crashes. Doesn't mean everyone is going to crash their car.

Of course I accept that - so should we not warn any driver it's a possibility ? Are the annuls of this very forum not filled with pages upon pages of discussion about falls, crashes, technical failure and maintenance / QC / design issues ? I would say you'd have to be unbelievably lucky to not fall at all if you have been doing this any serious length of time. But hey - each to their own - I don't have to die on this metaphorical hill, but I am going to accept the possibility of crash on the way down it ! :)

 

Edited by Cerbera
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22 minutes ago, winterwheel said:

My views come from six years of experience with a large community of riders. Some are risk takers who should wear gear. Some are not.

Fair enough, I certainly don't have that kind of experience however my opinion (and it's just that) is that it's careless to advocate for the lack of gear that you wear to others who may not fair as well with their wheeling experience. I personally don't wear enough gear to emerge uninjured from a fall at any speed really but that is my own personal choice as you said. However i would always recommend the use of full protection and especially if you are an "older" person who could get injured easier and remain injured longer than others. Because let's face it. We are riding on one wheel with a fairly unpredictable failure rate and a 100% fall rate if that happens. I have yet to see anyone "land"a cutout...:P

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3 hours ago, Cerbera said:

Well, as literally thousands of videos attest

Extremely few of them are riders who are playing it safe though. Referencing YouTube as a data point is awfully flawed. I haven’t seen a single video of anyone commuting calmly with a Volkswagen Golf (or similar), yet it happens in the thousands every day, all over the world. And is waaaay more common than everything that happens in any of the YT car videos. YT exists because people want to show off, not because it’s common to put out videos of every day ordinary stuff.

Btw, I don’t think I’ve seen a single YT video of a human being just normally brushing their teeth. Just guess how many times that happens every day.

 

3 hours ago, Cerbera said:

to call it misinformation to merely point out that we should expect to fall at some point is flat-out wrong - it is realistic, off-putting or not !

Yes, we should expect to fall, just like we should expect that every other party in the traffic is out to get us. But it’s one thing to prepare for the worst down the line, and a whole another to try to convince beginners that they will inevitably fall multiple times while learning. One of them is indeed called misinformation.

 

 

Edited by mrelwood
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1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

Extremely few of them are riders who are playing it safe though. Referencing YouTube as a data point is awfully flawed.

It would be bad if it was the sole datapoint... and a corollary argument applies too - if so many crash videos do make it online, how many crashes don't - presumably a much larger proportion ? And beginner crashes are less likely to appear because a)they tend to be unspectacular and b) people would perhaps rather not show those early falls publicly.

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

Yes, we should expect to fall, just like we should expect that every other party in the traffic is out to get us. But it’s one thing to prepare for the worst down the line, and a whole another to try to convince beginners that they will inevitably fall multiple times while learning. One of them is indeed called misinformation.

Agreed, but I thought I was doing the first one, not the second. My point was only that no amount of teaching or the brilliance of it is going to prevent you not seeing a pothole at some stage !

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1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

Btw, I don’t think I’ve seen a single YT video of a human being just normally brushing their teeth. Just guess how many times that happens every day.

You are a very lucky surfer of the interwebs. I start out looking for "how to fold a T-shirt in 1 second" and 4 hours later start to believe that I too might be able to talk with a giraffe. <- I stole that reference because it's just truth.

Edited by Tawpie
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3 hours ago, Cerbera said:

if so many crash videos do make it online, how many crashes don't

Probably at least takes #1 - #7 from the same persons. The amount of crashes also only gives us any data if we know how many riders exist, and how many of the crashes happen to the same persons. Last I read about it, the amount of riders was estimated to be around 120’000 worldwide. I don’t know how many crash videos you’ve seen, but I would guess (and hope!) that it’s fewer than that!

 

2 hours ago, Tawpie said:

You are a very lucky surfer of the interwebs.

More than lucky I’d say that I attempt to be content conscious…

2 hours ago, Tawpie said:

I start out looking for "how to fold a T-shirt in 1 second"

Oh man, you must be a really busy person!

2 hours ago, Tawpie said:

4 hours later start to believe that I too might be able to talk with a giraffe.

Actually no, the opposite. You must have huge amounts of time in your hands! :lol:

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11 hours ago, winterwheel said:

Some are risk takers who should wear gear. Some are not.

Hit the nail on the head. I'm sure its possible to ride without falling if you are a very careful, observant and smart rider. Everyone's different to ourselves. Some folk can keep their wheels looking pristine while others like me can't.

8 hours ago, Tawpie said:

"how to fold a T-shirt in 1 second"

Ooo I've watched that video too. Took me a few attempts to work it out (hence why I do need to wear ATGATT)  but boy is it so easy and useful once you get it!

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