My uncle Charlie, who lived in California, road a unicycle that he built himself and watching him ride it captured my imagination – I too wanted to ride one.
It must have been around my 8th birthday when I asked my parents for one and they agreed to purchase the unrideable contraption from a Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog for my birthday.
For the next few months during a long, cold Minnesota winter I would go into the unheated garage, put my back against the garage door, and try to get the wheel to stay under me long enough to sit on it so I could attempt to ride it away from the door. The unicycle, of course, had entirely different ideas as it would squirt out from under me and happily fly across the floor without me or it would howl with laughter as I would crash onto the cold hard cement floor again, and again, and again. The human eventually prevailed over the machine and I was able to roll forward on the death device, begin to direct its movement, and eventually learned how to turn both directions as I glided over the frozen floor in winter clothes with frosty breath streaming out of my nose and mouth. Many times the ice and snow on the garage floor, or the combination of a frozen floor and frozen hard rubber tire, would take me and my new friend down fast and hard. Elbow/knee/hip pads and helmets were not a thing at that time ( the same could be said for seat belts in cars ).
By the end of the winter I was ready to head outdoors with what amounts to 1/2 of a bicycle. The unicycle had a very small wheel, short peddle cranks, and simple metal bushings instead of wheel bearings and by the end of the next summer the bushings were worn out. It must have been quite a sight to see this kid riding a hard wheeled unicycle bouncing up and down on the gravel with the wheel slapping back and forth against the forks as I peddled around our country home. The bushings that held the wheel in place were completely missing. My Dad noticed. After seeing I had stuck with it long enough to master the unrideable steed, my Dad surprised me with a new Schwinn unicycle. It had a large air-filled wheel, long cranks, honest-to-goodness wheel bearings, and a seat that didn’t feel like you were straddling a small metal pipe. This ad is from about the year my Dad bought the Schwinn. It would cost about $350 at today’s prices and I thought I had the very best gift in the world. I know I had the best Dad. I still have that unicycle.
My ability to ride a unicycle instantly improved about 100-fold and my life long enjoyment of a one wheeled machine was off to the races. The difference in rideability was magical. I rode it on snow, hockey rinks, and any summer surface that would hold up the tire – and some places that couldn’t. I rode forwards and backwards, I rode it with only one foot, and I jumped off anything I could ride up onto.
There certainly are easier ways to learn to ride these infernal machines. The first tip is to buy a well-designed one. The second tip is to not ride on a frozen cement floor in the middle of a Minnesota winter. Regardless, I found it to be worth the effort.