I’ve been riding an electric unicycle for three days. I got it because I thought it would be a practical and fun small vehicle for someone who lives in an apartment. This is a follow up to my previous post about buying the wheel.

My opinion so far is that it is definitely fun, but I can’t really speak to the practicality yet. But I can say how my riding has gone so far.

DAY ONE after getting the wheel set up I put it in my car and drove down the street to a small park. Held onto a tree and balanced on the wheel to get a feel for the way it moved. After doing that for a bit I started trying to roll but kept dropping the wheel in the grass. But after a few tries I was able to go, and once I started moving balancing was much easier. I was not balancing super well, turning was difficult and a fell on my butt once when I was trying to turn in the grass. After around an hour and a half I was pouring sweat and ready to go home. I was content with the fact that I was able to ride the thing at all.

DAY TWO I had a lot more time to ride it. I went back to the park and was having a similar experience as the day before. A little later on while my partner was in a doctor’s appointment I practiced in the back parking lot of the building. I bailed off the wheel when I hit a speed bump at a bad angle and it hit the pavement pretty hard and put a crack in the top part of the shell. I was pretty upset but I kept riding, I duct taped it when I got home.

Later on I went to a different park that has some dirt and gravel paths and I rode it around nice and easy for probably close to 3 hours. I started to notice when I was getting off balance more and recovered instead of bailing from the wheel. My feet, knees and calves kept getting sore and I would take breaks and sit periodically.

DAY THREE, today, I rode in another park for a little while and then later I decided to try riding the wheel to the park down the street from my apartment rather than driving there. Very cautiously, getting off the wheel whenever I felt slightly unsafe, walking the wheel across the crosswalk on the way there. It was a short ride, on a pretty quiet side street. After riding at the park for a bit I practiced riding down the side streets a bit before heading back home.

After charging my wheel I put on a backpack and went for a journey. I rode an 8 mile (13km) loop through my town. The fear of falling was still there but I just went slow and stayed aware of my surroundings. I was on some busy streets for part of the trip, and I mostly stayed on the sidewalk. I don’t live in a super bike friendly town, there aren’t always bike lanes.

All of that riding was done with the wheel set to it’s default 25km/h (15.5mph) top speed. Since day one I was getting warning beeps and the wheel would tilt me back to slow me down. After I got back from that trip I went onto the familiar side street to the park by my apartment and turned the speed up to 29km/h (18mph) and cruised around a bit. I didn’t get any warning beeps and it felt good going that little bit faster. I didn’t wreck, bail, or drop the wheel all day today.

I’m feeling accomplished. I’ve come way further than I thought I would in this amount of time. As the basic balance is becoming more natural I am able to try things. I can sway a little bit, or slow way down and make a quick little turn. I can look over my shoulder without losing balance or inadvertently turning the wheel. I really have been having fun the whole time but today it got way more fun.

There’s definitely some downsides though. My calves, knees and feet are very sore right now. If I had done all this riding on an electric scooter would I be this sore? I doubt it. I’m 42 years old, and I have some chronic pain in my right leg so I was concerned about pain. I’m hoping it gets easier over time.

Also some people see me and they don’t know what to do. It’s like they’re looking at an alien. Some people in the parks had really negative reactions. I wonder how they would have reacted to a scooter. No one ever seemed annoyed by my ebike, except one stupid teenager who honked his horn at me on the road.