I unicycled 1100 miles with a group through Europe (2001) and again about 500 miles in northern Norway (2003) with mostly the same group. Both were incredible experiences and a unicycle is actually a fun way to tour since you’re upright and able to look around, use a camera, dig things out of other riders’ backpacks, ride in close formation and hold a conversation easily. I tried to look up the website just now, but it’s gone. However, here’s the Norway trip on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20060622062249/http://www.unitou....
Edit: on both trips we had a support vehicle carry much of our luggage. I really admire Ed for fully self-supporting — it definitely adds a lot to the challenge especially since most of the equipment to carry it is custom.
I was part of the group that broke the world record unicycling from Land's End to John O'Groats in 1986. I started as one of the five riders (we were all going to ride the entire distance, it was not a relay), but three of us dropped out due to injury. Nevertheless, Mike Day and Michel Arets made the entire distance, about 900 miles, in 14 days, 12 hours, and 41 minutes.
We were using unmodified 28" unicycles, neither gears nor brakes, and no armrests or equivalent. It's interesting to see how the unicycle has been adapted for these ultra-long journeys.
After dropping out I become the support vehicle driver, finding accommodation en route (which sometimes were tents, and sometimes kindly donated hotel rooms), buying food (no restaurants as we were skint students doing this on zero budget), and generally looking after the riders.
It was an interesting experience.
For reference, the previous record had been 19 days, 1 hour, and 45 minutes, so we beat that by about 4 1/2 days. The current record is 6 days, 8 hours, and 43 minutes. Which is insane.
Also for reference: The current bicycle record is 43 hours, 25 minutes and 13 seconds, set by 40 year old Michael Broadwith on 17 June 2018. Note that this is roughly an average speed of 20mph for roughly two days, non-stop. This is also insane.
I have been sponsoring him on Patreon for a while as not only did he ride those 21000 miles (with no freewheel!), but he also self-filmed and self-produced one of the most original, high-quality video series on the platform. You can really see how much he learned about video making as he progressed on the journey.
For something more accessible to laypeople: bicycle touring is a thing.
Pack a few bags, attach them to your bike and cycle across a province, country, continent or around the world.
I biked across Europe in 2017 and it is my most happy and memorable life event to this day.
I did this when I was young. Me and a group of friends went from New York to Montreal to Vancouver to Seattle.
I took several other long-range trips through a group called the Metropolitan New York Council of American Youth Hostels. It doesn't look like it exists anymore. But I remember we would run into other organizations on the road like one called Outward Bound, which was kind of the yuppy version. They had sag wagons and cooks. We had our wits and Vienna sausage.
It is just as easy in North America, and the ACA trans-country routes can feel crowded in season. You do meet a lot of retirees or foreigners on them, though, which underscores that the difficulty of bicycle touring for Americans is not something about their country or roads, but the miserably short vacation time that American workers get.
It is!
I spent a week traveling the Pacific Coast Highway in 2018. I brought camping gear, but never used it because I found a warmshowers.org host (sometimes multiple) at every stop.
I did a section of the PCH too (northward starting at San Francisco). As pretty as it was, it was not my favorite place to ride a bike. No shoulder, winding road, zero visibility... it felt like I was taking my life in my hands every time I approached a curve.
Bike-packing is the lighter-weight, mixed-terrain version of traditional on-road bicycle touring.
It's quite accessible. Just need a bike, a map, and a backpack with camping kit. Of course, some of us get crazy with counting grams and trying to mix in gnarly terrain.
I do a few trips each year, usually 3-day weekends within a few hours drive of home. Some are mellow on groomed gravel with my wife. Some are more extreme with friends on mountain bikes.
Most bikepacking communities rightly warn against wearing a backpack. If you want a bikepacking setup, there are frame bags and seatpost bags to hold all your gear without you having to lug all that weight on you, which is such a drag after just a couple of hours in the saddle.
I cycled from NY to SF 2015, with a detour to Chicago. I've done lots of bike touring in other parts of the world, but would say US is one of my top countries for bike touring!
When my kid was about 3 he had a nanny who was a circus performer and dedicated unicyclist. So my 3 yo could unicycle (with a cute tiny unicycle) before he could bike.
The nanny said he was a “mountain unicycler”. I thought it was an absurd exaggeration until he showed us a video that had been made of him and a friend doing stunts on a cliff face. We began to worry about his sanity...Luckily my wife considered that a positive thing.
One thing that sticks out to me in that video is that they seem to grab the seat like a handle a lot. I'm not sure why this surprised me, as it seems pretty natural, but for some reason it never occurred to me that unicyclists might do that. It almost looks like it's a pogo stick with a wheel when they do that!
Apart from keeping the pedals against your feet when jumping, holding the seat also allows for pulling down to put more torque on the pedals, like standing and pulling on the handlebars of a bike for when you need more force on the pedals than your weight.
He says in the video "My left arm maintains the brake" @ 1:26 in. So I assume there is a brake lever there along with the other comment saying it helps keeping the bike close during airtime.
Yes, I used a brake as well. It can help with stopping quickly but only with much practice (well, stopping isn’t hard, but doing it comfortably). A brake also helps to drag on hills so as not to fatigue the legs and knees. Some in my group used a shift lever to operate the brake, carefully increasing until the right amount of drag was reached for comfortably going downhill.
Ed is an absolute legend. Can't imagine the courage it took for a 19 year old to head out into the world like that. Would highly recommend checking out his youtube channel, on which he has hours of very well edited video documenting the entire trip.
I couldn't get past the, uh, pressure it put on my groin. I don't know how men do it for more than a couple of minutes, let alone a globe trotting distance.
It doesn't necessarily put that much pressure on your groin once you get the hang of it. You can rise up a bit, and it eases that. It's definitely exhausting though. I made the mistake of trying to keep up with a group on bikes once. It was only a mile and a half, but even so it was almost impossible to keep up. Not being able to freewheel is a big resstriction.
Sitting bolt upright on a conventional bike consumes a lot more energy than being on the drops. It's one of a handful of topics to bring up when a newbie starts talking about how they can't keep up because they're not in shape. Yes, that is true, and we also have much better technique than you do, which we can work on right now, if you like...
Somehow this guy got aerobars to work on a unicycle, which they don't talk about. I had to stop and search for an image to see how the hell those work.
They're taking a load off his core and letting him use many more muscle groups.
My son kept up with a bike group on trails for 30 miles.
To do that you should have a 36" wheel. An alternative is a geared unicycle, but those are expensive and rare. Choose crank arm length as needed to make the pedaling most effective. Resulting speed might be 30 MPH peak, or 20 MPH sustained.
There's a big difference between a 20-inch unicycle and eg a 24-inch. At Google we even had one that was probably 30 inch or more.
Though still, keeping up with cyclists is going to be a problem. Joggers and other runners are the group to keep up with. And they don't have a freewheel either.
I've done quite a bit of unicycling. The better your balance, the less energy is required for balance. I think for a skilled unicyclist the difference in pace compared to being on a fixie would be slight.
Eh, it's really not a big deal. When I first learned, I was worried about the same, but I learned to sit properly to avoid problems. Basically, I adjust myself while mounting and then I'm good to go.
Other than that, it's the same story as riding a bike. Learn to ride on your sit bones and toughen up that area by regular use.
I must say, however, that learning involves a lot of pain, mostly from the seat hitting sensitive areas when falling off. You can learn to fall relatively gracefully as well, which minimizes pain.
I can unicycle a bit. The reason I stopped was 100% the groin issue. There's more weight on your crotch than a typical bicycle and the way the seat is curved makes it very easy to smash testicles. It's a fun activity, but also a good way to end a bloodline.
It might depend on the person. I used to be an avid unicyclist, including commuting to work on one every day, and my groin always ached from it. Adjusting, sitting up, etc, never really helped much. It's the main reason I don't really ride any real distance anymore.
I did find that barends helped however, push on them with your hands and you can get some relief. The unicycle in the article has them.
Oh thank you for writing this. I was in the end-stages of buying a unicycle, and now I think I'll just borrow a friend's for a while first just to see how bad the groin situation is.
Equipment varies. Be sure to get a slot down the middle. Often there is a hidden slot, built into the foam but covered by stretchy fabric. Here is one without the fabric:
Just a small correction to: “I used an app on my phone called Maps.Me, which creates open-source maps that are completely free and downloadable...snip...”
Maps.me is using OpenStreetMap data created by more than six million contributors including Maps.me users who also can edit the map data.
Edit: on both trips we had a support vehicle carry much of our luggage. I really admire Ed for fully self-supporting — it definitely adds a lot to the challenge especially since most of the equipment to carry it is custom.