first long ride on the Schlumpf

In case anyone is interested...

I just got back from the British Unicycle Convention. On the way to
BUC, I did my first long ride on the Schlumpf. The longest ride
previously was the 1.75 laps at the Strathpuffer 24 in January, which
added up to about 17km or so, almost all in low gear. Since the
Schlumpf got unbroken last week, I'd commuted 3 or 4 times on it, I
think the commutes were between 3 and 6 miles each way. At some point
last year, I stupidly said that I'd unicycle to BUC again this year.
Since I'd never ridden the schlumpf a long distance before, the
sensible thing to use for a two day journey with bivvy gear and enough
clothes and stuff for a weekend of unicycling was my coker. Since I've
never been particularly sensible, I packed up all my gear, strapped the
sleeping bag to the back of my Schlumpf seat, got a map and set off to
ride there.

The first day, I did 98 miles, an almost century, from Beeston near
Nottingham, to the rather aptly named Weel, near Beverley. I went
across the bridge formerly known as the longest single span suspension
bridge in the world, and ate lots of malt loaf, pizza and chips and
other lovely stuff, (as recommended by top athletes). At one point I
passed a school class doing a traffic survey, "car car car lorry bus
what the..." which must have skewed their statistics rather. I bivvied
a few hundred metres off the road in a woods in Weel, in lovely
weather, a bright full moon, owls hooting, rabbits and foxes scurrying
around, and the bells on a big clock in Beverley ringing once an hour.
It was lovely, although so toasty warm I had to sleep outside the bivvy
bag rather than in.

Second day, I also did another almost significant distance, 49 miles,
from Weel, to Seamer near Scarborough, where BUC was held. It was
actually only about 20-25 miles away if I'd done the direct route, but
I had an urgent apointment with an ice cream sundae at 'Mr Moo's Ice
Cream Parlour' (http://www.mrmoos.co.uk/) which was very very nice,
chocolate ice cream, with chocolate sauce, and chocolate bits in it,
all on top of a great big chocolate cookie, with a chocolate straw and
covered in cream, yumm. It's actually on the farm where the cows live,
so you can go and see the cows that your ice cream came from, I can
really recommend going there! I also wanted to go into Bridlington to
see the beach and stuff, which added a bit. In the morning, I got
really sunburnt, then as I was 3 miles out of Flamborough, the skies
opened and all the rain that we hadn't been having for the last week or
so decided to come out at once, 15 of the last 20 miles or so were in
complete torrential rain, roads flooding instantly and turning into
streams etc.

The next two days, I played hockey loads on Saturday, (my team came
third, and our first team came second!), and went for a bit of a road
ride (probably only 15 miles or so) over the biggest hills we could
find in Scarborough, and then along the sea front. It was cool.

So yeah, almost 100 miles, almost 50 miles, so almost 150 miles on the
Schlumpf. It rode okay. The high gear is nice, it took me 11 hours 20
mins to do the first day of riding, which is longer than the 9 hours 51
I've done for 100 miles on a coker, but this time I wasn't in a hurry
at all, I was stopping and looking at stuff, and having loads of rests,
as I didn't want to kill myself for the weekend. So speed wise,
probably about the same as my coker maybe just slightly faster (110mm
cranks on the coker, 150 on the 29" schlumpf). I think the ride would
have been easier on the coker, as it seems harder to ride the Schlumpf
when you're tired, the coker evens out your pedal stroke for you a lot
more. I didn't find the low gear much use when road riding when tired,
I rode it all in high gear in the end. When you're not tired it's nice
to have for riding up steep hills, as I discovered on the Sunday ride,
but when you're tired, it's just so much effort and you might as well
walk up the hills. On the flat or downhill, there's no point in low
gear because it just feels like you're running in a hamster wheel or
something.

I also played around a bit with the Schlumpf in a gym, I can now kick
the down shifter, although not stay on once it shifts, and can shift up
fine. I stopped practicing shifting after one time when down shifting
seemed to miss clicking in and freewheel for long enough to let the
unicycle go about half a revolution rather than the normal 1/12 of a
revolution, leaving me on my arse and bruised. Ouch.

So yeah, the Schlumpf does work for long distance (although I've got a
different frame, rather than the rubbish original one) and is about as
good as a coker. It was nice to have something low geared when I got
there.

I still wouldn't recommend getting one for someone who has a car and
drives to the start of most rides, unless you want to do a combination
of quite technical muni and road riding in one ride, then a stock coker
will be fine, and you'll have enough money to buy a super nice muni, or
to go on holiday or something. I'd recommend a schlumpf if you
regularly do rides where you do hard muni and lots of road riding in
one ride, or don't have a car and ride out to your muni rides. My
commute has muni in the middle of it, so it's good for me, and means I
can practice muni every day.

For pure road riding cokers are still great. Maybe a schlumpf coker is
a good idea but I'm currently put off them for a few reasons, they're a
really narrow hub, they look and feel dodgy, the wheel has side to side
wobble even compared to a stock coker, there isn't yet a frame for them
which is as good as the stock coker frame, and having seen the ways
Roger's one chucked him off on our ride yesterday, I think they're a
bit too much of an injury risk, especially if things like dodgy shifts
happen. I'm not really convinced they'll stand up to hard riding
either, the amount of power people like Roger put through their cokers
is insane, I'd guess fat people might put even more stresses on their
gears. The fact it has a warranty if it breaks is fine, but they don't
warranty your legs or wrists and from my experience, if the gears drop
out for longer than you're expecting, you crash down jolly fast.

Joe


--
joemarshall

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Thanks for the ride report, Joe. You're an animal, especially with the
bivy thrown in!

This kind of Schlumpf info is great, especially for those of us
considering, but not yet owning, a Guni. Sounds like I'll stay with
the Radial 36 for a while yet.


--
steveyo

steveyo

...like having your own personal rollercoaster...
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Thanks for the ride report which is also interesting to people who do
own a Schlumpf. While 98 and 49 miles are almost round numbers, they
are (imho) certainly significant distances! Kudos to you.

Good read, on this day, where a Schlumpf quietly waits in the UPS
building for me to go pick up

Other than speed wise, how did you find the 150's over such a long
distance compared to the 110's on the coker (my previous favourite
endurance setup)

the wheel sizes are different and such, but I mean the pedaling with
150's for so long, did it bug you?


--
Brian MacKenzie

DVD now available: 'Training Wheel Not Required'
(http://www.LBMmultimedia.com/videos/TWNR_uniTV.wmv) | 'Inner Balance
Blog' (http://innerbalancemovie.blogspot.com)
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