Category ElectricUnicycles

So I spent a good portion of the morning so far getting the blog content back online.  When I logged in I immediately noticed the screens looked odd.  Some further investigation showed that my 13 years of posts were gone, the database appeared to be empty.  I had no idea what happened.  It could have been a malicious hack or just some sort of file/data issue.  Thankfully GoDaddy has a robust and reliable backup schedule for their hosted WP customers.  The bad news is I had to go back to Thursdays back up until got one that appeared intact.  Once I got the data back the first thing I did was change my account password just in case it was compromised.  All appears well once again.  This isn’t the first time I have had my blog get corrupted since migrating to GoDaddy however recovery when it happens is much, much easier than when it was living on IX Webhosting, where backups were kept for a couple days, were only accessible by the net admins and didn’t work half the time.

After I got my chores done Saturday morning I headed back to the school parking lot for some more Ninebot One practice.  After the improvements I made during the week riding in the driveway I was looking forward to seeing how I did in the large unobstructed area.

The session started out badly.  I had some minor spills followed by a pretty major one where I was quite glad I had protective gear on.  Starting off that way was pretty discouraging.  Part of the problem is this phantom wobble that kicks in randomly on my rides.  All of a sudden the wheel will start wobbling (you can see it in the video) which immediately throws off my balance.  Most of the times I can get it back under control but sometimes it winds up throwing me off the wheel.

From what I read online this is a pretty normal occurrence with new riders and can come from shaky balance and a lack of strength in the muscles used to balance a wheel between your legs.  Despite these problems I did have some long rides, a couple inside the smaller loop in the lot and one successful loop around the large outer loop, a distance of damn close to a 1/4 mile if I were to guess.  I wished that riding that distance felt better.  The truth is it feels like I am walking a high wire most of the time.  I will be cruising pretty easily with my hands at my side and all of a sudden a wobble will come in where I am flapping my arms like a chicken to recover from.  I had several near spills during the big loop ride.  Feeling like you are one small movement away from a wipeout onto the hard asphalt gets stressful. I also struggle doing any sort of turn that is not a huge semi-circle.

Part of being a good rider is wiping those negative thoughts from your head.  It seemed like most times I had a wobble or shaky moment I was just thinking “I hope I don’t fall” a few moments prior.  I came out of the session with two extremely raw ankles and more bumps and bruises.  I still am determined to conquer the wheel but damn, it is one of more difficult things I have undertaken in recent memory.  Later at home I did a few tweaks to the wheel that I am hoping will cut down on the wobble issue.  I did a quick test in the driveway which felt better but my ankles were too painful to do much beyond an up and back run.

Saturday night Cindy and I got out to see the new Star Trek movie.  I hadn’t really heard positive or negative about the film but I always have seen the Star Trek movies in a theater so I wanted to keep the streak alive.  We saw the 3D version of the film which adds zero to the experience for me except costing more.  The film featured awesome visuals with lots of explosions to keep you distracted from the dumb dialogue and utterly ridiculous resolutions to perilous situations.  There were two climactic scenes that come to mind on the stupid list.  I don’t want to be a spoiler so jump to the next paragraph if you intend to see the film.  Let’s just say I never thought the Beastie Boys would save the day.  The movie was just ok.  It gets a, “Fine to wait for Netflix release” B from me.

On Sunday morning I was tired and beat up from the Ninebot One riding the day before.  Despite this I felt the need to drag my ass to the track and get a run in.  Cindy smartly opted to take a pass.  The first few laps were not very comfortable at all with pain in my ankle from both a slight sprain and the brush burn.  I also had some pain in the knees and hips.  Eventually those pains got fuzzy and were just replaced with the misery of running in South Florida in the summer once the sun is in the sky.  Even though I started well before 8AM I was soaked after my 13 lap sweat-fest.  I was glad I had the mental endurance to get out there and complete something I really did not want to do.

When I got home I jumped in the pool to cool off.   All weekend I had been looking forward to Cindy and I taking out our dual Segway Minipros for a ride.  After changing we drove to Dunkin Donuts and parked there.  After grabbing coffee we headed east towards a nearby development on our electric two wheel personal transporters.

Riding the Minipro is such a relaxing experience compared to the russian roulette feeling I get on the Ninebot One.  Riding while drinking coffee is a breeze.  I discovered that riding while drinking coffee AND shooting GoPro video is nearly as easy as I recorded portions of the ride.

Cindy and I found us hitting the 11mph speed limit on the bots quite often, it feels very easy to do so because of how stable the ride is.  The pace feels pretty leisurely in the first person however when I watched the video back it seemed like we were going pretty fast.  In total we rode right around 6 miles and to be honest I could have gone longer.  Cindy was having some discomfort in her feet riding that long.  I had some as well but it bothered her more.  I really liked riding around on the Minipros as did Cindy, it allows you to appreciate longer stretches of scenery in a much shorter time period.

I liked it so much that I actually went back out solo later in the day after I topped off the charge.  I wanted to try riding from the house to the school where we do the track running which is about 3 miles each way.  The ride required me to be on roads for the first half mile or so before I had a sidewalk to ride safely on.  Riding on the road went fine, again the stability of the Minipro made it a very low stress thing to do.

Riding through the development behind the school was much more scenic and peaceful.  I got a few strange looks from people that saw me wheeling by.  I again had issues with setting off the speed limiter a lot.  The bot just wants to go faster, the governor is definitely just a safety precaution and not a hardware limitation.  If it would allow you to go just a couple mph faster I think it would hit the sweet spot.

On the way back I looped around more so it took longer on the return trip.  When I got back to the front door of the house I saw I had a total of a little more than 30 miles on the odometer.  Supposedly with the Ninebot Mini, the non-US version of the bot, once you hit the 50KM mark (31 miles) it unlocks slightly more speed.  This prospect excited me so I headed back out on the road for a couple more miles to cross that mark.  Unfortunately I still seemed to have the same 11mph speed limit but the battery level was about halfway so I’m holding out hope that with a full charge it will let me squeeze out just a little more MPH.  In total I put in 15 miles on my Minibot Sunday and really felt no ill side effects from it.

Last night we watched London has Fallen, the second in the series starring Gerard Butler as a secret service stud.  The movie was entertaining although it portrays Butler to be basically invincible.  It felt like he killed more people than Rambo did in all of his movies combined.  He also set the bar very high in the brutality scale with dozens of headshots peppered with up close and personal kills.  If you are the type that is offended by violence in movies you will want to steer a wide circle around the film.  If you are able to detach yourself from reality for a couple hours and just enjoy an old fashioned blowing em up ass kicking, you’ll enjoy the flick.  B+

I was feeling pretty beat up last night and was going to skip any Ninebot One training.  I changed my mind as my inner taskmaster didn’t want me to lose any of the small amount of progress I had made thus far.  My ride session was brief but the most positive I have had to this point.  I had no falls which is a minor miracle.  What is more surprising is I was able to ride the entire length of the driveway, in both directions.  Yea my arms still flail wildly during most rides but at least I can keep myself on the wheel. It felt good to be making some real progress.

So I had to read the statement twice to make sure I was not seeing things.  Of course I am referring to Donald saying that perhaps Russia could uncover the 30,000 deleted emails of Hilary that the FBI couldn’t.  Knowing how Trump is, of course I knew he wasn’t being serious but his lack of judgement when making public statements is very concerning.  I mean really, how can the American public think it’s ok for a presidential candidate to have no filter when it comes to speaking.  When you combine this with his paper thin skin you have the potential for all sorts of fireworks to go down, potentially with catastrophic consequences.

I have said before, if Trump manages to win the presidential election despite the repeated warning signs to the US public that he is woefully unsuited for the job, we as a country deserve whatever misery awaits us as a result.  I’ll just keep riding my wheel and try to not say, told you so.

I neglected to mention that we added a Dyson V6 to our already massive floor cleaning army recently.  Now you may ask why I would need this with two vacuum robots and three hard floor cleaning bots.  The answer is very simple, corners.

Although the bots do a decent job of cleaning the main surface areas they can not get into corners or other tight spaces.  I have a small 10 year old corded Dyson that up until this point was what I had to use in these situations.  It’s a pain in the ass to lug it out of the closet, unwind the cord, plug it in and convert it to wand mode to clean spots like this only to have reverse the process when you are done.  As a result these nook and crannies don’t get attended to as often as they should.

The Dyson V6 removes all of these obstacles.  Pull it off it’s wall charging station and you are ready to suck and suck hard.  Despite it being a battery powered device it has VERY powerful suction.  When you squeeze the trigger it sounds like you are holding a small jet in your hand.  It comes with a number of tools that allow it to be useful in a bunch of situations.  You can remove the long tube altogether if you are doing something like cleaning out the car.    The box states that the V6 actually has more suction power than a lot of it’s plug in counterparts.  After seeing it first hand I don’t doubt that claim at all.

So despite my desire to keep plugging away at my Ninebot One rider training I decided to take a break last night to give my mildly sprained ankle a chance to heal a bit.  During the day Cindy stopped in at our local Sports Authority that is in it’s last week of business before they close the doors for good.  She scored some incredible deals with most everything in the store marked down 80-90%.  I now have an impressive array of body armor to hopefully minimize my Ninebot related injuries including a skateboard helmet, elbow and knee pads.  I also plan to get a cheap set of work boots to help protect/support my ankles.

I was doing more reading and thinking about the balance issues I have on the one wheel bot.  I started to think about if I am able to ride a bike slowly with my feet stationary.  Of course the answer is yes.  Although a bike has two wheels your brain is doing similar left right balance movements.  I need to put my mind more in bike mode when riding the One as front back balance is more or less handled by the internal gyroscope in the wheel.

I also realized I was handling leans/turns which lead to crashes wrong.  Again a bike analogy made sense here.  If you watched any of my learning videos you will see a common scenario is I get on and the wheel leans to one side or another and I can’t recover and fall off.  On a bike, if you are traveling slowly and start to lean to one side or another you steer into the direction of the lean to correct yourself.  So if you are wobbling to the left, a slight left turn of the wheel gets the bike back under you.

When I am on the Ninebot One I am trying to do all of my turning via leaning which works ok when you are cruising along but not at slower speeds.  What I need to be doing is turning the wheel into the direction I am leaning/falling into.  Your legs act almost like forks on the front wheel of a bike, you just sort of twist them to turn the wheel.  Now I have not gotten to put this new found revelation to a real world test but it makes perfect sense to me.  Hopefully it translates into less crashing and more cruising.

Cindy and I watched a good chunk of the DNC last night while we were in bed.  Some of it was awesome some of it wasn’t.  I didn’t particularly like the woman speaking at length about Trump University like it was a major reason to oppose him.  Donald Trump sold his name repeatedly over his career to many, many projects.  To confuse use of his name as him overseeing the daily operations and decisions made at this “university” is just disingenuous.  It’s like people that like to “Blame Obama” for pretty much anything negative in the country.  Your doctor didn’t call you back? Blame Obama! Cable bill is too high? Blame Obama! You hit a pothole in the street? Blame Obama!  My point is Donald has plenty of personal shortcomings to be critical of without having to try to pull in things he lent his name to as simple figurehead.

I thought Michelle Obama was nothing short of fantastic in delivering her speech.  I told Cindy I don’t think there has been another first lady during my life that would have been able to pull that off, including Hilary Clinton.  You can just tell she speaks from a sincere and true place.  Although I like and admire Elizabeth Warren I was not all that impressed by her speech.  I thought she sort of dropped herself down a few levels and delivered a speech that did not come off as sounding overly intelligent, instead resorting to a lot of tactics I’d expect from Trump with a lot of bashing meant to rile up simple thinkers.

It was pretty amazing when Bernie Sanders took the stage.  He got the loudest and longest applause of the night by far.  He tried a dozen times to start his speech and was drowned out by the thundering cheers of the crowd.  It was incredible as they panned the audience showing people literally in tears.  It was a very powerful moment.  These people felt so invested in Bernie and his unwavering, simple, and honest dedication to what he believes in.  With the revelation that the DNC was actively trying to influence the outcome of the primaries in Hilary’s favor it made the moment even more bittersweet.

His speech was filled with mostly the same points that he hammered home tirelessly during his campaign, most of which I support.  Even though he was unable to dismantle the HRC political juggernaut, his efforts have made a lasting mark on the American politics scene.  He showed that even with meager resources, a good person with the ability to communicate his message in a passionate way can still gain traction with the public, regardless of the media and even your own political party attempts to derail you.

Anyone else think Bill Clinton looks incredibly frail?

Saturday morning Cindy again was teaching a spin class and I again used that time to head outside to get shit done like weeding and weed whacking.  I also attended to several other outdoor things that caught my eye while I was circling the grounds. Of course it was hot and humid as hell.  When I came inside I jumped in the pool with my shorts on.  Sadie enjoyed an extensive session of splashy splash.

So I had told Cindy for a few days that I had ordered a surprise for her.  She had been trying to guess what it was and of course I would neither confirm or deny her guesses.  It was not supposed to show up until Tuesday but during the day Saturday I got a notice it was actually going to show up that day!

We had a few errands to run but I was worried to leave the house as the package required a signature.  I wound up printing out a note and signed it, hoping that would be sufficient for the Fedex guy if he showed up while we were gone.  On our way back we saw a RING movement notification.  Cindy checked it and saw it was indeed the FedEx guy.  She was able to talk to the guy via the doorbell and verified he could leave it with the note.  He said he could and told us he would put the box in a plastic bag since it looked like it was ready to rain.  It was a cool practical use of our in house tech.

The surprise was in a generic box so Cindy still did not know what it was.  I told her I bought another robotic vacuum cleaner which did not excite her in the least.  When I opened the box and pulled out the Ninebot One electric unicycle she was more receptive as it was one of the things she had guessed it may be when I first mentioned the surprise.  I thought the Ninebot One would be a nice compliment to the Segway Minipro.  Sure it is a one wheel device but I figured our Minipro riding ability would help fast track us to learning how to ride the Ninebot One.  Before making the purchase I watched a ton of videos of others riding it as easily as we zip around on the Minipro.  Sure I figured it would be harder to learn than the Minipro but not exponentially so.  Wow was I wrong.

We originally were planning to see the new Star Trek movie Saturday night but the arrival of the EUC (electric unicycle) changed our plans.  We rented Allegiant on demand and took a break during it to go outside and ride around on the new toy.  The movie does not require any in depth review, it’s a middle of the road B flick that was half decent.

So my first testing of the One was indoors.  This is a self balancing wheel, like the Segway Minipro however it only balances front and back, not side to side.  Just getting onto the wheel seemed crazy.  I wound up holding myself up on the counter while I mounted the wheel. Once I got on it I could feel the forward and back balance kick in but I also felt like the second I left go of a support structure I would fall over.  When I was able to make it from the counter to a wall and then a table I was hopeful that I was already getting the hang of it.

When we went outside I got myself next to the fence and used it as support as I clumsily moved along it, thinking again I was making some significant progress.  Of course I could only got a second or two at a time until I had to reach for a fence post.  I was still holding onto something to mount the wheel, I had no idea how others were able to just hop on.

As expected Cindy had more luck than I did as her lower center of gravity and good balance served her well.  Before we started Cindy applied a bunch of protective foam to the bot which is included to protect it during the training period.  In very short order a lot of it fell off.  Very early on I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to keep the One unblemished as we tried to learn.  Just a few spills in the driveway had already scuffed and scratched it’s body.  Thank goodness it appears to be built to withstand the abuse.

So anyway we decided to abandon the safety of the fence line and headed onto the driveway.  At first we used the garage broom as an auxiliary support to keep us upright.  It sort of worked but really did nothing to help us learn how to truly balance on the single wheel.  Cindy then started trying to get up on the wheel sans broom.  She was trying to hop on the pedals while holding the handle on the wheel with one hand.  She had some limited success but when she would try to release the handle to stand up she would fall off.

She then got brave and tried just hopping on it, like we have seen in the videos.  You basically put one foot on UEC and let it lean slightly in the the opposite direction that your foot is on.  You then hop the other leg onto the other pedal and hopefully immediately start rolling forward.  It looks incredibly simple when you see somebody that is good with the wheel do it.  In real life it is much, much harder.  Cindy did manage to do it several times, traveling as far as 10-15 feet before falling off.  I was impressed.  When I tried to do something similar I would not be able to get moving at all and fall immediately.

Well Cindy had a bad wipeout as she was trying to build on her riding distance.  She lost her balance in a way that caused the wheel to shoot out from under her.  She kicked the wheel out with such force that the Ninebot continued rolling on it’s own.  I had to quickly snag it as it was rolling towards the road.  Cindy landed hard on her hip and arm.  That was enough for her.  Both of us were not wearing any safety equipment which in retrospect is not smart at all.  Neither of us expected the One to be this treacherous to ride.

So once Cindy called it quits I felt obliged to keep plugging along.  I used the pillars by the front door as supports to steady me to get on the wheel.  I then would launch myself out into the front yard, the grass would be more forgiving on both my body and the Ninebot when it would fall.  I had some limited success with my best ride taking me right to the edge of mound, some 30-40 feet away.  I knew that I needed to be able to get on the bot without holding on to something so I did a few attempts at that as well.  I was able to get on it although each ride was 10 feet or less.  My shins/ankles were killing me by the end of the session.  If you would like to see the footage of some of the session you can see it here.

If I am being honest I was sort of bummed out.  I had these ideas in my head that the Ninebot One would be the perfect companion for the Segway.  I envisioned both of us being able to learn to ride the EUC relatively easily and enjoy doing so.  Well after our first session reality set in.  If I was ever going to get decent on the One I was going to have a long, painful, and potentially treacherous road ahead of me.   Because I dropped a good chunk of change on the bot I felt obliged to see it through however.

On Sunday morning neither of us felt up to running from our bumps and bruises from the Ninebot.  I told Cindy I would like to go to the track however to do more EUC training.  Cindy was done with the Ninebot One for the immediate future but despite my aches and pains I felt like I had to press on.  We brought the Minipro along for Cindy to ride on safely.

Once we got there we discovered that Sadie finds personal transport vehicles very interesting.  She seemed to love chasing Cindy around as she zipped along.  So I had some moderate success sprinkled in during the training session that was dominated by falls.  I have not figured out how to gracefully stop without just jumping off the bot.  I had one particularly nasty fall where I was up one second and crashing down on my side a split second later.  I came down hard on my hip and elbow but was back up and riding again a couple minutes later.

I had one ride that was probably in the neighborhood of 75 feet or so which of course ended with me jumping off the bot again and letting it tumble.  My training session ended when the bot hit the ground hard enough and at the right angle where the battery pack ejected it self.  I needed tools to fix it so we stopped it there.  My Ninebot One that was new and pristine less than 24 hours prior now looked like it has been through a war.  It was pretty crazy.

In addition to the various bumps and bruises I suffered I found that overall trying to ride the EUC was hard work.  I was sweated through my shirt.  Part of that is the total body engagement needed for balance and part of it is what happens when your body is asked to be thrust into a situation where it does not know how to react.  Forcing myself to get on the One again and again, knowing each time I was probably going to wind up falling off definitely tests my fortitude.

During the afternoon  a horrendous storm blew through.  Up until this point we had survived rainy season without a major return of standing water on the property.  Well that streak ended yesterday, by the time it stopped raining we had ponds everywhere.  This is the part of the summer I absolutely hate where the ground is permanently soaked and every day has heat and humidity levels in the 90’s.  It sucks, plain and simple.

When the rain stopped and the driveway dried a little bit I decided I needed to continue the painful training.  I again had some limited success with more failure.  There is no doubt I am making progress but it is slow.  I just hope I get to the point where I can ride the One safely before either the bot is destroyed or I am.  The afternoon session ended when I fell in a way that sprained my right ankle slightly.  The fall also wound up sending the Ninebot into a puddle of standing water where it landed on it’s side.  Thankfully the bot can endure mild exposure to water.  I hosed off the dirt and propped it against the wall to dry.

It seems like my dreams of Cindy and I swapping between the Segway and One are not going to happen.  I am going to have to be the one to learn the wheel if I want to have any use come of my purchase.  I had Cindy get me some additional body armor at the local Sports Authority going out of business sale to aid me in gaining that expertise without winding up in the ER.

If you want to see how to install an ejected battery back into a Ninebot One you can do so here.