Giraffe Unicycles

Sticking your neck out for show

Say you've mastered the unicycle, and can juggle five bowling pins and recite the preamble to the Constitution while doing it. If you're not ready for the unicycle on a high wire, but not impressed with sword swallowing, we recommend giving the giraffe unicycle a shot. Long neck, not big wheels You may think that a giraffe unicycle could be any unicycle that puts the rider exceptionally high in the air. Not so, proper comedic effect is only achieved with an abnormally long post and a normal, 20 inch wheel. You may find them with 26 inch wheels, but usually not. Standard unicycle wheels don't get any bigger than 36 inches, so with the post, the seat will not be much more than 42 inches off the ground. That's if you have a 30 inch inseam. While such a sight would certainly be amusing, we hardly consider it dangerous or spectacular.

A "bear" minimum

To qualify as a giraffe unicycle, the seat should be at least 5 feet off the ground. If my math is correct, and it always is, that is a whopping 60 inches. Or, if you prefer, a total of 18 inches higher than unicycles with the largest wheels. We've mentioned that only bears can be taught to ride unicycles, which explains the terrible pun, but we also must say that one should never train a bear to ride a giraffe unicycle. It has never been done, but research shows the results would be gruesome.

The other direction

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a readily purchasable tiny unicycle similar to the tiny bicycles we see at the circus. The closest you'll get to one of these is a 12 inch wheel child's unicycle. Come to think of it, that's plenty small. For maximum effect, you should learn to ride both the child's and giraffe varieties of unicycle.