JOHN STONE is a composer and an athlete in Manhattan, and he has never been in a circus. This last fact is an important but often misunderstood aspect of his life, but perhaps one of the drawbacks of commuting to work in Midtown from his home on the Upper West Side on a unicycle.

“It gets tiresome that people see me on my unicycle and they only think of that,” he said on a recent Sunday while holding a tall black unicycle with special features to accommodate long-distance rides. “Sometimes people will see me riding and start singing circus music at me.”