Segway!

Meng Wong came by this afternoon (mostly to say hi, we're trying to set up a dinner tomorrow evening to talk IdM) with an unexpected surprise, a Segway. He called to say he was coming from SMV and shortly afterward I saw this image sliding down the driveway past the rows of cars that appeared to be on a motorized scooter (or something, all I could see was the shoulders and above) but I didn't hear a buzz. When the rider turned the corner I realized it was Meng and he was riding something 'odd'.

Initial impressions? Quiet and smooth. Meng glided around like someone moving quickly accompanied by a slight whine. It all seemed quite effortless. That he could stop and seem to hover was neat.

Eventually, Meng asked if I wanted to try it and I could not pass that up. While Meng rebooted it into basic mode, Saeid was leaving and said this was a huge mistake, I'd kill myself (he knows my history too well I guess).

I spent a few minutes zipping around the parking lot, gaining confidence and trying various things. The most obvious 'feature'... recoil because of fear causes a quick (smooth) deceleration. I quickly got the idea (with Meng egging me on) to bend my knees in turns and lean into them like a skateboard or surfboard (except that my feet felt like they were in the wrong place). Perhaps it's a bit more like skiing in that respect. The part I was having a problem with was the lack of handle control (I played a bit a few years ago when the older boys were into scooters and eventually got the idea of high speed steerage). I did some spins, learned to back up, change directions at slow speed and did some high speed runs into turns. Eventually I started whining about the turn radius because I wanted to be more adventurous.

I finally convinced Meng to reboot in advanced. He did and asked me to not hurt myself. Say what? Off I go!

Over the next ten minutes I managed to wrench the handles out of alignment twice, get the darned thing up on one wheel three times and in the final hopping Segway episode, I achieved what Saeid said I'd do, falling on my arse (my wallet area is still a bit tender; ouch).

What tripped me up was my response to an off balance situation. I was trying to the use handle bar for control and completely forgot the rotation control was in the left hand grip. By trying to steer right to compensate, I threw myself left (onto a wheelie there) and I actually started a bigger spin (rotation wise). Slowly (far too slowly) I sensed a problem, started dragging myself right and I think I shifted the rotation grip in the process. When the right wheel hit I was completely out of control, riding a stand up bucking bull and shortly after, I was sitting on the pavement.

But damned, that was fun!

Later Meng followed me back to my office so I could pack things up to go. In the quiet building with few people around the machine actually seemed a bit noisy, and more so when we took a tour through the empty and tile floored lunch room area so I could fill up my water bottle.