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tried a segway

 
Trailboss
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Yesterday was my wife's birthday and as part of the celebration we rented segways for an hour.
They're pretty fun!
Anybody else tried them?
 
author and iconoclast
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Hey, cool! You can rent them? Where from?
 
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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Hey, cool! You can rent them? Where from?


BLOCKBUSTER
 
paul wheaton
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Here in Spokane at the big park dowtown.
I called the park office and asked about hours and they said they closed for the winter, but here's the phone number for the guy that used to do it. So I called the guy and the guy said that he would meet me at 5:30 ....
And of course everywhere we went people oooo-ed and aaaaah-ed. We were the coolest people in the park for about an hour.
 
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What do they run on ? i.e what powers them ?
regards
 
paul wheaton
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They have a battery that sits between the wheels.
 
paul wheaton
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Lookit - the guy e-mailed me pics of our segway adventure ...
This is me and Brenda in downtown Spokane ...
 
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The story of the inventor and how the segway came into being (a wheelchair that could climb stairs) is pretty impressive. The local paper published an excerpt from "Code Name Ginger: The Story behind Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World".
 
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Segway is recalling about 6,000 of its high-tech scooters.
 
mister krabs
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Is Brenda wearing a JavaRanch shirt? Why aren't you wearing one?
 
paul wheaton
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Brenda is wearing a JavaRanch shirt. I have only one left in my size and I save it for occassions where there will be other Java people.
 
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You have a beard.

Is it hard to balance?

They don't have Washington listed for either rentals or sales.
[ September 27, 2003: Message edited by: Marilyn de Queiroz ]
 
paul wheaton
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Originally posted by Marilyn de Queiroz:
You have a beard.

Is it hard to balance?

They don't have Washington listed for either rentals or sales.
[ September 27, 2003: Message edited by: Marilyn de Queiroz ]


Are you asking if having a beard makes it hard to balance?
M, I've met you face to face dozens of times. My beard comes and goes. Surely this is no surprise. These days I'm going for the "lazy bastard" look. I hate shaving and I rarely leave the farm.
The big thing about the segway is that it balances itself. In fact, I tried to get it to tip and it wouldn't do it. The other thing is that when you lean forward, it detects it and starts moving forward. If you lean backward, it goes backward. So there are only two ways to control the vehicle: Leaning forward or back; twisting the turn knob on the left handlebar.
 
HS Thomas
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Marilyn, the original with another (less expensive) toy.

regards
 
HS Thomas
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Shouldn't you both be wearing helmets BTW ?
I don't know what speeds those things can clock up but anything that claims to be the Transport of the future needs some safety features.
regards
[ September 28, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]
 
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some technical mistake: the tower behind you two is leaning, Brenda's Segway is not completely included, there is too much sky in the composition, which is uninteresting to the subject of this photo.
I really like the trees behind you two, don't know how they are called in English. In my hometown there are a lot of these trees, they look just like long hair girls standing along the river, homesick now...
 
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I really like the trees behind you two, don't know how they are called in English.
Willow? We have them in R. too.
 
Marilyn de Queiroz
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Weeping willow trees. Red willow trees are similar but the branches don't hang down as low.
 
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Why don't you make your own segway ?
 
paul wheaton
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A helmet would mess up what little hair I have.
When we got off the segway's we discovered that our feet were sore and we had "sea legs". While it was fun to do it once, I'm quite certain I would never buy one.
When it comes to electric vehicles, I feel I already have the best:
 
Thomas Paul
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Originally posted by Don Kiddick:
Why don't you make your own segway ?


Did you notice how high this guy's pants are? He really is a nerd!
 
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[HST]: Shouldn't you both be wearing helmets BTW ?
I don't know what speeds those things can clock up but anything that claims to be the Transport of the future needs some safety features.

Well it needs to be safe, but helmets in particular may or may not be necessary. I think that it's probably important to the company that makes the Segway that helmets not be considered required. The reason being, they're trying to market this thing as something that can safely share the road with pedestrians. Some cities have banned the Segway from sidewalks because it's perceived as potentially dangerous; others have passed laws allowing it. It's important to Segwa to gain public acceptance. If they came out and said "you should wear a helmet while riding", that would imply that the risks are high enough to justify it - in which case, what about pedestirans in the vicinity? If you're endangering the driver enough to require a helmet, you're probably also endangering pedestrians, and you can't very well expect them to wear helmets - so instead, this line of thinking would lead to Segways being banned from sidewalks, to protect pedestrians. The company doesn't want this; instead they have been basing their product's safety on other things - like limiting the speed, and designing the controls to be easy to operate without falling or running into something. Which seems to be pretty sucessful overall, despite the recent problems associated with running out of power. (A few people fell when their Segways ran out of power, because control was lost while the Segway was still in motion. Now they've got a patch which causes the Segway to stop before power is completely lost.)
 
HS Thomas
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posted by jim Yingst:
(A few people fell when their Segways ran out of power, because control was lost while the Segway was still in motion. Now they've got a patch which causes the Segway to stop before power is completely lost.)


So un !
Re: the pant heights, any lower and he'd be Nebbish! (originally a Slav term).
regards
 
Jim Yingst
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Did you notice how high this guy's pants are? He really is a nerd!
He built his own Segway, and it's the pants that make him a nerd? :roll:
 
Anonymous
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Can you still ride a segway if your middle ear is damaged?
 
Jim Yingst
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Can you still ride a segway if your middle ear is damaged?
Probably. The things have plenty of gyroscopes of their own to tell which way is up; they shouldn't need your help in that department. Though I suppose if this condition causes you to walk in an unusual manner, the segway might have trouble translating your own movements into commands.
 
HS Thomas
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Trained fighter pilot rides the human transporter that is impossible to fall off of....

He must have damaged his inner,middle and outer ear.
regards
 
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Originally posted by HS Thomas:
Trained fighter pilot rides the human transporter that is impossible to fall off of....


Actually, if I remember the articles correctly, it was one of those tricky-low-battery-loss-of-control issues.
 
paul wheaton
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When we went for our ride, we asked the guy about that. He said that the segway wasn't turned on. To prove it - notice how in the last frame the segway is not upright? And in the first frame - notice how it is not straight up and down. The device is powerfully insistant on staying vertical.
 
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