The Segway Human Transporter : 07-14-2003
By Carlos E.
The Segway...
It's been joked about, used on TV, and is as hard to come by as a Vertu phone...
That's why it was quite the surprise this past week, when, during my vacation,
I saw someone using it and decided to ask if I could try it out.
So, for those of you that are wondering... NO, I did not fall down when I got on for the first time.
The Segway is an interesting machine; it looks just like something out
of a sci-fi movie. The construction is very clean and its appearance
is very
minimalist/functional. The owner, who was also a dealer of the machines
(thus his stroll around was more of a marketing ploy than a real commute),
was
carrying 3 'keys' that, according to him, set the maximum speed that
the Segway can operate in. He started it with the Red one, presumably
the one
that was the easiest (or fastest to play a joke on me).
Now, as for getting on, the platform accommodates your feet nicely. It
looks like, size wise, like those foot massagers in the sharper image,
without
the texture. Once on, however, you realize how mechanically unnatural the
whole thing is. Here you are, standing on top of what looks like an old-school
2-wheeled lawn mower, and yet you aren't falling. Weird feeling.
My natural inclination was to try and 'balance' like you would with a cart
or while doing a wheelie on a skateboard, however, because the Segway is
trying to balance you out, you essentially only aggravate matters. Thus,
my initial stance was quite a bit wobbly, even if I wasn't moving at all.
The left handle has the turning rotor. If you turn it, it essentially makes
the Segway make a flat spin in either direction. It turns like tanks do,
by turning one wheel one way and the other in the opposite direction, thus
turning in one spot, aka “on a dime”.
Now moving forward is the really cool part, the feeling is one of intentionally
face planting. You lean forward and magically your feet come with you. It
accelerates at a fast pitch too, but I never was allowed to reach top speed,
for the owner said to stop and turn around. Well, I did just meet the guy;
he probably wasn’t too keen on me running away with it.
As for stopping, it almost feels like pulling a horse’s reins and leaning
back. It's not immediate, and I don't think you could make it skid stop like
you could with a bike. That said, it’s quite the experience to lean
back onto nothing. At least that’s how it feels.
Turning and moving was my next thing, I tried it both going backwards and
forwards. Mind you, all the things I've mentioned so far I did in roughly
5 minutes, so I think the learning curve is definitively short for those
of the Nintendo generation.
All in all, the Segway is a curiosity. I don’t know if I’d buy
one other than for just toying around and getting people to talk to me. I
don’t have any comments on the real vs. advertised battery life, max
speed, and durability, but I’m sure someone else might have that out
there. Definitively cool, though.
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