...and a good time was had by all.  

In the very first meeting of Segway enthusiasts held under the Segway LA banner, a baker's dozen of

1. Owners
2. Future Owners
3. The Curious
4. Newbies

...all showed up in the same place at the same time.

Everybody rode. That's because TJ (Whose real name is Tom Johnson. Coincidence? I think not.) brought his i machine to the gathering. Actually, he was the only #1 category holder, but his experiences and glidance were appreciated greatly.  

Names and handles one might recognize from their postings on the Segway Chat forums were in attendance.

Wheels, Toybuilder, Cyberclone, RobbW, BruceWright, JGassor, Fred Kaplan, David Whiteman, TJ, Jamesdu, Loricat...

Loricat? That was Lori Bender who was the complete innocent #4 category holder. No relation to Bender, the robot in Futurama, she arrived to help host the meet and didn't know its subject beforehand.

Lori got to be the first glider on TJs HT, being the person with the fewest preconceived notions. Took to it in about 10 seconds. Within 3 minutes, she was proficient. Later in the afternoon she had it doing wheelies. Of course, it is in a permanent state of "wheelie," but she zoomed around the parking garage and out onto the sidewalk stopping traffic as she flew.

Lori's first and only Lesson                 Toybuilder in dream state                        Wheels on wheels.

TJ Demos the HT

Lori breaks sound barrier

The meeting was convivial and informal, for the most part. Rather a jam session that talked about possibilities, reports from left and right, goals, the politics of banishment, and opportunities to shape a positive public opinion.

TJ's experiences were an outline of what early adopter's experiences are likely to include.

• Get used to it, people will ask questions. About 14 people stopped him the previous day with the standard barrage.
• The coolest thing we can do is answer questions, give a demo lesson if appropriate, and zoom on.
• Keep your black key--the slowest, lowest performance--with you in case of demos. (Don't hand your key to a stranger. In fact, the key idea is probably worth not revealing up front, at all.--Ed.)
• Sometimes one is in a hurry, so developing a pleasant response, a quick answer and a ready smile may have to do.
• The HT is a definite--if not THE definite--people meter. Not that it meters people, but you meet the nicest people on a Segway (sorry Honda). Okay, rewrite that. "...people meeter."
• Segway's training course will likely include training in how to demo the unit, thus training the always-interested general public, one ride at a time.

Everybody got to ride and test ideas. Preconceived notions (mine) resulted in the initial "novice rock" where one's own balance system momentarily competes with the on-board intelligence.

It's a two second phenomenon. Any external stability dampens it out, never to return. It's like your feet go, "Oh. I get it." I got into the effect because I wanted to feel what standing up on one of these was like without coaching, just to experience the rawest first-timer physics for myself. Yep, there it is. A quick oscillation about 4 inches to/fro as the machine asked me to Use The Force, Luke.

Several of us exhibited it, but Lori, wouldn't you know, had zero difficulty from the get-go, ending up with a complete appreciation for a machine that wasn't even on her horizon when she awoke that morning. From zero to convert in ten minutes flat.

Newbie habits (the guys, only) included:

Looking at your feet instead of looking forward,

Backing up until the machine signaled, "Hey!" and

Trying to corner too quickly when moving fast. And it DOES move fast, if requested to.

One rider was able to actually stop so positively as to momentarily squeak the tires on polished pavement (always a squeak enhancer). You can't lay rubber starting, but it's good to know that stopping is so potentially powerful.

Reigning it in with the sitzlehnen maneuver is a very effective method of stopping. You partially sit back, pulling the bars with you, and maximum braking occurs naturally.

By partly sitting, your center of gravity lowers and the stop is shortened, allowing you to maximize braking and come to a comfortable stop.

Sitzlehnen is a new German HT word for sit-lean. Other new-to-be-coined HT terms should be derived from other of the world's languages.

What's Swahili for "balance?" Baki (n.), as in "watch your baki," or Jisuka (v.) as in, "Let the machine jisuka." Lots of possibilities here. But I digress...

Clockwise from top left; Underbelly of the beast, Bottom of rubber foot pad,
TJ answers the many questions, James threads the twisting hallways.

Nightrider light system

JGassor brought two very interesting items. The ReeVu bike helmet with its built-in rear view mirror system, and an easy to adapt bike headlight attachment that can velcro-mount almost anywhere needed. Both very effective.

The ReeVu is a natural. Good protection for head-dives and the rear view system works intuitively and pretty much as advertised. The rear image is seen in the visor portion of the helmet. A reduced-magnification, wide angle view rearward that is the result of a novel periscope effect.

Glancing up to check it is just a flick of the eye, but the helmet must be level (of course) to see meaningful rearward vistas.

The light system attached without any fuss via velcro straps, rubberized guides and three main components; battery pack (rechargeable), headlight and red LED tail light. Wires made the connections. The tail light is the least useful, but the headlight easily mounted and adjusted to catch a good forward illumination of the path ahead.

       

Jim Gassor with ReeVu and headlight, Tekla Wright casually balances, Contemplative host.

Wheels brought the most popular accessory: The home-made Segway Cookies with the Segway logo on them. Valued at over $30 apiece on eBay, we all threw caution to the wind and ate them outright.

Topics throughout the three-hours of gathering included

• the Segway Drill Team for the 2003 Do-Dah Parade (A Pasadena CA send up of the Rose Parade held around Thanksgiving and which has grown to other cities--check it on Google.com),
• the effect of having "rides" of several (many?) HT's in public places,
• publicity opportunities,
• "extra" work in motion picture or TV shows,
• how to best make the HT experience available to municipalities, city council people and supervisors,

...among others. Interesting group.

That last point, the politics of gliding, had several prongs. RobbW will be testing the HT connection for Metrolink, and several of us, self included, offered to help wherever appropriate. He has a more knowlegable sense of the LA political system and has some constructive ideas for potentially precluding "ban" legislation. Apparently, there is an LA city "proposed ban legislation" agenda item already in process.

In general, I believe that any city lawmaker who gains an hour or two's worth of experience with the HT will have a much more informed basis to bring to any legislative debate. They're people, too, and deserve to be allowed to glide through their own cities.

Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe we should be teaching their kids to glide. "Dad!!! You voted to ban WHAT?!!!"

Zzzz... 

Not one person banged into another, unintentionally. And most of the testing was in narrow halls of Metavision in a rather small, crowded area. We tried the run-over-the-foot test several times. Zero damage, but always accompanied by the standard punch-line yelp. (PT, we warmly remembered your hand-test with coincidental screech.)

Later, several members intentionally tested the effect of low-speed collisions and the surprising results are these:

• Forward movement collisions, the only anticipated danger, collide with the handle bar first, since it sticks forward of the base unit by nearly a foot, providing the target is standing.
• That immediately pushes back against the handle bar, forcing the HT's basic angle to change, thus causing it to start dynamic breaking.
• The force of the collision doesn't fully include the HT unit itself, since its natural response is to brake its own mass out of the equation.
• The HT handle bar was the only contact with the collision target. Its rubberized front inlay touches first.
• No injury, bruises or damage was felt. We tried it at walking speed and slightly above.
• The colliding person's mass was transferred to the collision target, pushing the targeted person backward, but not very far.
• A pedestrian collision-like result occurred, something you can always have without the HT. Those never happen in real life.

I'd love to see some actual physics tests on this. What and where are the foot-pounds of transferred energy? What speed would be needed to raise a bruise? The informal test suggests that adding the HT's 83 pounds into the Fear Factor is inappropriate.

Attendees are invited to submit comments, updates, factoids, impressions and links here, for the immediate moment, to help flesh out these preliminary pages.

Between TJ and myself, we have segwayla.com and segway-la.com tied up for use by the eventual group's web presence.

Next meeting will be wherever, whenever. After March 1, most certainly, and hopefully in the form of a gathering of fresh HT gliders in a fun-ride area of greater LA county.

You got your Manhattan Beach area, your Venice Beach area, downtown with its hills, Beverly with her hills, Santa Monica, parks galore and so on. Typical So Cal overchoice.

-Peter iNova
default scrivener/webmaker pro tempore