Segway HT

r u s s w h i t e

Finally, America has an answer to Japan's 1991 Mazda Suitcase Car. The Segway HT, a two-wheeled scooter-like personal-transportation apparatus, is on the way to revolutionize the way we walk places by helping us not have to walk places. The device's inventor, New York eccentric Dean Kamen, compares the Segway to "a pair of magic shoes." Shoes or no, it has "gyros and sensors that act like your inner ear." It has no brakes, no steering, no engine, no throttle, and no gearshift. After mounting the machine, the driver has only to shift her weight forward or backward to go in said direction. Plus, it's nigh impossible to get knocked over due to the Segway's internal balancing contraptions. And it can climb stairs. So, in the parlance of the times, it's fucking sweet.

Of course, half the fun of learning about the device is learning about Kamen himself. The brains behind such other devices as a plastic kidney dialysis machine and a wheelchair that can stand erect on two wheels and climb stairs, Kamen lives on an island off the coast of Long Island, NY, called "North Dumpling," which supposedly seceded from the USA after New York officials gave Kamen grief for building a windwmill there. He can only get to his island home with a modified helicopter he made himself.

But back to the Segway. Powered by two batteries which recharge in four or five hours, this little bugger can travel ten to fifteen miles on one full charging at a top speed of eighteen miles per hour. Plus, no noise, no pollution. And if that's not revolutionary enough for you, think of the urban restructuring that could result if the Segway really takes off. Imagine, a world no longer so car-dependent. Roads and sidewalks give way to Segway lanes; pedestrians no longer have to trudge along side-by-side, choking on emissions from the Volvo caravan five feet to their right; and instead they effortlessly cruise by each other in a utopian, Jetson-like society full of automated movement and extremely flabby knees. Maybe that's not exactly how it'll turn out, but who cares? Recall, it's fucking sweet.

Who gets one first, you ask? Kamen hopes that a public model will become available in the next year or two at the measly price of $3000. Tom Weyandt, director of comprehensive planning for the Atlanta Regional Commission, posits: "The police [will get Segways first], perhaps, then out at the airport, in fairly controlled settings. In time, however, we'll begin to see it used by the consumer, for short trips, say on a corporate campus or a university campus." Lazy, technologically-dependent perambulaters rejoice!

marty already has one.